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The failure of self-checkout technology

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Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#151

Post by zinekeller »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #148
steelframe wrote: post #109

I wouldn't mind these machine so much if they always accepted cash. The problem is that more often than not they don't. When I was on vacation in London about 5 years ago when Visa had an outage: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2018/jun/01/visa-outa... I was trying to pick up some food at the only grocery market that was within walking distance of where I was staying. The grocery store only had self-checkout m…

The fact that a credit card CAN have an outage is ridiculous. They were invented as an eventually-consistent system first! Just save up the credit card info, and charge the bank when the network connection is back up.

It no longer works that way in Europe (or basically anywhere outside the US): most customers and banks insist that they see payments in real-time (in the name of fraud prevention (user-controlled credit card locks are a thing here) and convenience).

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#152

Post by workfromspace »

Obviously this sounds like such a US problem. Self checkout in the UK and Europe (Estonia and Barcelona) IME works perfectly:

- No thefts

- Many people with card payments

- Working self checkout machines

Also, recently I have been thinking how come the US is pioneering so many tech but fail to implement any, such as:

- Payments: No SWIFT/IBAN, still lots of cash usage, no e-invoices (ie for utility bills), still using paper checks, physical emails

- No national identification cards or numbers

- Very limited e-government services

And the argument I've been hearing the most is freedom; which also sounds oxymoron, coming from the country with the worlds strongest 3 letter agencies.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#153

Post by fomine3 »

punyearthling wrote: post #89

I prefer self-checkout simply because I'm better at bagging my groceries than people are. Employees don't care if your food gets crushed by a carton of milk, or under fill the plastic bags; and that's another thing - human cashiers use plastic bags here in the US. I like having control over my bagging situation.

This is one of a reason to prefer self checkout. Here in Japan, cashier people are careful but they move products from basket to another basket. After payment is done, I need to move products from basket to my bag. It's two LIFO-like moving operation, it's inefficient. Though in defense of traditional system, it should be efficient for POS system utilization .

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#155

Post by matthewdgreen »

manmal wrote: post #126
matthewdgreen wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I started looking at RFID tech in 2004, the disposable tags cost maybe $.50-$1 but general consensus was the costs would follow a Moore’s law like trajectory, halving every 2-3 years until they were on even the cheapest items. And yet here we are 20 years later and I don’t see RFID checkout systems very often at all. Are the tags still really expensive? Or is it the extra cost of attaching them to packaging?

Are you suggesting to put trillions of copper, silicon, and aluminum parts on disposable items like bananas, so people have a slightly better shopping experience?

I am not suggesting it. It was widely presented as inevitable once the costs dropped enough. Retail inventory management and checkout is expensive.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#156

Post by ironSkillet »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #99

It would be a nightmare to lose self checkout at Target. It would be a blessing to lose it at CVS. It can be done very well or very poorly.

Personally I just wish the self checkout voice at CVS didn't sound so aggressive when telling me to put the item in the bagging area. I'm on it lady, no need to be so pushy. It makes me uncomfortable lol.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#157

Post by joecot »

the_snooze wrote: post #149
snakeyjake wrote: post #146

>employees who get taken away from their other duties to help customers deal with the confusing and error prone kiosks. I have seen these customers. I do not understand. What are they doing at the self-checkout that is confusing? I have used dozens of different implementations and they are all simplicity incarnate. So I just lump them all in with the folks who don't know that cars need oil changes, take more than 45…

Some of those customers are indeed clueless. But the machines themselves aren't that great either. Automation and efficiency almost always come at the cost of decreased resiliency. They work great as long as you're on the happy path. To give a practical example, fresh produce have that 4-digit code to identify them (e.g., 4011 for bananas). But some fresh produce comes in containers that have barcodes on them, like g…

As someone who uses self-checkout machines effectively, this happening is fine. I have a moment of confusion, then find the code, then move on to the next item. What is terrible is when instead of the self-checkout machine throwing a warning about it not being scanned correctly, so I can find and input the code, it just locks up the machine and says "Customer needs assistance". Then I'm in the same boat as the clueless folks, because the machine won't trust me to correct.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#158

Post by coderjames »

snakeyjake wrote: post #146

>employees who get taken away from their other duties to help customers deal with the confusing and error prone kiosks. I have seen these customers. I do not understand. What are they doing at the self-checkout that is confusing? I have used dozens of different implementations and they are all simplicity incarnate. So I just lump them all in with the folks who don't know that cars need oil changes, take more than 45…

> >employees who get taken away from their other duties to help customers deal with the confusing and error prone kiosks.

> I have seen these customers. I do not understand.

One applicable scenario I have observed at my local super market is people for whom English (or the otherwise locally-dominant language) is not their first language. The machine may have a 'clear' error message displaying and speaking "return last scanned item to bagging area" but imagine that you don't understand the language the machine is using very well. At a register with a human, a person can unload groceries on to a belt, hand the cashier some bills that they may or may not entirely understand the value of or swipe a government-provided benefits card, and get back their items and any applicable change without needing a firm grasp of the spoken or written language.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#159

Post by xboxnolifes »

manmal wrote: post #126
matthewdgreen wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I started looking at RFID tech in 2004, the disposable tags cost maybe $.50-$1 but general consensus was the costs would follow a Moore’s law like trajectory, halving every 2-3 years until they were on even the cheapest items. And yet here we are 20 years later and I don’t see RFID checkout systems very often at all. Are the tags still really expensive? Or is it the extra cost of attaching them to packaging?

Are you suggesting to put trillions of copper, silicon, and aluminum parts on disposable items like bananas, so people have a slightly better shopping experience?

We kind of already do that, just with plastic, adhesive, and ink.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#160

Post by mmvasq »

I had a pretty significant attack from individuals trying to demonstrate just how much data they can access on native systems. The self checkouts are less of a concern than the amount of harassment that can already be done utilizing fraud analytics and loyalty programs.

I am glad to see biometric pay become a thing at Amazon, it has been too slow for this to progress. Being able to take a walk to the store, and not carry a wallet is a huge convenience. Shame I am not shopping with them much other than the occasional Whole Foods purchase after being thrown into the law enforcement vs local response loop when analytics were being misused.

The palm biometric solution is a decent happy medium (vs fingerprint or retina scanning) and something international travelers are already used to.

They didn’t show me any examples of RFID issues other than some guy obtaining a wand and taking inventory of the dogs in the neighborhood. Not a big deal compared to the personal bias and insults they could chase one around with - all over internet platforms using fraud and marketing analytics.

The loyalty programs are in pretty bad shape. I dropped a bunch of them wasn’t worth maintaining for the level of griefing someone can do on games and social media about purchases.

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