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The failure of self-checkout technology

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Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#71

Post by seszett »

pjmlp wrote: post #41
Faaak wrote: post #30

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 ra…

Trust like in Switzerland is a very rare thing in most countries, you will seldom see newspaper stands with money boxes where everyone is expected to take one single paper out and leave the money in the tiny box, anywhere else this would fail.

I don't know about newspapers in Switzerland, but self-checkout machines don't usually weigh items in France or Belgium either (or the Netherlands, if AH stores in Belgium are representative of those in the Netherlands) and these countries probably aren't as fetishised to be trustful as Switzerland seems to be.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#72

Post by fallenhitokiri »

V__ wrote: post #39
kioleanu wrote: post #17

I’ll leave a comment I’ve made last time this came into discussion: Self-Checkouts have been really problematic in Germany with stores rushing to put them to use and namely: 1) they have very bad interfaces 2) they don’t trust customers at all 3) it’s easy to report cases to the police and 4) stores have people hired to catch thieves and their incentive is that they are paid 50 to 100 euros per report (paid by the pe…

This is not my experience at all. Can you tell what retailers you are using, so I can avoid them? If I don't have to otherwise, I only go to the store with a self-checkout near me. There are some ux problems which they should improve but all in all I'm happy.

Same here, not my experience at all. It would also be interesting if the stores are franchises vs corporate owned.

We have Rewe, Kaufland and IKEA supporting self checkout around here and the experience is decent. The interface is not the best. Sometimes a scan fails, but there’s always someone close by who can help.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#73

Post by mbork_pl »

gregoriol wrote: post #68
mbork_pl wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I often see these things, their UI/UX is horrible. I'm a bit of a gadget-geek and rather a tech-savvy person, and yet I did make mistakes with them and wasted time because of the UI/UX. > The real future will be no-checkout though: just take the stuff you need and go, shops would be able to detect what you got there and bill you. I really hope not. That would be a privacy nightmare. And how would I then pay in…

Well, maybe there will be some validation at the exit of the shop, maybe a message on the phone to check that you indeed bought those things. But cash is going to be gone too in the future-future.

> But cash is going to be gone too in the future-future.

Like famine, poverty, cancer and CSS? ;-)

Yeah, sure.

Seriously though: history shows that if official money is not trusted (for some reason), another form emerges. So no, cash will be there as long as humankind exists.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#74

Post by matthewfcarlson »

edh649 wrote: post #55

Self-checkouts, like many problems, seemed to be solved when I visited Japan. They have 3 stations, 1 where an employee scans your items and then puts them back into a new basket. They then direct you towards (one of many) terminals where you pay. There are then more spaces where you can bag your groceries. Once you've seen it you'll be baffled as to why it isn't a global solution. No need for the employee or others…

Aldis has a similar flow. One or two cashiers can handle the whole store as they just do scanning and collect payment. They’re also concerningly fast at scanning. It really baffles me why more stores don’t adopt some of their policies.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#75

Post by iteria »

agubelu wrote: post #67

I frequently hop between Spain and the UK. Self-checkout is ubiquitous in the UK and people seem to almost universally favor using it, manned tills are a minority and generally reserved for larger purchases. In Spain it's quite the opposite: manned tills are a majority and people _actively_ avoid using self-checkout, even when it means going through a much longer queue. I found it an interesting cultural difference,…

I'm American, but i have a serious preference for self-checkout because I can avoid tje annoyances of regular check out. Waiting on the person who forgot their wallet. That person who wants to argue about one dollar on a one hundred dollar purchase. The person who realized they bought to much and now needs to figure what they want to put back. And more.

Cashiers are nice, I guess. But stores are not a social call for me. I want to buy my stuff and not deal with ridiculous people in front of me.

Also self-checkouts just move faster. This probably wouldn't be true if stores had the same number of cashiers they used to, but it really reminds me of mu youth where you could be in and out of a store without a significant wait to check out.

I lived in France for a bit and the stores were completely different. Speedy and plentiful lines, so that's probably the difference between Spain and the UK

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#76

Post by 6510 »

mbork_pl wrote: post #51
rimeice wrote: post #28

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 t…

This. I know the people at my local grocery store and always chat with them.

Here they use to sit behind conveyor belts and now they do almost nothing and stand at the self check out.

You can still chat with them, they have time for it now but even if you couldn't, if I had to chose between those 2 jobs I would rather not chat with you. That's putting it politely...

We have 3 systems, the conveyor belt, a hand held device with which you can scan products while shopping or you can scan everything at the check out. They check 3-4 products for one in about 5 customers.

It's a great system. I can do shopping during rush hour without standing in line or having to dump everything on the conveyor and bag it again in some neurotic ritual.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#77

Post by D13Fd »

iteria wrote: post #75
agubelu wrote: post #67

I frequently hop between Spain and the UK. Self-checkout is ubiquitous in the UK and people seem to almost universally favor using it, manned tills are a minority and generally reserved for larger purchases. In Spain it's quite the opposite: manned tills are a majority and people _actively_ avoid using self-checkout, even when it means going through a much longer queue. I found it an interesting cultural difference,…

I'm American, but i have a serious preference for self-checkout because I can avoid tje annoyances of regular check out. Waiting on the person who forgot their wallet. That person who wants to argue about one dollar on a one hundred dollar purchase. The person who realized they bought to much and now needs to figure what they want to put back. And more. Cashiers are nice, I guess. But stores are not a social call for…

I'm also American. I'll jump for the self checkout if there is an open one, but if there is a line for self-checkout, I'm going for a register. The self-checkout lines move so much slower than the regular cashier lines, because people get hung up on things and have to ask for help.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#78

Post by rimeice »

6510 wrote: post #76
mbork_pl wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I know the people at my local grocery store and always chat with them.

Here they use to sit behind conveyor belts and now they do almost nothing and stand at the self check out. You can still chat with them, they have time for it now but even if you couldn't, if I had to chose between those 2 jobs I would rather not chat with you. That's putting it politely... We have 3 systems, the conveyor belt, a hand held device with which you can scan products while shopping or you can scan everyth…

> if I had to chose between those 2 jobs I would rather not chat with you. That's putting it politely...

Why not? I think I'm missing the insinuation there...

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#79

Post by mrbadguy »

I think the self-checkout suffers from a fairly common fact: it doesn’t actually save any labour, just now the customer does the scanning instead of an employee. Of course, the argument goes that you can have more of them as opposed to staffed tills but that doesn’t actually seem to be working out as per TFA since they’re expensive to install.

One thing that I have seen actually adding value is where there’s a scanner that you carry around and scan items as you pick them up (some shops can let you do this with your phone's camera). This does save time and you simply pay at the end and don’t need to scan and bag everything since you’ve been doing that on the go.

Of course, these days I use the delivery service and get groceries delivered once a week so that’s kind of the ultimate convenience ;)

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#80

Post by gregoriol »

mbork_pl wrote: post #73
gregoriol wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, maybe there will be some validation at the exit of the shop, maybe a message on the phone to check that you indeed bought those things. But cash is going to be gone too in the future-future.

> But cash is going to be gone too in the future-future. Like famine, poverty, cancer and CSS? ;-) Yeah, sure. Seriously though: history shows that if official money is not trusted (for some reason), another form emerges. So no, cash will be there as long as humankind exists.

It'll be marginal at some point, like people riding horses to work.
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