The failure of self-checkout technology • Hacker News Board

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#491

Post by david-gpu » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 5:28 PM UTC

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #473

david-gpu wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Enjoy your homogenous, high trust society "Homogeneous" in what way? Because in my experience the sort of "homogeneity" that leads to high trust is that of wealth/income, and it requires a generous social net.

Most ways, as the research of Robert Putnam has documented well. https://wcfia.harvard.edu/publications/downside-diversity

I see no mention of whether they adjusted for age and urban vs rural settings. Dense metropolitan cores, where most economic activity happens, tend to be both younger and highly diverse ethnically as the jobs there attract migrant flows. It is unsurprising that younger people in dense metropolitan "the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects". That's what retired people do.

And to be completely transparent about where I'm coming from: I'm the father of two mixed-race children and all this talk of "homogeneous societies" reeks to me of plain old racism that will hurt my kids. And I grew up in one of those European "homogeneous" countries that right-leaning racists love to talk about, too.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#492

Post by zilti » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 5:29 PM UTC

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.

Same in Switzerland. I got so annoyed the first time I used a self-checkout in Germany.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#493

Post by zilti » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 5:34 PM UTC

dazc wrote: post #414

cameronh90 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The thing with liking it or not is: do you dislike it strongly enough to wait an additional 10 minutes to be served at a traditional register instead?

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#494

Post by compiler-guy » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 5:54 PM UTC

regular_trash wrote: post #401

compiler-guy wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If the problem is pervasive as made out to be, it stands to reason that a person would have at least one anecdotal experience in favor of the claim.

Which is more likely?

1. The people who say they have had a problem actually have had a problem, and some other people have gotten lucky.

2. The people who say they have had a problem are lying, or deceived.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#495

Post by arp242 » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 6:02 PM UTC

alexanderchr wrote: post #490

arp242 wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it's neither homogenous nor high trust.

It's not exactly Japan-level high trust, but it is compared to most other countries in the world.

It really depends; in some areas it's exceedingly low-trust, almost paranoid. In some other areas it's probably not too bad.

Previous: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36933489

I used to live in Indonesia and things are much more "high trust" in many aspects. On the other hand Indonesia also has a lot of problems with corruption and that sort of thing. "High trust/low trust" is too simplistic.

I don't have 200 other countries to compare it to, but by and large, Western countries are much less high-trust in many areas than people assume. This often becomes painfully obvious once you stray outside of the "standard happy path".

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#496

Post by bigbuppo » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 6:02 PM UTC

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…

Companies want insurance to pay for their losses, and it turns out the only thing the videos find on self-checkout stands is that customers are frustrated that the machine is calling them a thief, when the shoplifters, big surprise, don't stand around in line for 15 minutes to walk out the door without paying.

The loss prevention person at the door is more likely to find items you left behind than to stop a shoplifter, but insurance demands it.

And the false positives on those little loss control tags is so high that most of the time workers aren't even going to look your direction if something sets it off. Once again, this is all crap required by insurance.

Shoplifters don't care about any of this. They just grab what they want and leave.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#497

Post by radlad » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 6:10 PM UTC

jrwoodruff wrote: post #433

jtbayly wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The majority of the problems that I run into with self-checkout are related to not being able to buy items I picked up off the shelf like Mucinex or children's cough syrup or alcohol without getting an employee to check me out... at self checkout. What's the point of "self" checkout if somebody is required —not by failure of the system but by rules—to come help me several times during the process? Edit: a…

Definitely a yes-and scenario here. I was a cashier, I'm good at finding and scanning bar codes and PLU lookups. I was a damn fast cashier. That's impossible in a self checkout. And then you get carded for a can of spray paint, and the one attendant for 8 machines has three people with blinking lights. On top of that, most of these self-checkouts are not designed to handle a full cart of groceries, but also why do I…

> Walk in, grab a cart that had bags attached to the front, grab a portable scan gun from it's charging dock. Scan and bag as you shop, dock the gun to the checkout register, show the attendant my id if needed, pay, and I'm done.

They were doing this in a few Michigan Krogers within the last few years. I think they ended the program though.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#498

Post by handoflixue » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 6:11 PM UTC

regular_trash wrote: post #401

compiler-guy wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If the problem is pervasive as made out to be, it stands to reason that a person would have at least one anecdotal experience in favor of the claim.

Given the massive variation in self checkouts, it's also possible you just live in a region which is on the High Quality end of the bell curve.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#499

Post by d1sxeyes » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 6:23 PM UTC

jtbayly wrote: post #382

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 disagree. The majority of the problems that I run into with self-checkout are related to not being able to buy items I picked up off the shelf like Mucinex or children's cough syrup or alcohol without getting an employee to check me out... at self checkout. What's the point of "self" checkout if somebody is required —not by failure of the system but by rules—to come help me several times during the process? Edit: a…

I always gamble and scan any alcohol or age restricted items first. About half of the time, it throws an alert and flashes but lets me continue scanning, it just won’t let me complete and pay until someone has come over and approved.

For some reason though, some idiot designer who never actually thought about how these would be used in reality, decided to make it so that the other half of the time it immediately stops all scanning until someone comes to fix it.

In the first case, basically I waste no time. In the second, I lose however long it takes for the cashier to come.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#500

Post by lexszero_ » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 6:42 PM UTC

k4rli wrote: post #292

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 just scan the barcodes on my phone and place everything in bag as I go along. Before leaving the store a QR on the POS kiosk display is scanned with the store phone app and I just need to select on POS if I will pay through app (pre-added card info) or physical card/cash. As simple as it gets. No one checks the products. Occasional random checks happen but the checking frequency probably depends if past checks have…

Here in Finland one retail chain (of the whole multitude of two that operate nationwide) is experimenting with scan-as-you-go approach in a few of their largest stores, and it's awesome. You scan your bonus/discount/client card at the terminal near the entrance, which then lets you take one of barcode scanners from a charging stand (it's only for customers that have said card, but most households have at least one already). Then you put your reusable shopping bag(s) into a cart or basket, and go collect your items and throw them straight into your bags after beeping with the scanner. The carts even have a nice holder for the scanner so your hands can stay free. When you're done, return the scanner to another charging stand near the exit, go to the self-checkout terminal and pay - it will match you using the same client card, which in my case is also linked to my primary bank account (yep, the retail chain runs its own bank, it's a standard Visa and works with GPay). If there are age-restricted items, it will take about 20 seconds for the store employee to come look at my ID and beep their card to allow the purchase to go through (there are also a few other common non-error cases when a human is called). Once in a blue moon they can do a spot check, beeping a few random items from the top of my bag, though that happened to me just twice in two years of shopping there weekly, one of the occasions was at 4AM when I was the only customer in the entire store.

The biggest convenience for me is that I only have to handle the items twice: when I pick them from the shelves, and when I unpack the bags at home. Going to any other store that doesn't have this system now feels like there is a lot of redundant and unergonomic operations.