The failure of self-checkout technology • Hacker News Board

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#21

Post by throwaway290 » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 10:34 AM UTC

Kathula wrote: post #10

transfire wrote: post #3

I love them. How quickly people forget… waiting in line for over 10 minutes wasn’t all that uncommon back it the day. Doesn’t really matter though. The next gen tech is coming soon. You won’t have to scan anymore and theft will be next to impossible.

>theft will be next to impossible This sounds like some tech utopia t thinking. What's gonna stop someone just grabbing something and walking out? The employees?

Probably it'll scan your card upon entry.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#22

Post by piva00 » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 10:34 AM UTC

I have almost no issues with self-checkout in Sweden. There's the odd one requiring me to weigh every item after checking them in the cashier but most do not require that.

I blip my card, scan my items while bagging them, and finish the purchase on the terminal. Random checks from an employee happen every 10th/20th time I use one and it's pretty painless.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#23

Post by red_admiral » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 10:35 AM UTC

garyclarke27 wrote: post #13

I'm surprised RFID hasn't taken over. Scanning the whole basket in one go is way more convenient and faster than fiddly labour intensive Barcode scanning of individual items. RFID is now very cheap and the benefits of saved: labour, time, theft prevention etc are huge. Decathlon is the only retailer I have seen use this.

My guess is the price of a RFID tag on every single product is still uneconomical. Decathlon can do it for clothes and sports equipment, but are you really going to stick a tag on every £0.27 can of baked beans?

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#24

Post by jdietrich » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 10:35 AM UTC

garyclarke27 wrote: post #13

I'm surprised RFID hasn't taken over. Scanning the whole basket in one go is way more convenient and faster than fiddly labour intensive Barcode scanning of individual items. RFID is now very cheap and the benefits of saved: labour, time, theft prevention etc are huge. Decathlon is the only retailer I have seen use this.

Supermarkets typically only have a gross profit of a few cents per item. Even ignoring the logistical complexities of getting those tags onto the product, it's a complete non-starter simply because of the cost of the tags.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#25

Post by 0xAFFFF » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 10:37 AM UTC

garyclarke27 wrote: post #13

I'm surprised RFID hasn't taken over. Scanning the whole basket in one go is way more convenient and faster than fiddly labour intensive Barcode scanning of individual items. RFID is now very cheap and the benefits of saved: labour, time, theft prevention etc are huge. Decathlon is the only retailer I have seen use this.

Uniqlo is using RFID too at least in France. Both work pretty well and the speed of checkout is unmatched. But this works for Uniqlo and Decathlon because they only sell their own products. Supermarkets come with more hurdles, as products don't typically have any tag attached and are also selling bulk.

I also suspect you need an average price per product that's too high for supermarkets to make it worth it.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#26

Post by garblegarble » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 10:39 AM UTC

cpursley wrote: post #7

transfire wrote: post #3

I love them. How quickly people forget… waiting in line for over 10 minutes wasn’t all that uncommon back it the day. Doesn’t really matter though. The next gen tech is coming soon. You won’t have to scan anymore and theft will be next to impossible.

I assume you mean being able to walk out the front door with the goods and have them charged to you automatically. But how does this address the current US epidemic of people stealing goods by just walking in and out because there’s no criminal charges under a certain amount in some jurisdictions? Seems like this problem will just amplified, leaving to more shuttered stores.

I'm sure at some point a company will identify people on entry and then simply sell the value of the stolen items as debt to a debt collection agency...

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#27

Post by dfox » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 10:39 AM UTC

Kathula wrote: post #10

transfire wrote: post #3

I love them. How quickly people forget… waiting in line for over 10 minutes wasn’t all that uncommon back it the day. Doesn’t really matter though. The next gen tech is coming soon. You won’t have to scan anymore and theft will be next to impossible.

>theft will be next to impossible This sounds like some tech utopia t thinking. What's gonna stop someone just grabbing something and walking out? The employees?

The general idea is to use something like UHF RFID to scan the whole shopping cart at once (there are even UHF RFID tags that can interoperate with EAS systems). The technology exists and is suprisingly cheap and is used by some some clothing retailers. And that points to the main issue: you have to somehow apply the tags to the items, that is easy to do if you work closely with the manufacturers and only sell your own brands, but somehow non-trivial for something like grocery store.

In theory there is an standardized mapping of the whole GS1 labeling system onto UHF RFID and the only thing that prevents universal deployment is some kind of critical mass. Somewhat surprisingly the standards even take into account the privacy issues inherent in that and the tags do not have fixed physical address (unlike HF RFID/NFC with 1wire-style deconflicting UIDs) and the contents can be progressively masked out, with command to completely disable the tag being mandatory.

On the other hand, first demonstration of that I can remember was by Siemens in 1991, so there is probably another 30 years to go for that to become widespread :)

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#28

Post by rimeice » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 10:40 AM UTC

I find it interesting that the experience of having a human interaction with a cashier is rarely discussed in this debate. It's such a good opportunity to impart your brand as a retailer through a human to human conversation and leave a customer with a positive impression. I'm less loyal to a machine than a person I recognise through several interactions from my local community. There must be a cost associated with this for the retailers leaning on this strategy.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#29

Post by camkego » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 10:42 AM UTC

acd wrote: post #19

I prefer to talk to a real human. 1. Human is nicer than cold robot 2. Liability to scan items is the stores responsibility

Number 2 is a big deal. Another comment in this thread is by a shopper who has been banned from a store for having missed an item. This might be a good reason not to use self check out.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#30

Post by Faaak » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 10:42 AM UTC

I really like those that you can find in Switzerland (either in Coop or Migros).

The basic assumption is "trust the customer". Thus, the self-checkout devices don't have the annoying "you must weight the article you just scanned".

You just scan them one by one, add them to your bag, pay at the end, and that's it. Sometimes (it happens to me around 1/year) you get a random search, which is not that bad as they just randomly scan ~10 articles from your cart and it just beeps (i guess ?) if they're not paid for in your receipt.