Why several big-box stores have ditched their self-checkouts | CBC News::undefined
I love self checkouts especially if I’m just grabbing a few things because I’ve gotten the rhythm of them down really well and get in and out much more quickly. And in reality they should only be used to offload the customers that meet that exact profile, “just grabbing a few things, not intimidated by tech”
That said the problem is two fold, people do not understand the optimal use case of self checkouts, and two companies see them as a way to cut as much labor as they can which in many cases forces those who don’t meet the ideal criteria into using them.
I find it to be a lot better since it allows multiple employees to cover many registers, but at the same time I’m very skeptical of technology that leads to less social interaction. Eventually we’re going to get to a point where people will literally skip meals if it means they have to interact with someone.
The last several times I’ve been to Lowes they only have self checkouts open. Can you imagine trying to run a 4x8’ sheet of plywood or 15’ long pipe over the scanner? It’s ridiculous.
What are you talking about they have hand scanners. You don’t even have to take things off the cart you just grab the scanner and walk around your shopping cart
This is the exact reason we stopped going to Lowe’s; literally 5 employees standing around talking while customers (self included) struggled to scan boards, pay for nails and screws and a million other little and large things. I hope they rot, taking my business to Home Hardware and other places that actually employ people.
Dame deal with home Depot. They’ll have self checkout only, but maybe they’ll have a clerk who will help you to self checkout
There’s no way to send feedback, or to log a fault with the machine, so the store operators have to deal with every single exception manually, over and over, instead of getting the thing fixed.
- “Place your bags in bagging area” (ok, done)
- “Unexpected item in bagging area” (How can it be unexpected, you just told me to put my bags there. Operator logs in and clears fault)
- (remove bags) “item removed from bagging area” (so you want me to put my bags there, but you don’t, but you do. Operator logs in and clears fault)
- “We couldn’t scan the last item” (yes you could, it’s on the screen there. But if I take it back and scan it again, I get “item removed” and then it won’t scan it again. Operator logs in and clears fault)
- “unexpected item in bagging area (again)”. (So I successfully scanned the thing, but you didn’t expect me to put it in the bagging area? Where should it put it instead? Operator logged in and clears fault)
- “have you forgotten to scan something?” (No, that’s my walking stick and the extra bags I brought that I didn’t actually need after all. Operator logs in and clears fault)
Does anyone actually test these things before installing them at the stores? Does anyone review the faults to see how to improve the scanning and item recognition? Are you really creating a better customer experience by having half a dozen customers holding up the line while waiting for the operator to come and clear a fault?
Huh. In my area, all of those features went away years ago. Self check-out is so easy it’s possible to shoplift without realizing it.
I just assumed the world collectively ditched all those annoying features.The truth is they largely dont care. It’s easier for them to have an overactivity cautious robot that’s dog gone triple checks that you aren’t robbing them as long as they can close all normal lanes but one. They dont care that it’s a 10x worse job than cashiering the normal register, or that you’re annoyed to shop there. In most cases, your choice of stores is either limited, or the other ones are doing the same damn thing.
All that said, i have seen self checkout done well and sanely. Instead of jamming tiny stations next to each other to fit 10 in what used to be 2 normal lanes, it was more like 10 in 4 old lanes. Each station was huge, with plenty of room to set things. It had actually calibrated sensors that let you put bags down first, and get this, the clerk was able to remotely clear errors from a nearby station that wasent crowding anyone.
The above was in an overpriced, boutique store so i dont expect it to ever become the norm, but ill be damned if it wasent actually nice to use.
I stopped shopping at Cub specifically because the self-checkout registers were just like the ones described above. The cashier lanes weren’t any better because I still had to do all the work except scanning anyway.
Cub is the most convenient location for me by about 5 miles, but I refuse to go there because the service is so very bad.
The self check at my local Cub is awful, the paranoid self check is so frustrating, especially because I bring my own bags and it never works right. And it’s so expensive compared to every other grocery store in the area.
I want to like Cub because they’re the only union grocery store that’s convenient, but allegedly they allow lower management in the union and that’s caused problems, and the rumor I’ve heard is that the company that owns Cub is intentionally running it into the ground in order to kill the union. But given how shitty all retail has become, I’m not sure how true that rumor is.
I’d add one more- I set my purse down on the scan area (the only flat surface) to get my credit card out and get the “unable to scan item, please try again”. I try to set it with the bags and get the “unexpected item in bagging area, please remove from bagging area”. If I dont want to hold it while scanning and bagging I end up having to keep switching purse between shoulders or set it on the floor (which feels insecure).
They had to know that women carry purses and don’t always have a cart to set them down in, but they gave us nowhere to set them while scanning or bagging things and it just creates a mess.
I personally prefer self checkout at the grocery store because I get to bag my groceries the way I want to (grouped by frozen food, cans/bottles, non-food, etc.). It’s annoying to carefully group my items at the regular checkout conveyor only to have the cashier randomly bag them at the end. And even if I offer to bag them myself, I have to do it awkwardly while the cashier and next customer wait and stare, which isn’t the case for multiple self-checkout counters.
The cashiers bag your shopping? That’s so odd. We don’t have that here.
I think self checkouts have their place in the world, but too many suits with low brain cell counts have tried to treat them as the panacea for everything, and got dollar signs in their eyes and started salivating when they saw the prospect of firing all their cashiers. But they really don’t lend themselves well to a lot of types of retail establishments.
The Walmarts near me are exclusively self checkout at most hours of the day. They still have a dozen or more normal checkout lanes, but they’re almost always unmanned. Instead, they corral everyone into their “open concept” self checkout area which is a nightmare of shopping carts bumping into each other and customers with zero situational or spatial awareness stepping on each other’s toes. The best part is, the machines get their knickers in a twist so often that they now have pretty much exactly as many employees standing around the self checkouts to babysit customers and unjam the machines (and watch for theft, I’m sure) as they had normal checkout cashiers in the first place.
Both of our local Home Depots have self checkout “desks,” each of which is a big table with the scanner and monitor facing the customer. I suppose their self checkout theft rates have gotten so high that they’ve converted all of their checkouts back to cashier operated ones, but they kept the same self checkout machines… Just, the employee operates it instead of you. So we’ve come full circle and just reinvented the normal checkout but worse, because both you and the employee are on the same side of the same counter breathing in each other’s faces.
I do like the single self checkout kiosk at the Autozone across the street, though, simply because their entire staff seems to be perpetually doing something that doesn’t involve helping customers or addressing the ever-lengthening line in any capacity whatsoever. And also practically no one else has twigged to the self checkout machine at all. So when I just need a can of Brakleen or a quart of oil or whatever the fuck, I can just scan it and bounce while everyone else is standing around in line growing old.
The best part is, the machines get their knickers in a twist so often that they now have pretty much exactly as many employees standing around the self checkouts to babysit customers and unjam the machines (and watch for theft, I’m sure) as they had normal checkout cashiers in the first place.
There’s a grocery store near where I live that is like this. They have a scale built in to the bagging area, and it’s own idea of how much your stuff should weigh, and if you don’t add items precisely when it expects you to it shouts “UNSCANNED ITEM IN THE BAGGING AREA” and halts until an employee assesses the situation and releases you to scan more stuff. But this happens so often that the employees don’t have time to check why it’s complaining, and just scan their card to shut the thing up.
I’ve come across the same things in most of my travels. The worst incarnation I’ve seen of self check outs are the camera based self checkouts I’ve seen at some Circle K gas stations in the South West of the US.
I think they are too far of a jump for most normal consumers to understand. They use cameras so one can place all the items on the scan surface and it tries to calculate everything at once. Most people including myself try to scan things one at a time and it doesn’t work like that as it tries to do it all at once. Eventually store staff then need to come over to help every customer or they just ring up customers in a traditional way over at the main till. In these situations I don’t have enough cashier training to use these machines so I avoid them.
I love tech most of the time but I don’t enjoy when tech tries to leap frog over a couple of generations than the public can handle. In these situations have staff to take customer’s money. Websites dedicate resources to remove barriers to buying on a website. Why are brick and mortars adding barriers with each passing year?
Nothing grinds my gears more than having to line up and wait a long time to spend my money. I think there are some focusing too closely on the numbers and not the larger picture.
I ran into one of those circle k things in Louisiana this summer. Fortunately, it wasn’t self checkout. It’s just how they had the cashiers checking you out, which was nice because I’d never seen such a thing and she had to explain it to me.
Kinda blew my mind when I saw it work though.
Sounds like they have worked out the bugs since I first saw them earlier this year. They weren’t scanning very quickly and us customers had no idea how to even use them as they don’t look like the normal self check out systems, well at least the ones I saw.
I think the tech could be really good like the Amazon stores without cashiers but I’m not sure if most at first even understand how they work and are hesitant. I knew I was the first time at a Amazon store. It took hours for the receipt to be emailed to me and I had already left the state as I went to my next stop. However it was correct. Should prove to be interesting times ahead…
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Self checkout has only been convenient for handful of items. People that go through with a cart full and a half deserve the frustration.
Go to a real person if you have big order. However companies should treat their employees better so they don’t leave.
You use self scan (get your own handheld scanner) for those shops
Not in the U.S.
I prefer a handler who is fast and accustomed to checking customers out all day. The self checkout is only as efficient as the current person occupying the kiosk.
Waiting in the self checkout is kind of frustrating that way. But in the manned checkout you’ll still get the customer who waits until the bill is totalled before taking out their wallet and digging through for cash or card, as if they somehow expected not to have to pay. I’m pretty efficient in self checkout e.g bagging stuff while the payment is processing.
You’re not wrong. There are times where regardless of style, checking out can get clogged by morons.
The most prevalent chains here have self-checkouts, and it is frustrating because they are card-only! So even if there are unccupied counters, if you want to pay with cash, you stand in the regular line. And this is despite some years prior there were cash-accepting machines in one of these chains.
We need more places where you can scan and checkout with your phone. For example: https://www.bigy.com/myExpressCheckout
This single-handedly changed where I buy groceries - I can essentially just walk out the front door as soon as I have everything I need. Don’t need to worry about:
- Waiting in the massive checkout lines (even the self-checkout lines are long…)
- Taking everything (or mostly everything) out of the shopping cart for the cashier to scan.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
After Dwayne Ouelette took over the Canadian Tire in North Bay, Ont., last year, he decided to buck the trend and ditch the store’s four self-checkout machines — which had been there for a decade.
When self-checkouts began their rise to prominence about a decade ago, they were seen as a way for retailers to cut labour costs and speed up the checkout process.
And a new survey commissioned by U.S. personal finance website LendingTree found that out of 2,000 Americans polled online last month, 15 per cent admitted to stealing at self-checkout.
Back at Canadian Tire in North Bay, general manager Derek Shogren says self-checkout theft is an issue, but that it was only a small part of why the store ditched its machines.
The general manager of the Canadian Tire in Mississauga that removed its four self-checkouts earlier this year told CBC News that theft and customer preference were factors in its decision.
In England, Booths managing director Nigel Murray told the BBC that self-checkout was ill-suited for the supermarket because it sells numerous unpackaged items that don’t have scannable barcodes.
The original article contains 929 words, the summary contains 180 words. Saved 81%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I hate those things so much, buying a red bull, red light and wait for someone to arrive to check that I’m over 16. It happened to me so many times and normally I like technology, but those things, no thank you.
It’s not the tech, it’s the implementation. I absolutely hate most of them, one in particular needs you to scan the item then place it in an area to check weight otherwise it barks at you and freezes you out until they come to check. The amount of times it doesn’t work right makes it the most frustrating system I ever used and actively avoid it but normally can’t since they almost never have a cashier.
I hate the place even more than i did and now try to plan to do the 20 minute drive to a place that doesn’t do this. Good job!
Good, those things are garbage
They really should be like a reverse carpool lane, two items or less.
I’d say 5-7 max but for sure no full carts
I (and other people) take a full cart through when the self checkouts are the only ones open. Asking at the service counter for a checkout to be opened, they just say “use the self checkout”. They don’t care if there’s a long line, or if people have to wait, so long as they can get away without paying people to run a checkout. I suspect that most supermarkets would completely do away with people at checkouts if they could.
And no produce, nothing that needs to be looked up or weighed.
Ugh that’s going to make all my quick runs for a single onion a pain in the ass. But I do agree that most people in self checkouts are incapable of efficiently using quick lookup. Even though it’s right there!
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The whole idea of a large store that you walk through and gather your own things for is strange, unless we’re talking farmers markets. You should just tell someone what you need and they give it to you or deliver. We’ve created a world dependent on cars but not using them intelligently.
That’s how it was in the early 1920s.
But I mean, you can do this today. Home delivery or pickup.
Store managed delivery/pickup seems to be growing since the pandemic. I think they discovered that the reduced theft and the ability to sell imperfect produce more than covers the cost of the system.
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That last part is a HUGE part of why they generate revenue. There’s an entire industry based around what goes where in a grocery store. Companies fight over getting their stuff at eye level or on end caps to make their products more appealing and likely to get bought. The entire point of sales is to get you to come in and buy more things you didn’t have on your list. (Even online sales)
Store managed delivery/pickup seems to be growing since the pandemic. I think they discovered that the reduced theft and the ability to sell imperfect produce more than covers the cost of the system.
I hate using the delivery services though, they can be useless for fresh veg/meat as you can’t properly pick a good cut or the right amount.
The substitutions can be awful too.
This is my biggest problem. Like don’t trust a min wage person to know when a avocado is ripe.
