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The failure of self-checkout technology

bbc.com

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Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#611

Post by selfmodruntime »

spicybbq wrote: post #574
selfmodruntime wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do retailers really have insurance for loss and theft? I thought they'd just factor it into pricing.

I work for a retailer and we certainly do not use a third party insurer, and I don't see why any other consumer retailer selling inexpensive merchandise would use insurance. It is priced in. In fact, we use RFID tracking to know when goods are stolen, not to save money, not to catch shoplifters, but to improve inventory management and ensure that we get a replacement item on the shelf to avoid losing sales.

Yeah, I figured as much. So the above commenter was just talking out of their ass.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#612

Post by Jochim »

SamCritch wrote: post #420
radarsat1 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Weird, I've never seen a self checkout in the UK that doesn't provide the option to select no bag or key in 0 bags.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#613

Post by antifa »

theamk wrote: post #587
compiler-guy wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

3. The people who say they have a problem actually had a problem, but they a minority and got unlucky, and then extrapolated their experience to everyone else The article actually ends with "shoppers are likely to find themselves disappointed and frustrated most of the time." - and that is clearly false for me and everyone I know. "rarely" or "occassionaly"? maybe. But not "most of the time".

> but they a minority and got unlucky, and then extrapolated their experience to everyone else

Bold of you to assume you're not the minority.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#614

Post by jen20 »

oytis wrote: post #573
jen20 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed it’s very good compared to the incredibly poor systems in most places, but suffers from the same attention problem as other systems - prompts in the middle of the scanning phase (usually the “I promise I’ll attach this to a wall) that should be treasured up for the end of the process. Of course the scanner doesn’t know this so will happily beep each time as you scan 10 more things that don’t get registered bec…

> prompts in the middle of the scanning phase (usually the “I promise I’ll attach this to a wall) Never seen that. Is it an American thing? Or maybe I just didn't by things that have to be attached to a wall.

Could well be - any dresser certainly pops this up in the US - seemingly related to the campaign at [1] which came about after children were killed by tipping furniture. There's an equivalent campaign in the UK [2], but I haven't bought any furniture from IKEA in the UK for over a decade, which predates it.

[1]: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/customer-service/secure-it-creati...

[2]: https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/campaigns/secure-it-pub10077d91

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#615

Post by byyll »

InCityDreams wrote: post #212
byyll wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK is part of Europe.

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

EU is not Europe. Europe is a continent and passport control and brexit have nothing to do with geography.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#616

Post by byyll »

bombcar wrote: post #322
byyll wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bananas don't have plastics, adhesive or ink and regardless, adding another chip to them won't make it any better.

You’ve yet to experience the glory of individually shrink wrapped produce. Bananas and oranges especially egregious but the shrink wrapped watermelon was whole nuther world.

I've seen it, just rarely.

Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#617

Post by Slamidan »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #582
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.

One of the biggest hurdles to getting a social safety net past public perception in the US is that people are easily swayed against it if they're told that people of other races will benefit from it. A certain portion of the population automatically sorts any public benefit into a weird racial zero-sum game, where any support given to is a dollar specifically taken away from . It's a big part of why we've historicall…

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Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#618

Post by Slamidan »

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…

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Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#619

Post by Slamidan »

david-gpu wrote: post #491
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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Re: The failure of self-checkout technology

#620

Post by philwelch »

workfromspace wrote: post #608
philwelch wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US not only has SWIFT, the US government basically controls it; they’re the ones who cut off Russia. In my experience the US was probably slightly ahead of the UK in terms of cards being accepted everywhere rather than needing cash. All of my utility bills have been on electronic autopay for years along with all of my other bills and I write a paper check probably less than once a year. I don’t know what a “physi…

> I don’t know what a “physical email” is Sorry, it's embarrassingly my bad. I meant physical mail/postal mail/snail mail. > The US is a federation of fifty states so photo ID cards are issued at the state level, similar to how your national ID in Europe will be issued by Spain or Estonia rather than the EU itself I would argue against this. The EU is a continental union[1] and not the same as the US [2]. All europea…

The EU is rapidly moving in a federalizing direction (one of the reasons the UK left, which will probably accelerate that movement). The phrase "United States of Europe" is part of the vision behind the creation and evolution of the EU in the first place. By adapting a common currency and the Schengen area the EU members have already given up significant parts of their sovereignty. It's not as federalized as the United States is now, but it's certainly an oversimplification to claim that EU members are "fully sovereign states".

Furthermore, EU member states are, in terms of population, much closer to individual US states in size than any of them are to the US as a whole. My state has three times the population of Switzerland.

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