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The failure of self-checkout technology

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Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#411

Post by lxgr »

workfromspace wrote: post #230
lxgr wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's got much to do with freedom (although it's commonly used as one reason to veto change). To me, it seems like given the size, market maturity, but especially the legal and political environment of the US, any change requiring large-scale coordination between multiple actors, especially public and private, has become very hard. Single-actor innovation requiring no cooperation of existing stakeholders…

Thank you for your analysis. I don't think it's a numbers issue. Japan with 127 million has multi-provider solutions such as IC cards, and I've heard India has Aadhaar and China has similar services. But I agree with the federal part. I guess it makes things harder as federal states of Europe (Germany, Switzerland, Spain) has some centralization and bureaucracy issues, but at least they still manage to get a national…

You're right, it's not a matter of size alone.

Japan is much more homogenous than the US, as far as I understand, and trust in government institutions also seems to be much higher. Both advantageous preconditions for establishing a national eID system!

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#412

Post by icoder »

valzam wrote: post #295
CM30 wrote: post #248

It feels like almost all the issues with self-checkout technology come from the attempts to minimise shoplifting, which don't even seem that effective at doing that. In theory, a system that let you scan products the same way checkout staff do without any weight checks or bagging area rules or other interruptions would be incredibly efficient. Especially if you could do things like scan the same product multiple time…

I have never understood the point of theft prevention at a self-checkout via the weight checks etc. If I want to steal something I just ... don't scan it? And keep it in my backpack. I don't see how the buggy weight checks serve any purpose other than annoying honest customers.

I only just learned about the concept of weight checks, I'd assume they weigh whatever you 'present' to have bought and compare that to what you scanned.

If you don't scan it and you put/keep it in your backpack, that's not different from doing the same but going through the cashier checkout right? They already had that problem, so if they keep that as it was but reduce the amount of personnel, that's a net positive?

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#413

Post by inglor_cz »

alpaca128 wrote: post #260
CM30 wrote: post #248

It feels like almost all the issues with self-checkout technology come from the attempts to minimise shoplifting, which don't even seem that effective at doing that. In theory, a system that let you scan products the same way checkout staff do without any weight checks or bagging area rules or other interruptions would be incredibly efficient. Especially if you could do things like scan the same product multiple time…

> In theory, a system that let you scan products the same way checkout staff do without any weight checks or bagging area rules or other interruptions would be incredibly efficient How would it be more efficient than a traditional checkout? There's no way the average person can match the speed of a cashier who does that every day, and at least the supermarkets I've visited don't have enough self checkout machines to…

"How would it be more efficient than a traditional checkout? There's no way the average person can match the speed of a cashier who does that every day, and at least the supermarkets I've visited don't have enough self checkout machines to balance that out."

Where I live, the speed of a cashier is not the bottleneck. The bottleneck is waiting in the line after 3-4 people, especially if one of them has some issue "eh, I didn't want Foo, I wanted bar, let me run for it real quick".

Self-checkout parallizes the process, and if a single "Exception" is thrown, the other threads still run just fine.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#414

Post by dazc »

cameronh90 wrote: post #255
CM30 wrote: post #248

It feels like almost all the issues with self-checkout technology come from the attempts to minimise shoplifting, which don't even seem that effective at doing that. In theory, a system that let you scan products the same way checkout staff do without any weight checks or bagging area rules or other interruptions would be incredibly efficient. Especially if you could do things like scan the same product multiple time…

In Waitrose (UK), they often don't have any scales, and as a result, there can just be one staff member watching over 20+ machines. By comparison, the other day I was at Tesco and they had introduced these new large self-checkouts for trolleys (aka carts in US), but about halfway through my trolley, I started getting an error for every item I scanned. Turns out, the max weight for the scale was 20kg.

Waitrose are in the process of updating the self-checkouts to full trolley-style machines. My local store is not that large but has 12 of these now in place of the previous 4 old-style machines.

Despite many claims that people don't like them it is surprising how they are almost always in full use.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#415

Post by icoder »

HPsquared wrote: post #317
DanielHB wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In theory, a system that let you scan products the same way checkout staff do without any weight checks or bagging area rules or other interruptions would be incredibly efficient. Especially if you could do things like scan the same product multiple times if you were buying multiple copies of it. The supermarkets in Sweden work like this, the only thing some of they do is random checks. In some chains you do need t…

The big supermarkets in the UK have a "scan as you shop" system. There is a portable scanner you take along with the trolley and scan each item as you put it in the trolley (directly into a bag - avoiding the bagging step). You then just go to the self-checkout and pay for what you scanned. They do spot checks at the checkout, especially for "new" customers. It's tied to your identity (need to scan a store card to un…

Yeah some supermarkets in the Netherlands even let you do this with your phone (camera). Haven't used it for a while but even some years ago it worked quite good.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#416

Post by lxgr »

bombcar wrote: post #332
7952 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Smaller places in the USA will still bust out the carbon copy machine during outages, but they then have to bitch at the processor to get lower fees (often the fees are higher for non-instantly verified transactions).

That can't be true anymore, at least not the carbon copy part: None of my US credit cards are even still embossed in the way necessary for them to work in these.

Merchants can just note down the card number and manually charge it, though. I've definitely had that happen in the past somewhere. The downside is that the merchant is fully on the hook for chargebacks for such payments.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#417

Post by TrackerFF »

compiler-guy wrote: post #396
TrackerFF wrote: post #387

You'd think the article was written by a rep from the cashiers union. I have no bad experiences with self-checkout. None. Going to a staffed-only checkout feels like going back 20 years in time. They take up more space, they can move slower, suddenly customers will kill the speed because they need to look for their coupons, pay with change, or whatever.

And because I personally have never seen the problem, it couldn’t possibly exist!

Not saying that they don't exist, but my experience has been nothing but positive. It must be 8-9 years since we got one locally, and it's been smooth sailing for me.

You scan the products. Confirm that you've scanned everything. Want a shopping bag, yes/no? Pay.

That's it. The scanners work. Payment work. Getting a receipt works.

Maybe I've just been lucky, who knows.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#418

Post by KineticLensman »

xen2xen1 wrote: post #402
TrackerFF wrote: post #387

You'd think the article was written by a rep from the cashiers union. I have no bad experiences with self-checkout. None. Going to a staffed-only checkout feels like going back 20 years in time. They take up more space, they can move slower, suddenly customers will kill the speed because they need to look for their coupons, pay with change, or whatever.

Opinions on self checkouts are age tests. The older you are the more likely you are to hate it. You can basically peg someone to 45/50 or older if they complain. I say this and I'm near that age range. On Facebook: I bagged my own groceries! Is someone going to pay me?!?? And yeahz you're 52? Yup, over and over.

> You can basically peg someone to 45/50 or older if they complain.

Not me (aged 60, happy with using self-checkouts in general, resigned to the occasional glitches)

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#419

Post by atvcatole »

guappa wrote: post #241
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…

Want to buy this vegetable? Now try to find it among these 300 icons of vegetables! Enjoy!

Some stores here in Norway uses computer vision to identify the produce, I tried it out last summer and it successfully identified ~9/10 with the rutabaga being the one it didn't manage, but the touch keyboard was responsive and easy to use for that one.

For things with more than one option (e.g. organic/non-organic lemons) it would show the 1-4 products it though was relevant and I just had to click the touch monitor on the correct one.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#420

Post by SamCritch »

radarsat1 wrote: post #251
CM30 wrote: post #248

It feels like almost all the issues with self-checkout technology come from the attempts to minimise shoplifting, which don't even seem that effective at doing that. In theory, a system that let you scan products the same way checkout staff do without any weight checks or bagging area rules or other interruptions would be incredibly efficient. Especially if you could do things like scan the same product multiple time…

That's exactly how it works in the Netherlands, you just scan your items and go. There are no weight checks and you can scan items more than once and edit and remove things from the list. Apart from getting a poorly executed random check sometimes (which is far from effective for the purpose of avoiding theft imho) it actually works really well.

Yeah, I think the UX here in the Netherlands is much simpler and easier than in other countries. When I go to the UK (e.g. Tesco Express) I have to select a bagging option, there's no "no bag" option at the beginning of the transaction even though I'm only buying a litre of milk, then when I put the carton down in the bagging area it triggers an alarm saying a store assistant is coming, but they never do because they're too busy serving all the other customers at the regular checkout. So I give up and try a different checkout, blocking the one I've just tried to use for 2 minutes.

I posted about this on Linkedin too and got a few comments about the complexity in the UK, USA, France and elsewhere. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/samcritchley_it-hasnt-deliver...

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