'It hasn't delivered': the failure of self-checkout technology

I think the error of self-checkout was installing self-checkout terminals as a replacement for traditional checkouts as opposed to a speedy option. Particularly in grocery stores, I really enjoy scan-and-shop style self checkouts, as I am able to pack my bags as I go through the store. I can then present myself at a till, pay, and leave. That actually saves me time.<p>What I don&#x27;t enjoy are paranoid self-checkout machines with scales that are constantly complaining about unexpected items, or self-checkout machines in locations where pretty much every customer is making an age-restricted purchase or a large portion of the items have security tags. There needs to be a sensible attempt to understand the purchase habits of the people using a particular store and tailor the checkout experience accordingly.<p>On a related note: I was in a Boots (similar to Walgreens) earlier today and I witnessed a truly crazy amount of shoplifting: 3 times whilst I was there. Partially that was down to the layout of this particular store, which had a number of different exits and an insufficient amount of staff. The self checkouts don&#x27;t help at all, because they cause far more false positives with the exit alarm, where a security tag doesn&#x27;t get removed.<p>It would be straightforward for an inventory system to hook up directly to the security tags, rather than having them be totally separate from the SKUs which are actually scanned into the POS. You&#x27;d then have item-level tracking of stock, which I&#x27;m sure would help from more than just a shrinkage perspective.

This article didn&#x27;t ring true at all given all the supermarkets near me have been expanding their self-service offerings while reducing their staffed tills.<p>Even my local Waitrose now only has 1 or 2 staffed tills.<p>Then when I got to the examples I realised the article is entirely US focussed. Is there a cultural difference to explain why self-service would be more of a failure in the US?

&gt; Some retailers cite theft as a motivator for ditching the unstaffed tills. Customers may be more willing to simply swipe merchandise when using a self-service kiosk than they are when face-to-face with a human cashier. Some data shows retailers utilising self-checkout technology have loss rates more than twice the industry average.<p>This is hardly surprising and stores that sell high-value goods seem to just move checkout employees from the traditional checkout to a monitoring role at the self-checkout area. Home Depot now has self-checkouts where I live (usually a block of 4 per store), but there&#x27;s always a few employees milling around the self-checkout area helping customers and probably keeping an eye out for theft.<p>There&#x27;s just no sense of &quot;social contract&quot; when interacting with a self-checkout. It&#x27;s much easier to rationalize theft as merely striking back at a large, faceless corporation when you&#x27;re interacting with a machine.

UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA<p>If one is buying in a hurry, or just a handful of things, or maybe &quot;sensitive&quot; items at the pharmacy, self-checkout is a nice-to-have. Apart from that, it&#x27;s been a PITA that I can only assume is even worse for people who don&#x27;t spend their lives working with computers, debugging systems or finicky UIs&#x2F;bad apps.

I would say at least 1 time in 5 I encounter some kind of issue with the self-service checkout at my local supermarket. The scale won&#x27;t work, or it doesn&#x27;t detect when I&#x27;ve put something in the bagging area, or a barcode isn&#x27;t recognised, or something else. And that&#x27;s leaving aside the times I try to buy alcohol (or NA beer...) and need approval.<p>And then I have to stand there like a twat for 20 minutes trying to get the attention of a member of staff because there is one staff member for 20+ machines and everyone is having the same issues.<p>The technology may or may not have delivered for shareholders, but in my experience it hasn&#x27;t delivered value for customers. Perhaps the bigger question is why we put up with stuff like this.<p>Maybe it&#x27;ll get better in time (though it has had many years to improve already). I used to despise the passport machines in the airport, now I merely dislike them.

There&#x27;s more options than just self-checkout and I would argue they work a lot better in FMCG, for instance the grab-and-go tech of AmazonGo, which has come way down in price and difficulty past few years.

I haven&#x27;t used self-checkout voluntarily: if you go to Lowe&#x27;s or Target too early, they don&#x27;t have anyone on the checkout line yet, so you don&#x27;t have a choice except to come back in an hour. But the experience is bad, and it exists solely to save money by putting people out of a job, with the side effect of making customers do free work. If they all go away tomorrow, good riddance.

I will always prefer the self-checkout option, and scan-as-you-go as long as the pickup of the scanner is easy. The queue for the self-checkout will have to be significantly larger for me to consider wasting someone else&#x27;s life to scan my products. Maybe I&#x27;m jaded, but not long ago there were scandals of till workers being asked to use diapers for the holiday season.

It’s not an absolute thing. If you have someone staffing 6 of them to assist with errors and prevent theft, then it can speed up people trying to get in-and-out. If you have a giant cart of groceries, then someone who’s an expert at scanning and bagging will make everything go much faster.<p>People like speaking and projecting in absolutes, but the truth is mixed.

Seems to be an international phenomenon. Here in the Netherlands supermarkets have been plagued by both stealing and annoyed customers who are flagged (randomly I suppose) every time they need to be checked, and then need to wait for minutes before some employee starts checking them.

M&amp;S colossally fucked up with their contract. It has an unbelievably frustrating amount of scan lag. An absolute classic example of one person buying a product on behalf of the end user and completely screwing up. I really hope someone got fired for that one.<p>Waitrose on the other hand did away with any kind of weighing device. Can’t have an unexpected item in bagging area if the bagging area isn’t expecting anything at all!

This last weekend, I got stuck in a &quot;Unknown item in bagging area -&gt; Please return item to bagging area -&gt; Unknown item in bagging area&quot; infinite loop.

Self checkout doesn’t work if you’re afraid people will steal.

I don&#x27;t go to supermarkets much (my partner does that) but I hate the self-service kiosks at airports. I would <i>much</i> rather deal with a human being.

There is a technology where the shopping cart itself is the self checkout.

been using the self checkout at Uniqlo recently. works beautifully