These seem to work fine in high trust societies. Today's America and the UK fail miserably at this owing to lack of customer honesty and organized crime exploiting the loopholes that are designed for individuals not organized groups that exploit them.
The failure of self-checkout technology
221–230 of 621 posts
Re: The failure of self-checkout technology
#222I prefer self-checkout and use it pretty much every time I see an opportunity to do so. Living in the Netherlands, somehow self-checkout in Dutch supermarkets is very different from the ones I encounter in France or UK. Every time in France or UK I have issues with it primarily because the self-checkout tills have a very cumbersome and poorly working area where I have to put the checked products. Either they're doing a weight check or something, but it just doesn't work 75% of the time, which is extremely frustrating. Dutch supermarkets went with cheaper tills without this weight-check tech, and it just works every time.
Re: The failure of self-checkout technology
#223I prefer self-checkout and use it pretty much every time I see an opportunity to do so. Living in the Netherlands, somehow self-checkout in Dutch supermarkets is very different from the ones I encounter in France or UK. Every time in France or UK I have issues with it primarily because the self-checkout tills have a very cumbersome and poorly working area where I have to put the checked products. Either they're doing…
Interestingly, Marks & Spencer don't have scales for your shopping (unlike all other self-checkouts). I wonder if there's cultural and demographic reasons for this. M&S is a very upmarket supermarket, so a potential thief (typically quite poor) is going to stand out like a sore thumb and end up with a security guard stuck to their waist.
The larger supermarket chains (Tesco, Asda, Morrisons) have low-cost lines to cater for the wider market. That means it's harder to distinguish between a thief and a genuine customer, as they'll come from the same socioeconomic backgrounds i.e. they'll dress the same way.
I wonder if there's crossover with what you see in the Netherlands?
Re: The failure of self-checkout technology
#224I 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…
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…
Not seen it on groceries, but I know Uniqlo use this same method and it's fantastic.
Re: The failure of self-checkout technology
#225Obviously 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…
You need to stop generalizing. Plenty of large swathes of the U.S. have plastic cards, e-invoiced bills, and yes, even zero-cost non-drivers ID cards which work across state lines, along with several forms of national ID if one chooses. Hardly anyone writes checks or uses physical mail — a common joke is that you have to buy a pack of 50 envelopes to send 1 letter every few years. Widespread cash is a benefit, not a…
You may be right about generalizing the US, but
> even if out in the countryside with zero internet
I think I can safely say even the remote countryside of any part of Europe has card payments now.
Re: The failure of self-checkout technology
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's Uniqlo and it works because clothes have no metal or body of water or something else that could interfere with the RFID.
The items are also all high enough margin to cover the extra tag cost. Isn’t going to work for supermarkets.
It's not just for payment though, it also helps for theft, and I suppose inventory management is improved on many aspects as well.
Re: The failure of self-checkout technology
#227Obviously 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…
> SWIFT/IBAN You might be thinking about SEPA. SWIFT is slow, expensive and also available in the US. One reason is that credit card fees are much higher than in Europe (up to 3% or so) due to lack of regulation (of course a significant proportion of those fees are returned to the card users as cashback, so it’s not like American companies are much more greedy, it’s still not a very efficient system of course..)
You're probably right about SWIFT/SEPA part. My bad, apologies.
And it's just not the credit cards. Many people here (including high school students) are provided and using debit cards for virtually everything.
Re: The failure of self-checkout technology
#228I make it a point to never use it.
Re: The failure of self-checkout technology
#229I my city we have to large supermarkets very close to each other with an optional self-checkout. In one supermarket there is still a person who helps shoppers when they are using the self-checkout the first time or hit a problem like the age verification. The other supermarket doesn't have that person and instead some other personell from the supermarket can be rung for, which takes ages. Want to guess in which supermarket the system is used constantly? One person overseeing four self-checkouts does work, but you still need that one person.
Re: The failure of self-checkout technology
#230Obviously 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…
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 systems such as ID cards.