4 ms·

I think about this every time I used one of these machines... isn't it in the businesses best interest to get people through as fast as possible? I have the sam

I think about this every time I used one of these machines... isn't it in the businesses best interest to get people through as fast as possible? I have the same experience at grocery stores and convenience stores, I'm always amazed at how slow the machines are with such seemingly simple tasks.

judge2020 7y ago
The machines on brand new gas stations and self-checkouts are much faster [also support mobile payment], but performing upgrades to older systems usually isn't worth the cost since they're only at max. throughput for a few hours every week, if that.
- freeqaz 7y ago
  The new ones play video ads and (some at least) have audio that you can't disable too (spotted in New Mexico). Truly baffling! Hopefully not all of the machines are that bad. I wish that common point-of-sale interfaces focused on simplicity and ease of use (especially accessibility). Maybe one day!
  - enchiridion 7y ago
    Some of the unmarked buttons on those machines will mute the ads. Depends on the model.
- dna_polymerase 7y ago
  Saving a few seconds is only the immediately measurable effect of such an investment, but as you can see in this post it seems the added friction is a major headache for people, and removing it may have long term customer loyalty effects.
- StillBored 7y ago
  I find its the opposite, in the US they weren't this slow when they were rolling out 20 years ago. Probably 10-15 years ago they started to get a lot slower, they went from basically instant to increasingly laggy. Gas stations have been rolling out chip aware ones for the past couple years and overwhelmingly they seem fairly laggy. It seems like there are a couple brands that are faster, and the rest are timeslicing 10k pumps inputs on a mainframe in new jersy (ok that's a joke but wouldn't surprise me if they are javascript based and round-tripping over dial-up to a linux machine fronting a AS400 or something).

judge2020 7y ago

The machines on brand new gas stations and self-checkouts are much faster [also support mobile payment], but performing upgrades to older systems usually isn't worth the cost since they're only at max. throughput for a few hours every week, if that.

freeqaz 7y ago
The new ones play video ads and (some at least) have audio that you can't disable too (spotted in New Mexico). Truly baffling! Hopefully not all of the machines are that bad. I wish that common point-of-sale interfaces focused on simplicity and ease of use (especially accessibility). Maybe one day!
- enchiridion 7y ago
  Some of the unmarked buttons on those machines will mute the ads. Depends on the model.
dna_polymerase 7y ago
Saving a few seconds is only the immediately measurable effect of such an investment, but as you can see in this post it seems the added friction is a major headache for people, and removing it may have long term customer loyalty effects.
StillBored 7y ago
I find its the opposite, in the US they weren't this slow when they were rolling out 20 years ago. Probably 10-15 years ago they started to get a lot slower, they went from basically instant to increasingly laggy. Gas stations have been rolling out chip aware ones for the past couple years and overwhelmingly they seem fairly laggy. It seems like there are a couple brands that are faster, and the rest are timeslicing 10k pumps inputs on a mainframe in new jersy (ok that's a joke but wouldn't surprise me if they are javascript based and round-tripping over dial-up to a linux machine fronting a AS400 or something).