To me, this seems very anglophone: although I also prefer the cashier and use self-checkout only if there's a queue, imx it always works and never has queues. (for large shopping we let them deliver, so in-store for us is always small numbers of items)
(as for "retail shrinkage": here newspaper boxes do have a slot for coins but don't have a lock on the door)
I assume you mean being able to walk out the front door with the goods and have them charged to you automatically. But how does this address the current US epidemic of people stealing goods by just walking in and out because there’s no criminal charges under a certain amount in some jurisdictions? Seems like this problem will just amplified, leaving to more shuttered stores.
I'm sure at some point a company will identify people on entry and then simply sell the value of the stolen items as debt to a debt collection agency...
The general idea is to use something like UHF RFID to scan the whole shopping cart at once (there are even UHF RFID tags that can interoperate with EAS systems). The technology exists and is suprisingly cheap and is used by some some clothing retailers. And that points to the main issue: you have to somehow apply the tags to the items, that is easy to do if you work closely with the manufacturers and only sell your own brands, but somehow non-trivial for something like grocery store.
In theory there is an standardized mapping of the whole GS1 labeling system onto UHF RFID and the only thing that prevents universal deployment is some kind of critical mass. Somewhat surprisingly the standards even take into account the privacy issues inherent in that and the tags do not have fixed physical address (unlike HF RFID/NFC with 1wire-style deconflicting UIDs) and the contents can be progressively masked out, with command to completely disable the tag being mandatory.
On the other hand, first demonstration of that I can remember was by Siemens in 1991, so there is probably another 30 years to go for that to become widespread :)
I was really surprised how futuristic the shopping experience in Decathlon is. Every item has a unique rfid (or something) tag, and all you have to do is put them in a box at checkout, and it scans them automatically.
Most of their items has this tag inside the regular tags, I guess this would be much harder to implement in a regular store.
> I guess this would be much harder to implement in a regular store.
Also very uneconomical. RFID tags have a cost, while printing a barcode on a package that is anyway printed is totally free. Unless there's a clear economical advantage that compensates for the lost revenue, this is a no-go for less expensive items like what you find in a grocery store.
Auto-payment stuff has been tried before in some places, but it's largely a failure. It's too prone to generate false positives in both directions (not detecting purchased goods and the usual rigmarole of failing to properly identify a customer because facial recognition tech isn't that good).
Self-checkout seems to be the happy middle ground where the lost turnover/angry number of customers is reasonable enough for it to be possible.
People really don't like "computer says no" when their money is involved and that's the barrier you need to clear before auto-checkout is a thing.
I don't use a cashier if self-checkout is available.
Supermarkets where I live have 2-6 kiosks, and there is usually one employee overseeing it and helping people. Once in a while a kiosk will beep and the employee has to pick out a few random items and scan them. If they scan something you didn't pay for - you're in trouble.
I'm surprised to read this because my personal experience is they've gotten better now they're at critical mass. I feel like I'm able to get through them quicker than a staffed checkout.
I definitely see the issue with theft. I do suspect that this is a result of tech failures. Customers just go "fuck this, it doesn't scan so I'm not paying." It's not unreasonable, given the issues with staffing them when there are technical issues.
It's interesting that despite being a BBC article, the customers supposedly ditching them are nearly all US retailers, with only one very minor UK retailer mentioned. From my experience (in the UK) they tend to work well if staffed appropriately, and are easy and quick to deal with the vast majority of the time.
In the US, I would never trust a shop's self-checkout to be honest and fair, I would expect some half-built AI to misclassify me as a thief, then get swatted, tazed, or worst.
I think self-checkout implicitly relies on a degree of social cohesion and trust, freeloading on shards of societal good whilst contributing only de-humanization in return.
Curious. Obviously this is just just anecdote, but all the shops I use regularly (in the UK) have been increasing the number of self-checkouts and upgrading the systems. My local Waitrose has stripped out a whole load of basket tills and replaced them with a larger self-checkout area with upgraded hardware that is noticably better/more reliable.
Perhaps this is a location or shop specific effect?
Yes! They have the worst scanners, no idea where you're supposed to position the barcode so I end up waving it around for 10 seconds before it gets scanned.
The software on the system itself is, but M&S is my favourite experience of all because in my store they have twice as many self checkouts as anyone else, they have an appropriate number of attentive staff directing people to empty self-checkouts / sorting issues, and they haven't bothered with scales which slows things down.
It varies between shops. Some M&S seemingly have the slow old ones with the tiny bagging areas, but some of the recently renovated shops have the Waitrose-style faster machines with no bagging scale at all.
This article looks like written by a 60+ years old: it's definitely not a failure for 30-something technology-able people. It may be complicated for people with habits of cashiers and non-techy, but the near-future is going to be self-checkout. The real future will be no-checkout though: just take the stuff you need and go, shops would be able to detect what you got there and bill you.
Where I often see these things, their UI/UX is horrible. I'm a bit of a gadget-geek and rather a tech-savvy person, and yet I did make mistakes with them and wasted time because of the UI/UX.
> The real future will be no-checkout though: just take the stuff you need and go, shops would be able to detect what you got there and bill you.
I really hope not. That would be a privacy nightmare. And how would I then pay in cash?
Well, maybe there will be some validation at the exit of the shop, maybe a message on the phone to check that you indeed bought those things. But cash is going to be gone too in the future-future.
> But cash is going to be gone too in the future-future.
Like famine, poverty, cancer and CSS? ;-)
Yeah, sure.
Seriously though: history shows that if official money is not trusted (for some reason), another form emerges. So no, cash will be there as long as humankind exists.
Maybe, though I doubt it. Cash has some advantages which make it very appealing in certain circumstances. Anonymity is only one of them, and probably not even the most important one – cash does not rely on network being available.
There is a regular war going on in the country neighboring my one, a thing that was hard to think of several years ago. We had a pandemic and lockdowns destabilizing lives of millions of people and thousands of businesses.
What makes you think the US are immune to disasters resulting in having no internet for weeks or longer?
There certainly seems to be a variation in quality of the machines across different UK retailers, or maybe some have the tolerances in their scales set much more finely than others.
> I have never witnessed a singular tech failure either.
The newer gen hardware is much better than the old stuff and is now pretty reliable. Some of the older machines were painfully unreliable.
My closest big Sainsburys only just upgraded from the original generation stuff and they perpetually had a quarter of their self checkouts broken for various reasons. I once saw them have a technician out to service all the machines one day, and the very next day 2 of them were already broken.
I'm surprised RFID hasn't taken over. Scanning the whole basket in one go is way more convenient and faster than fiddly labour intensive Barcode scanning of individual items. RFID is now very cheap and the benefits of saved: labour, time, theft prevention etc are huge.
Decathlon is the only retailer I have seen use this.
RFID doesn't work that well when more than a handful tags are present at the same time. Even at Decathlon it doesn't always work perfectly.
As I said in another comment, I think it works for Decathlon because you usually only buy a few items, but it probably wouldn't work for a supermarket where people have a dozen identical things in their cart, and often 50 or 100 total items.
My guess is the price of a RFID tag on every single product is still uneconomical. Decathlon can do it for clothes and sports equipment, but are you really going to stick a tag on every £0.27 can of baked beans?
In NL, for a long time, you get some money back when you return glass bottles and large plastic ones to the store. A few years ago they added small plastic bottles and after that all drinks in aluminum cans. The goal is to add more packaging. (Disposable plates, cups, forks, spoons and knifes are now banned.)
Checking out is much less dirty than checking the packaging back in.
It isn't unthinkable for all products/packaging to get an RFID tag. On that scale they will be cheaper and perhaps some can be reused. Passive tags cost only 8 cent atm.
Supermarkets typically only have a gross profit of a few cents per item. Even ignoring the logistical complexities of getting those tags onto the product, it's a complete non-starter simply because of the cost of the tags.
Uniqlo is using RFID too at least in France. Both work pretty well and the speed of checkout is unmatched. But this works for Uniqlo and Decathlon because they only sell their own products. Supermarkets come with more hurdles, as products don't typically have any tag attached and are also selling bulk.
I also suspect you need an average price per product that's too high for supermarkets to make it worth it.
I haven't had the same experience either as in this article, whether in France (where self-checkout has been a thing in most supermarkets for ten years or so I'd say), Belgium where it has arrived more recently, or the UK from time to time.
It works fine in most stores, and the queue is not infrequently longer than in manned tills because many people seem to prefer the convenience of self-checkout, that's my case too. The few stores I knew which had painful self-checkout machines (usually related to weighing items, and needing precise timing between putting the scanned item on the right-hand platform and scanning the next item) seem to have fixed their problems in the last few years.
Many stores are moving to scan-as-you-go, you scan your customer card when entering, get a handheld scanner, and just hang it down and pay when leaving. With a random but infrequent check by personnel. This is by far the most convenient method and I see it in almost all supermarkets now (well, the French and Dutch chains that operate in Belgium at least, but now that I think of it, it seems the Belgian ones don't do it). There's also the Decathlon system where every item has an RFID tag and you just put everything down and it detects things without scanning, but I think it works because people generally don't buy lots of things at once at Decathlon (a large sports apparel and equipment store). I don't think this is viable for supermarkets.
Also, being "caught" not having scanned something (just forgetting to scan before putting something in the cart must be rather common, it's human) never seems to be a problem, it triggers a full rescan and probably increases the chance of getting checked later one, but even that doesn't always seem the case.
So from my point of view, it's clearly not a "spectacular failure", customers certainly don't hate it, and it's not going to be abandoned anytime soon.
There are benefits to self-checkout not mentioned in the article. Space.
This is probably not an issue in many countries but for example in Switzerland where space is limited in many stores this makes a huge difference. You can have double or triple the checkout points than if you had regular checkouts.
I have seen optimized regular checkouts (no conveyor belts) in super markets now as well but they still require double the space than a self checkout.
Generally I also only see 1 attendant for 10 or so self-checkout machines. They carry a special phone which lets them deal with age checks or random inspections. In some places the random inspection can even be done without the attendant (the attendant can release the register to allow you to follow the steps yourself.).
I’ll leave a comment I’ve made last time this came into discussion:
Self-Checkouts have been really problematic in Germany with stores rushing to put them to use and namely:
1) they have very bad interfaces
2) they don’t trust customers at all
3) it’s easy to report cases to the police and
4) stores have people hired to catch thieves and their incentive is that they are paid 50 to 100 euros per report (paid by the person caught)
Now a combination of all of the above leads to a not insignificant number of people having police files for missing an item while scanning. I read about cases about once a week on Reddit.
Aaand I am one of them, luckily without the police report because they saw that it was an error, but with a permanent ban from the store. My mistake? Went to pay, scanned my customer code in the store’s app so I get the e-receipt and the payment failed without me seeing that it failed and I went out the door. Their reasoning for banning me? Should have asked for the physical receipt. I say me having to operate two devices that I’ve never seen in my life and some really bad UI/UX were at fault but at least I’m glad they didn’t call the police.
To be fair, there's a massive difference between the machines I've seen at least in Switzerland and the ones in the UK/US. In the latter, they seem far more anti-shoplifting focused, forcing you to place each item and wait for some delay before you can scan the next item, loudly announcing every step of the process, etc.
There's still some variance in the latter countries between supermarket chains as some are noticeably faster or require fewer taps than others, but the general experience in most every chain is far less pleasant than in every major supermarket brand in Switzerland.
As someone living here, besides all those points, I have seen what these machines have made to employment in supermarket chains in Portugal, hence I tend not to be yet another statistic of people adopting them.
However surely 'riding shotgun' (i.e. being there to help customers when things go wrong) on self checkouts is more interesting than mindlessly scanning items all day? (I don't know, I've done neither)
Furthermore, if there is less work to be done in supermarkets, then people can spend more time doing more interesting/productive work or simply enjoying their leisure. The issue is not that this (or any) automation is destroying people's livelihoods, but that the value added is being predominately captured by the already wealthy.
Portugal does suffer from an excess of 'work is for the workers' mindset, which is part of the reason it is so poor (compared to other Western European countries).
Cashiers in the age of self-checkout machines are IMO a good example of a useless job, I'd rather prefer these people do something else with their time.
I would even feel guilty to make them work when they aren't actually needed. Indeed, in the current system if they don't work they don't get money, but to me it's a wealth distribution problem. I'd rather have them get the same money and do whatever they like. It would be a net gain for society and a loss for nobody.
That's the wealth distribution problem I was talking about.
I bet many would rather do hiking, writing or going to the cinema if they were paid the same. And since their job is useless already, it wouldn't change much. It wouldn't actually be a loss for anyone compared to the situation now (modulo the price of the machines and their maintenance, which is much less than a cashier's salary). However, replacing them with machines and giving them less money is a win for the shareholders, and that's what counts most in our system.
Cashiers in the age of self-checkout are attracting old-fashioned customers. Without those cashiers you would lose a large customer base >60.
So in itself it's not useless as people can't cope with technology and need human interaction.
I've seen whole development teams that were more useless then that.
This is not my experience at all. Can you tell what retailers you are using, so I can avoid them?
If I don't have to otherwise, I only go to the store with a self-checkout near me. There are some ux problems which they should improve but all in all I'm happy.
Same here, not my experience at all. It would also be interesting if the stores are franchises vs corporate owned.
We have Rewe, Kaufland and IKEA supporting self checkout around here and the experience is decent. The interface is not the best. Sometimes a scan fails, but there’s always someone close by who can help.
That's a store policy problem; it shouldn't be difficult for them to confirm that a payment has been made for the equivalent set of items within the last 5 mins, and even possible for them to cross reference with your card.
When I got stopped walking out of a supermarket with an item with an RFID tag on it, I don't think the security guard (who had no direct view of the self checkouts) even bothered to check that, just asked me to confirm the checkout that I'd used and roughly how much I'd paid for it. And sent me on my way with the advice that it might be a good idea to ask for a receipt when buying electronic items in case they were faulty and I needed to return them!
That’s the problem with the money incentive most stores have here - what I mentioned in the original post, that the security personnel receives 50 - 100 euros per “thief” caught
I've accidentally failed to scan an item in the UK before which was caught during a random check. They just said "don't worry, it happens sometimes" and took me to pay for the item.
I do wonder how differently it would go down if I was a young black man.
Number 2 is a big deal.
Another comment in this thread is by a shopper who has been banned from a store for having missed an item.
This might be a good reason not to use self check out.
I have almost no issues with self-checkout in Sweden. There's the odd one requiring me to weigh every item after checking them in the cashier but most do not require that.
I blip my card, scan my items while bagging them, and finish the purchase on the terminal. Random checks from an employee happen every 10th/20th time I use one and it's pretty painless.
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 this for the retailers leaning on this strategy.
Here they use to sit behind conveyor belts and now they do almost nothing and stand at the self check out.
You can still chat with them, they have time for it now but even if you couldn't, if I had to chose between those 2 jobs I would rather not chat with you. That's putting it politely...
We have 3 systems, the conveyor belt, a hand held device with which you can scan products while shopping or you can scan everything at the check out. They check 3-4 products for one in about 5 customers.
It's a great system. I can do shopping during rush hour without standing in line or having to dump everything on the conveyor and bag it again in some neurotic ritual.
Not having to interact with a cashier is the exact reason why I prefer self checkout. I dread the thought of a cashier trying to have small talk with me. What disgusts me even more are fake, paid for smiles. I don’t want any of that.
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
If grocery stores wanted to promote their brand through the checkout process they’d tell their cashiers to not say a word. Most cashiers at my local grocery store are teens who hate working there.
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 randomly scan ~10 articles from your cart and it just beeps (i guess ?) if they're not paid for in your receipt.
Co-op in the UK has that as well. I don't know if it's the same for every area, but the one near friends of ours that we pop into on the way to theirs just has a scanner.
Trust like in Switzerland is a very rare thing in most countries, you will seldom see newspaper stands with money boxes where everyone is expected to take one single paper out and leave the money in the tiny box, anywhere else this would fail.
I don't know about newspapers in Switzerland, but self-checkout machines don't usually weigh items in France or Belgium either (or the Netherlands, if AH stores in Belgium are representative of those in the Netherlands) and these countries probably aren't as fetishised to be trustful as Switzerland seems to be.
> Trust like in Switzerland is a very rare thing in most countries
I’m in an Eastern European country and have the same machines in some supermarkets, no scales, no gates just scan the stuff and go.
That would’ve been unimaginable 15-30 years ago. Theft and violent crime rates were sky high. Having your home broken into or even getting mugged in broad daylight wasn’t that special (these days you have a high chance of getting a story in a national newspaper at least if you get mugged).
Of course it’s far from perfect and there are other issues that need to be solved. However under the right circumstances significant change is possible even during relatively short timeframes.
Agree, the experience could be _signiifcantly_ improved with this assumption of user behaviour. Would be interesting to do a study to see how many people acutally take advantage of the "non weighing" systems.
Same experience for me, those in Coop and Migros work very well. Good barcode readers and fast UI, you can actually scan your stuff quickly if you know where the barcodes are. Those of Manor have a less reactive UI and strange touchscreens (you have to push softly for them to work or the ignore your tap).
Have also used some in the UK a few years ago, and the UX was much worse. Usually slow user interface, some of them are even speaking to ask you to put down every single article... might be fine as tutorial, but so slow if you actually use them regularly.
Waitrose in the UK is like that. They seem to place trust in the customer which feels nice. I don't know if they have some clever ways of monitoring customers, but it feels good not to be treated with suspicion. I've never had anyone check my bags.
Sainsburys annoys me every time. The slightest delay in putting the scanned item on the scale and it starts nagging you, very loudly. I avoid them as far as possible. M&S is the same - nice place to shop in, but self checkout is unpleasant.
The machines at one supermarket chains in Denmark are exactly the same as at Sainsbury's, even with the same woman's voice if you set it to English on the starting screen.
However, they are much less annoying here. I assume it's all just parameters that are tuned to local requirements.
The funniest thing is that when you're stopped in the flow for some weight discrepency in the UK, the attendant will quickly type in their code and null the error without investigating it at all, move on to the next customer who's blocked with the same thing and repeat. Seems to totally void to point of having these anti-trust systems.
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.
Can't believe I had to scroll this much to find someone mentioning how good this is in Switzerland (where the implementations trust the customer) vs other countries (where you have to weight everything).
I scan everything beforehand with their device, then head to the self-checkout with a shopping cart full of items (already put into bags), I scan the QR code there and I pay. Done.
The whole operation is like 20 seconds max, and it's how it should be.
Using self checkout in the UK, US or in Italy is a nightmare. First
of all, they don't trust you by default so you have to weight everything (this operation takes on average 10s per item). Half of the time the systems are broken (in terms of UX) and you need to do things in a specific order (e.g: you can't scan a rewards card with the other items - you have to do it BEFORE even starting to scan the products).
I only go to self-checkouts if forced to use them, I rather spend my time keeping those employees on the job, plus there is hardly a time there isn't some kind of error with those machines anyway.
> They're not exactly cheap to get into stores: some experts estimate a four-kiosk system can run six figures.
The link the BBC article has to cite this is unavailable, so who knows what it means, but "run six figures" presumably is a little over £100k. That cost, for 4 kiosks, is actually much more reasonable than I expected. Compare that to the salary and other costs of 4 cashiers and that probably pays back extremely quickly.
Definitely not failing in New Zealand. More being installed at large retailers all the time. Even smaller grocery stores have them. New Zealand is a high trust society and I haven't yet heard of problems with them.
The User Interface on them is often pretty crappy, but they do work even if you need to get helped sometimes.
I've never been checked, except for the scanner system at pak'n'save where you scan as you pick items into your cart using a handheld scanner and only pay at self-checkout on exit (don't need to scan items on exit).
Sorry I didn’t read the article. I will vent though.
I’m not going to go on about the surveillance tech used in Australia as part of the self check outs but here are a few gripes, the problem is a lack of trust of the customers.
1. You have to tell it you have bags (fine) then it seems if you have lots of bags on the platform (or bags with items in them?) you have to wait for an attendant to check you’re not doing something dodgy
2. If you have other stuff in the trolley, say, your handbag or bags from other stores, or you put the grocery bags back in the trolley before you pay, you have to wait for an attendant to check you’re not doing something dodgy
3. There are other inexplicable reasons the system gets locked up and needs an attendant, I haven’t found rhyme or reason to some of them. I have though seen the attendant required to review and ‘Ok’ photos of stuff I’ve scanned and put in the bag.
I believe there are self-checkouts and self-checkouts. In some places they don't weigh the products just rely on you scanning the right label - much simpler for everybody (including thieves).
Not my experience at all in Belgium and the Netherlands. I have had zero problems with the checkouts in e.g. Albert Heyn. I even actively choose those over a human checkout because the experience is so much better.
Self-checkouts, like many problems, seemed to be solved when I visited Japan. They have 3 stations, 1 where an employee scans your items and then puts them back into a new basket. They then direct you towards (one of many) terminals where you pay. There are then more spaces where you can bag your groceries.
Once you've seen it you'll be baffled as to why it isn't a global solution. No need for the employee or others to wait while you count your coins or bag up, and no need for anyone to wait behind you while you wait for the self-service checkout to weigh each item individually, fail to scan etc.
Aldis has a similar flow. One or two cashiers can handle the whole store as they just do scanning and collect payment. They’re also concerningly fast at scanning. It really baffles me why more stores don’t adopt some of their policies.
I've seen groceries that use either cart-bound computers, hand held scanners, or phone apps for check out as you shop systems. The latter two are kind of a wash when it comes to convenience, as you trade time at the till for time when you pick an item up and decide to put it in your cart or not, but the cart bound computer used RFID, and would automatically update as you added and removed items.
Of course there's also things like Amazon's system, where you literally just walk in and out. Which is a lot tech heavier, but a lot more convenient too
By far the best self-checkout systems are the ones where you scan your groceries as you go and just pay when you leave. Not only can you pack your stuff into bags directly in your shopping cart as go, but you also get a running tally of how much you everything in your cart will actually cost you. Also if something cannot be scanned or gets scanned at the wrong price you notice instantly and can deal with it right then and there, rather having to deal with it when you are trying to pay and just want to get out of there.
And I'm not using on-the-spot-self-scanning because almost every time it tells me "go to the counter for randomized checks" which I can understand but is actually increasing the hassle for me. So I'll stick to the "normal" checkout where you scan the bunch at the exit, and sometimes even traditional where you can chat the cashier when there's no line.
In Norway, the trend is that shops that have a mix of both, now remove more and more of the cashiers and increase the number of self-checkouts. This wouldn't happen if the shops lost money and the customers hated it, so it's strange that this is the opposite of the U.K. Population more tuned to automation, perhaps?
As a UK resident, I honestly find the article a bit incredulous. The article doesn't justify its claim of it being a "spectacular" failure and all the examples are from the US. In the UK, despite their problems, increasingly more self-checkout systems are being installed, even in shops that previously avoided them like Lidl and Aldi. There is one high-profile case of them being removed in a minor chain (Booths), but aside from that, most shops are continuing to install them.
You do get people complaining about them on Twitter/Facebook/Nextdoor - mostly old people - but in reality, I find people usually prefer to use the self-checkout. Even if they can be a pain sometimes.
I frequently hop between Spain and the UK. Self-checkout is ubiquitous in the UK and people seem to almost universally favor using it, manned tills are a minority and generally reserved for larger purchases. In Spain it's quite the opposite: manned tills are a majority and people _actively_ avoid using self-checkout, even when it means going through a much longer queue.
I found it an interesting cultural difference, and I can't help but wonder to which extent it's influenced by the preference for human interaction in both countries.
I'm American, but i have a serious preference for self-checkout because I can avoid tje annoyances of regular check out. Waiting on the person who forgot their wallet. That person who wants to argue about one dollar on a one hundred dollar purchase. The person who realized they bought to much and now needs to figure what they want to put back. And more.
Cashiers are nice, I guess. But stores are not a social call for me. I want to buy my stuff and not deal with ridiculous people in front of me.
Also self-checkouts just move faster. This probably wouldn't be true if stores had the same number of cashiers they used to, but it really reminds me of mu youth where you could be in and out of a store without a significant wait to check out.
I lived in France for a bit and the stores were completely different. Speedy and plentiful lines, so that's probably the difference between Spain and the UK
I'm also American. I'll jump for the self checkout if there is an open one, but if there is a line for self-checkout, I'm going for a register. The self-checkout lines move so much slower than the regular cashier lines, because people get hung up on things and have to ask for help.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 356 ms ] thread(as for "retail shrinkage": here newspaper boxes do have a slot for coins but don't have a lock on the door)
Doesn’t really matter though. The next gen tech is coming soon. You won’t have to scan anymore and theft will be next to impossible.
This sounds like some tech utopia t thinking. What's gonna stop someone just grabbing something and walking out? The employees?
In theory there is an standardized mapping of the whole GS1 labeling system onto UHF RFID and the only thing that prevents universal deployment is some kind of critical mass. Somewhat surprisingly the standards even take into account the privacy issues inherent in that and the tags do not have fixed physical address (unlike HF RFID/NFC with 1wire-style deconflicting UIDs) and the contents can be progressively masked out, with command to completely disable the tag being mandatory.
On the other hand, first demonstration of that I can remember was by Siemens in 1991, so there is probably another 30 years to go for that to become widespread :)
Although it sounds a bit too much for a store, technically it could be done.
- Sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Most of their items has this tag inside the regular tags, I guess this would be much harder to implement in a regular store.
Also very uneconomical. RFID tags have a cost, while printing a barcode on a package that is anyway printed is totally free. Unless there's a clear economical advantage that compensates for the lost revenue, this is a no-go for less expensive items like what you find in a grocery store.
Self-checkout seems to be the happy middle ground where the lost turnover/angry number of customers is reasonable enough for it to be possible.
People really don't like "computer says no" when their money is involved and that's the barrier you need to clear before auto-checkout is a thing.
Supermarkets where I live have 2-6 kiosks, and there is usually one employee overseeing it and helping people. Once in a while a kiosk will beep and the employee has to pick out a few random items and scan them. If they scan something you didn't pay for - you're in trouble.
I definitely see the issue with theft. I do suspect that this is a result of tech failures. Customers just go "fuck this, it doesn't scan so I'm not paying." It's not unreasonable, given the issues with staffing them when there are technical issues.
Perhaps this is a location or shop specific effect?
> The real future will be no-checkout though: just take the stuff you need and go, shops would be able to detect what you got there and bill you.
I really hope not. That would be a privacy nightmare. And how would I then pay in cash?
Like famine, poverty, cancer and CSS? ;-)
Yeah, sure.
Seriously though: history shows that if official money is not trusted (for some reason), another form emerges. So no, cash will be there as long as humankind exists.
What makes you think the US are immune to disasters resulting in having no internet for weeks or longer?
One where you use a remote to scan the products as you add them to cart, then just put away the remote. The other one where you scan at the station.
I would say I see 5x reduction of actual people working behind the checkout.
And I basically rarely wait in queues any longer.
I have never witnessed a singular tech failure either.
The newer gen hardware is much better than the old stuff and is now pretty reliable. Some of the older machines were painfully unreliable.
My closest big Sainsburys only just upgraded from the original generation stuff and they perpetually had a quarter of their self checkouts broken for various reasons. I once saw them have a technician out to service all the machines one day, and the very next day 2 of them were already broken.
As I said in another comment, I think it works for Decathlon because you usually only buy a few items, but it probably wouldn't work for a supermarket where people have a dozen identical things in their cart, and often 50 or 100 total items.
Checking out is much less dirty than checking the packaging back in.
It isn't unthinkable for all products/packaging to get an RFID tag. On that scale they will be cheaper and perhaps some can be reused. Passive tags cost only 8 cent atm.
I also suspect you need an average price per product that's too high for supermarkets to make it worth it.
It works fine in most stores, and the queue is not infrequently longer than in manned tills because many people seem to prefer the convenience of self-checkout, that's my case too. The few stores I knew which had painful self-checkout machines (usually related to weighing items, and needing precise timing between putting the scanned item on the right-hand platform and scanning the next item) seem to have fixed their problems in the last few years.
Many stores are moving to scan-as-you-go, you scan your customer card when entering, get a handheld scanner, and just hang it down and pay when leaving. With a random but infrequent check by personnel. This is by far the most convenient method and I see it in almost all supermarkets now (well, the French and Dutch chains that operate in Belgium at least, but now that I think of it, it seems the Belgian ones don't do it). There's also the Decathlon system where every item has an RFID tag and you just put everything down and it detects things without scanning, but I think it works because people generally don't buy lots of things at once at Decathlon (a large sports apparel and equipment store). I don't think this is viable for supermarkets.
Also, being "caught" not having scanned something (just forgetting to scan before putting something in the cart must be rather common, it's human) never seems to be a problem, it triggers a full rescan and probably increases the chance of getting checked later one, but even that doesn't always seem the case.
So from my point of view, it's clearly not a "spectacular failure", customers certainly don't hate it, and it's not going to be abandoned anytime soon.
This is probably not an issue in many countries but for example in Switzerland where space is limited in many stores this makes a huge difference. You can have double or triple the checkout points than if you had regular checkouts.
I have seen optimized regular checkouts (no conveyor belts) in super markets now as well but they still require double the space than a self checkout.
Generally I also only see 1 attendant for 10 or so self-checkout machines. They carry a special phone which lets them deal with age checks or random inspections. In some places the random inspection can even be done without the attendant (the attendant can release the register to allow you to follow the steps yourself.).
Self-Checkouts have been really problematic in Germany with stores rushing to put them to use and namely:
1) they have very bad interfaces
2) they don’t trust customers at all
3) it’s easy to report cases to the police and
4) stores have people hired to catch thieves and their incentive is that they are paid 50 to 100 euros per report (paid by the person caught)
Now a combination of all of the above leads to a not insignificant number of people having police files for missing an item while scanning. I read about cases about once a week on Reddit.
Aaand I am one of them, luckily without the police report because they saw that it was an error, but with a permanent ban from the store. My mistake? Went to pay, scanned my customer code in the store’s app so I get the e-receipt and the payment failed without me seeing that it failed and I went out the door. Their reasoning for banning me? Should have asked for the physical receipt. I say me having to operate two devices that I’ve never seen in my life and some really bad UI/UX were at fault but at least I’m glad they didn’t call the police.
I don’t use self-checkouts anymore.
There's still some variance in the latter countries between supermarket chains as some are noticeably faster or require fewer taps than others, but the general experience in most every chain is far less pleasant than in every major supermarket brand in Switzerland.
Rather have my actions support the employees.
Furthermore, if there is less work to be done in supermarkets, then people can spend more time doing more interesting/productive work or simply enjoying their leisure. The issue is not that this (or any) automation is destroying people's livelihoods, but that the value added is being predominately captured by the already wealthy.
Portugal does suffer from an excess of 'work is for the workers' mindset, which is part of the reason it is so poor (compared to other Western European countries).
I would even feel guilty to make them work when they aren't actually needed. Indeed, in the current system if they don't work they don't get money, but to me it's a wealth distribution problem. I'd rather have them get the same money and do whatever they like. It would be a net gain for society and a loss for nobody.
I bet many would rather do a useless job than staying at home getting Hartz IV.
I bet many would rather do hiking, writing or going to the cinema if they were paid the same. And since their job is useless already, it wouldn't change much. It wouldn't actually be a loss for anyone compared to the situation now (modulo the price of the machines and their maintenance, which is much less than a cashier's salary). However, replacing them with machines and giving them less money is a win for the shareholders, and that's what counts most in our system.
I've seen whole development teams that were more useless then that.
If I don't have to otherwise, I only go to the store with a self-checkout near me. There are some ux problems which they should improve but all in all I'm happy.
We have Rewe, Kaufland and IKEA supporting self checkout around here and the experience is decent. The interface is not the best. Sometimes a scan fails, but there’s always someone close by who can help.
DM has indeed some pretty good self checkout tills. IKEA is pretty good also. Obi and Bauhaus are abysmal.
When I got stopped walking out of a supermarket with an item with an RFID tag on it, I don't think the security guard (who had no direct view of the self checkouts) even bothered to check that, just asked me to confirm the checkout that I'd used and roughly how much I'd paid for it. And sent me on my way with the advice that it might be a good idea to ask for a receipt when buying electronic items in case they were faulty and I needed to return them!
I do wonder how differently it would go down if I was a young black man.
Every once in a while I'm reminded to be grateful I live in North America.
1. Human is nicer than cold robot 2. Liability to scan items is the stores responsibility
I blip my card, scan my items while bagging them, and finish the purchase on the terminal. Random checks from an employee happen every 10th/20th time I use one and it's pretty painless.
You can still chat with them, they have time for it now but even if you couldn't, if I had to chose between those 2 jobs I would rather not chat with you. That's putting it politely...
We have 3 systems, the conveyor belt, a hand held device with which you can scan products while shopping or you can scan everything at the check out. They check 3-4 products for one in about 5 customers.
It's a great system. I can do shopping during rush hour without standing in line or having to dump everything on the conveyor and bag it again in some neurotic ritual.
Why not? I think I'm missing the insinuation there...
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
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 randomly scan ~10 articles from your cart and it just beeps (i guess ?) if they're not paid for in your receipt.
This article mentions the south of England but they’ve rolled it out country-wide since:
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/coop-facial-recognition
https://www.gettyimages.de/detail/foto/row-of-newspaper-vend...
I’m in an Eastern European country and have the same machines in some supermarkets, no scales, no gates just scan the stuff and go.
That would’ve been unimaginable 15-30 years ago. Theft and violent crime rates were sky high. Having your home broken into or even getting mugged in broad daylight wasn’t that special (these days you have a high chance of getting a story in a national newspaper at least if you get mugged).
Of course it’s far from perfect and there are other issues that need to be solved. However under the right circumstances significant change is possible even during relatively short timeframes.
Have also used some in the UK a few years ago, and the UX was much worse. Usually slow user interface, some of them are even speaking to ask you to put down every single article... might be fine as tutorial, but so slow if you actually use them regularly.
Sainsburys annoys me every time. The slightest delay in putting the scanned item on the scale and it starts nagging you, very loudly. I avoid them as far as possible. M&S is the same - nice place to shop in, but self checkout is unpleasant.
However, they are much less annoying here. I assume it's all just parameters that are tuned to local requirements.
(Have you swiped your Nectar card?)
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.
I scan everything beforehand with their device, then head to the self-checkout with a shopping cart full of items (already put into bags), I scan the QR code there and I pay. Done.
The whole operation is like 20 seconds max, and it's how it should be.
Using self checkout in the UK, US or in Italy is a nightmare. First of all, they don't trust you by default so you have to weight everything (this operation takes on average 10s per item). Half of the time the systems are broken (in terms of UX) and you need to do things in a specific order (e.g: you can't scan a rewards card with the other items - you have to do it BEFORE even starting to scan the products).
The link the BBC article has to cite this is unavailable, so who knows what it means, but "run six figures" presumably is a little over £100k. That cost, for 4 kiosks, is actually much more reasonable than I expected. Compare that to the salary and other costs of 4 cashiers and that probably pays back extremely quickly.
The User Interface on them is often pretty crappy, but they do work even if you need to get helped sometimes.
I've never been checked, except for the scanner system at pak'n'save where you scan as you pick items into your cart using a handheld scanner and only pay at self-checkout on exit (don't need to scan items on exit).
I’m not going to go on about the surveillance tech used in Australia as part of the self check outs but here are a few gripes, the problem is a lack of trust of the customers.
1. You have to tell it you have bags (fine) then it seems if you have lots of bags on the platform (or bags with items in them?) you have to wait for an attendant to check you’re not doing something dodgy
2. If you have other stuff in the trolley, say, your handbag or bags from other stores, or you put the grocery bags back in the trolley before you pay, you have to wait for an attendant to check you’re not doing something dodgy
3. There are other inexplicable reasons the system gets locked up and needs an attendant, I haven’t found rhyme or reason to some of them. I have though seen the attendant required to review and ‘Ok’ photos of stuff I’ve scanned and put in the bag.
Once you've seen it you'll be baffled as to why it isn't a global solution. No need for the employee or others to wait while you count your coins or bag up, and no need for anyone to wait behind you while you wait for the self-service checkout to weigh each item individually, fail to scan etc.
Of course there's also things like Amazon's system, where you literally just walk in and out. Which is a lot tech heavier, but a lot more convenient too
You do get people complaining about them on Twitter/Facebook/Nextdoor - mostly old people - but in reality, I find people usually prefer to use the self-checkout. Even if they can be a pain sometimes.
I found it an interesting cultural difference, and I can't help but wonder to which extent it's influenced by the preference for human interaction in both countries.
Cashiers are nice, I guess. But stores are not a social call for me. I want to buy my stuff and not deal with ridiculous people in front of me.
Also self-checkouts just move faster. This probably wouldn't be true if stores had the same number of cashiers they used to, but it really reminds me of mu youth where you could be in and out of a store without a significant wait to check out.
I lived in France for a bit and the stores were completely different. Speedy and plentiful lines, so that's probably the difference between Spain and the UK