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The failure of self-checkout technology

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Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#211

Post by secretsatan »

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 is why I love self checkout, I find chatty customers in front of me to be immensely frustrating when I just want to get my shopping done.

Other irritants are the ones who watch the cashier scan every item and waiting to pay before they even think of clearing their items from the conveyor thing, so you have to wait for them to mess around putting their wallet away, then get out their shopping bag and start packing

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#212

Post by InCityDreams »

byyll wrote: post #186
workfromspace wrote: post #152

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 usin…

UK is part of Europe.

A bunch of banks closing uk-nationals-with -eu-residencies accounts? Oh, and passport control? Remember Brexit?

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#213

Post by g-b-r »

shellfishgene wrote: post #197
g-b-r wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've actually never seen one where you can delete stuff yourself

I wonder why, as the alternative are hand scanners that you carry around the store, and those even have +/- buttons to adjust product amounts. Is that not the same opportunity to cheat?

The employees check that you're scanning the stuff before you drop it in the beg, it's a lot harder to notice someone deleting things afterwards (although they could simply add a distinctive sound for it)

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#214

Post by 7952 »

lxgr wrote: post #175
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This capability is actually built deeply into the chip payment specification used by most credit and debit cards, but it's fallen out of fashion in favor for online-first processing: The original motivation for offline capabilities was that phone calls were expensive in Europe (early terminals worked via dialup modems, which were also slow to connect), and phone lines were not ubiquitous in all stores. Now that that'…

The original implementation of credit cards was paper based. You made a carbon copy of the bank card and a signature taken. And the pin can be verified using the card alone.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#215

Post by dekleinewolf »

shellfishgene wrote: post #198
mrbadguy wrote: post #79

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 scanne…

Why would stores invest so much into the self checkout tech if it does not save labor/cost?

The point is that the labor is moved to the customer (and is now unpaid labor). So it's not 'less labor' but it is definitely 'less labor costs'.

Think 'serverless' technology - there is still a server, it's just no longer owned by you.

Seeing how the customer had to wait for the labor to be executed anyway in the past, I see this as a win.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#216

Post by shric »

Gigachad wrote: post #173
hackan wrote: post #92

I love self-checkout, honestly. Machines need to improve, but still. There's a store here where u simply DROP all items in the self-checkout basket, and it automatically computes everything! I suspect it uses NFC or similar, but it works, and its wonderful, simply drop everything in! And wait, there's more: did I say drop everything in? I meant, the bag you are using to hold everything? just put it in that basket, in…

It seems that in general, the US lags behind in retail technology. In Australia, close to all supermarkets are majority if not entirely self checkout. Even a lot of retail brands like hardware stores and clothing stores are self checkout. The ones like Uniqlo where you just drop the items in and it instantly scans them all are incredibly nice to use.

The ones in Australia aren't perfect though. I use Coles and Woolworths mostly in the Sydney CBD:

- bad touch screens that lag.

- even more lag when you're trying to pay.

- frequent (about 60% of visits) requirement for staff because it disagrees that I've put something in the bagging area, or some other reason

- unnecessary and slow modal dialogs about rewards programmes, receipt etc. I wish there was just a "leave me alone and let me pay by card" button that just lets me tap and pay.

I still use them most of the time because there is almost never a queue, but if the human checkout lines are empty or almost empty I'll use them instead, it's much faster.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#217

Post by Aeolun »

My problem with self-checkout (in the Netherlands) is not the interface or the system itself. I can navigate that. But then when I've finished checking out and bagging everything myself, the guy from the store came to do the whole thing again!

I just stood there in utter disbelief as they rummaged through my neatly packed bag to mess everything up, scan only a handful of items, and then present me a bill that's several euros lower than it was before they started re-scanning stuff (e.g. they missed items).

What is the point of self checkout if you are not going to trust that your customers scan everything?

Conversely, I've been self-checking in Japan for years, and they've never checked the contents of my bag.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#218

Post by secretsatan »

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…

The Coop and Migros ones generally work well I find too, although if you get an age checked item, they can be a bit slow in some stores to acknowledge you.

The touch screens for the ones in Manor are terrible OTH, they seem to require a very precise light touch, but not too light, I find it strange that the more "upmarket" Manor has the worst ones.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#219

Post by Reason077 »

filcuk wrote: post #106
devilbunny wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure that's great, but it's a bit impractical for groceries. Even the relatively small cost of an NFC tag is going to be a real problem given how thin most groceries' margins are (and how cheap small amounts of food can be, even now). But groceries are one of the best examples of where this would be a big time-saver. I will say that I really do prefer self-check in convenience stores, where a big purchase is thre…

For larger shopping, I like to use the scanning gun. I get that it's used to track me, but the fact is I get to track the price, pack items as I go and just pay on the way out.

Some of the UK supermarkets are bypassing the scanning gun now and just doing self-scan with an app. Works really well. Nice price checking feature in some of the apps too.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#220

Post by RoyalHenOil »

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.

I completely agree. When I worked as a cashier, we had no problem letting people pay with credit cards even in the event of a full-on power outage. We just used a credit card imprinter, which was quick, cheap, and easy to use.

Why has this suddenly become so difficult? It's not like outages are rare.

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