9 ms·

Wegmans ends self-checkout app after too much shoplifting

32 points by mikequinlan 4y ago

WalterBright 4y ago
Some years ago, a Microsoft millionaire decided to open a coffee shop in Kirkland. There were no prices posted. The idea was the customer ordered coffee, and paid what he thought it was worth. I asked the cashier several times what a reasonable price would be, and I would pay it. She absolutely refused to give any hint what a reasonable price was, and said I could pay nothing if I thought it was worth nothing. I don't recall what I paid, but it was probably too much. I felt uncomfortable about the whole thing. I didn't want to underpay and take advantage, and I didn't want to overpay and be a sucker. It didn't last long, next time I was in the neighborhood it had disappeared.
- jhbadger 4y ago
  I remember a wine bar in the 1990s in Washington DC like that. It was even worse because while people can generally ballpark what a cup of coffee (or a fancier drink like a latte) costs from experience, wine can vary tremendously in cost. Was I drinking a $3 glass of wine or a $15 one? I generally had no idea. But like your coffee shop, it wasn't long for the world.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  In a related story, my dad told me about a popular cafe in Los Angeles during the Depression that was the same model, pay what you think the meal was worth. They had lots of business. Occasionally someone would pay nothing, and would be met by other customers outside, who would beat them up, saying "this cafe is one of the good guys, don't you dare take advantage." And word would get out.
  - hericium 4y ago
    Well, that escalated quickly.
  - bitshiftfaced 4y ago
    This may hit at why the parent poster felt discomfort. You're not paying only for your coffee, but also your reputation.
    - twiceaday 4y ago
      And also other peoples coffee who didn't pay enough for theirs. Sounds like a free to play game actually.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      > but also your reputation Not exactly. I value my honor, and honor is what you do when others are not looking. The cashier had no idea who I was. As I've remarked before on HN, my father told me that honor is what separates men from animals. And men get to choose whether they are men or animals.
  - stevage 4y ago
    There was a business, Lentil as Anything, that operated on a similar principle here for years. There was a pretty big customer segment that ate there often and paid nothing though. It went out of business last year. Very sad. Just mismanagement more than anything,
- riffraff 4y ago
  My bank is a community-oriented one, and works on a "pay what you wish" model, but it's careful to suggest tiers: X pays for your account, X*2 pays for someone who can't pay, Y funds whatever. It makes you comfortable about the experience.
  - vel0city 4y ago
    Pay what you wish model? I sure would love my mortgage to be a 30 year at 0.01% APR. Something tells me if all the rest of the customers asked the same that bank wouldn't be around very long. Its not a bad thing for both parties to be up front with what is reasonable to them.
    - riffraff 4y ago
      Sorry for the confusion, I was only referring to fixed account management costs. They have been around for 25 years.
  - adrr 4y ago
    I wonder how much people pay on average especially when most people don’t pay for bank accounts. Curious if your bank charges fees like overdraft?
- pyuser583 4y ago
  How can I know what it’s worth before I drink it?
  - vel0city 4y ago
    How do you know that wine is worth $30/glass if you've never had it?
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      I buy cheap wines because expensive wines don't taste any better.
    - politelemon 4y ago
      Wine gets a lot of "marketing" around it before you've had it, in order to mark up the prices. As consumers you're conditioned to expect to pay high prices for certain metadata about the wine. The question should be, in a double blind glass of wine, how do you know what it's worth?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- socialismisok 4y ago
  There are a number of leftist and anarchist owned cafes around that operate at least partially on a pay what you can, or PWYC model for parts of their menu. Places like Lazy Cow Bakery in Seattle or The Anarchist in Toronto (https://theanarchist.ca/ https://theanarchist.ca/). As someone who has been homeless and penniless, and now makes a senior engineering income, I really really appreciate the places that do this.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    PWYC is quite different from pay what you think it is worth. On the Lazy Cow Bakery web site, they list prices: https://www.lazycowbakeryseattle.com/copy-of-order-form-1 https://www.lazycowbakeryseattle.com/copy-of-order-form-1 BTW, after reading their interesting web site, I don't think they are leftists at all. Their business model is based on making money through voluntary agreements and exchanges. "our workers get part ownership of the bakery and to make decisions about their wages and work hours" Sounds like free market capitalism, not leftism. "Located inside our bakery is our free community fridge & food pantry. Donations are welcome anytime during normal business hours." Sounds like charity, not leftism.
    - thinkingemote 4y ago
      "cooperative" is the keyword to search for.
      - eternalban 4y ago
        in the old days, when cursive did not present a challenge and only silent films had subtitles, you could tell these capitalists apart: http://www.islandbreath.org/2010Year/11/101103jpmorgan.jpg http://www.islandbreath.org/2010Year/11/101103jpmorgan.jpg
    - sofixa 4y ago
      >> "our workers get part ownership of the bakery and to make decisions about their wages and work hours" > Sounds like free market capitalism, not leftism Sounds like workers (part) owning the means of production, so socialism. A cooperative, where workers participate in ownership and decision making, is something inspired by socialist ideas and ideals, so it's pretty leftist by definition. The fact that it takes place within the framework of free* market capitalism doesn't make it an extension of the latter.
Test0129 4y ago
I'm surprised more places aren't doing this. These self checkout devices are incredibly popular and usually understaffed. Walmart in my experience is the only place doing this right. Every time I end up there I go through self checkout and invariable have to get all my bags checked against my receipt. Otherwise it's on the honor system. That never works. But I'm sure there's some actuarial equation to this.
- Overtonwindow 4y ago
  I have never had my receipt inspected leaving a Walmart. I’ve heard about this, and perhaps I’m a pessimist, but I wonder if they only do this at stores with high shrinkage. In other words, only the bad neighborhood Walmarts.
  - vel0city 4y ago
    I knew someone who would routinely shoplift clothes from Walmart. They'd essentially change all the clothes with new ones while at the store most times they'd go. They were never challenged leaving even though they'd walk past the greeter wearing a completely different outfit than when they came in. Not that I endorse such a thing, I did not approve of that person's actions. I mentioned it once when leaving, the greeter shrugged. Some places just price in the shrink and honestly don't care.
  - nickthegreek 4y ago
    I won’t allow it. If they try, I say no thanks and keep walking.
- detaro 4y ago
  If they check all the time, are they really saving over having cashiers?
  - formerkrogemp 4y ago
    I worked in grocery for a decade until going into accounting. The labor saved by self checkout is ridiculous. The hours for front end staff were reduced by an order of magnitude in my time there. They were always pushing us to pull people to self checkout to reach the required utilization rates and other ridiculous measure-targets. It started at 20% self checkout utilization rate, then creeped up over the years to 60%. Of course that means less staff.
Overtonwindow 4y ago
I confess that the moment I saw self check out being installed at a grocery store in 2000, I felt the future was at hand. 22 years later, I go out of my way to avoid them. I hate self check out. Have I become a Luddite? Lazy? I think I just really like the convenience of someone else ringing all of that up and putting it into the bags, etc. Edit: perhaps the future is to charge customers more who want full service. You can either check out and bag your own, or for some price more you get full service where someone else does it.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  I use both, with an internal evaluation about which is faster. Self-checkout is always slower, because you must complete one item at a time, and I don't have the codes for the produce memorized. With the cashier he can scan multiples at a time, has all the codes memorized, and I bag while he scans. So I look at the lines, the amounts in carts in the lines, who is in the lines, and make my guess which is faster.
- abawany 4y ago
  I still prefer them and go to one whenever I can, but that's because I just dislike the fake chit chat at regular checkout counters.
- coffee_beqn 4y ago
  I mean the store is making you do their very low paid tedious job for free on an inferior machine. It’s not exactly a barrel of laughs. I usually self checkout but I have an issue at least 70% of the time
- tomjen3 4y ago
  Self checkout would be a great idea, if you used the same software the cashiers used. Unfortunately, like every software made since 2010, its gimped so that it doesn't scare people, so its too slow. I used a scanner at home to scan my books (they are just usb keyboards, so surprisingly easy to integrate in e.g a spreadsheet), and the scan was so quick. I could go through all my grocecies in basically no time if all I had to was scan them. So I always pick the cashier, and then start reading on my phone while standing in line. This essentially reduces the wasted time close to zero, even if it does not reduce the wall time to zero.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
steve_adams_86 4y ago
I had a really strange experience at a self checkout just two hours ago. The employee monitoring the terminals suspected I was entering items incorrectly (intentionally), and came over to review my basket and what I’d entered. She became flustered when she saw everything was correct, then began rapidly and somewhat forcefully checking the rest of my items through. Was it that she didn’t trust me? Was I doing something that looked suspicious? Maybe there’s a lot of shop lifting and their job security is at risk when it occurs on their shifts. In any case it made me regret choosing self checkout – I’ll definitely think twice in the future. Ironically my wife steals things in self checkout constantly and I never have (nor would I), but somehow I’m the one who gets picked out for a thorough check. I feel for that employee, anyways. I was a little frustrated and bothered by it at first, especially when she began checking my items through for me. Then I realized she must deal with people being pretty awful and lying to her all the time – I wouldn’t last a day.
- Overtonwindow 4y ago
  >> Ironically my wife steals things in self checkout constantly Not to pass judgment on your wife or anything like that, but I’m very curious: Has this changed the way you feel about your wife or her judgment? I was just thinking to myself that if my wife said that she stole things constantly through self check out, I would advise her that it would be wise to stop. To me it’s reckless, you may never get caught, but you might get caught, and who knows what incident that might create.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Some people are just really bad at self checkout - they’re not trying to steal.
    - merlyn 4y ago
      Some self-checkouts are really slow and sucky. I can scan things faster than the register can take it. It gives me a beep, I move on. Then I see the register is missing items, and getting out of sync with the scale function. Most things I buy are light-weight, so the computer decides to just fudge it and move on. (And if you notice after the fact that you've moved it onto the belt, you can't take it back, the system will hang and block you from going on until you put it back). I'm not trying to steal, just their hardware can't keep up, and I'm not going to slow down to watch to make sure every beep corresponds to a successful item rung up.
Barrin92 4y ago
It's something I wondered about whenever I see those fully-automated store prototypes. Whenever you have a system like that you'll soon find out how much creativity the most mischievous people have. The ability of people to get around this stuff is pretty much limitless in ways you can't even imagine when you put safeguards in. I think they'll pretty much only work out in places that have such strict laws and culture around theft that people don't even attempt it.
gnicholas 4y ago
For those who didn’t read the article, they’re not ending “self-checkout” with dedicated lanes and scanner machines. This is a smartphone app system that they briefly rolled out and have now paused/abandoned. It did not require going through a line at all, which presumably made it much easier to ‘accidentally’ not scan an item here or there.
paulpauper 4y ago
We're not just talking about self-checkout, but an app that bypasses checkout completely. New York (CNN Business)In 2019, Wegmans, the cult-favorite northeastern grocery chain, rolled out a new mobile app that allowed customers to scan, bag and pay for groceries while they shopped and then skip the checkout line altogether. Not surprised it failed
- AndrewDucker 4y ago
  My local little Sainsbury does that. I use it all the time. It's very handy. The larger one a bit further away let's you do all of that except that there's still a checkout for paying at and they do a re-check of a few items every so often.
georgyo 4y ago
I used the SCAN app exactly once about a year ago and loved it. However it only worked that one time. Every other time it could not connect. It was truely great, it put so much trust in you. Self-checkout stations don't let you remove items, but this app let you edit the cart as you liked. Scanned something twice, not a problem. Put something back? just remove it. Checking out was a 30second task, and it did feel a little weird. I had a whole cart full of stuff, scanned my phone, paid, and left. I put a lot of care into making sure everything was there and accurate, but I can see how easy it was to abuse. Easily could have not scanned half the things in there. An interesting thing was that it didn't actually save much, if any, time. Maybe even took sightly longer overall. Scanning with the phone every time you added something means pausing in the store to do it, switching between scan mode and shopping mode wasn't seamless for me. Putting something back after you scanned meant fiddling with your phone for a little bit. Maybe if I was able to do it more then once it would have become significantly faster.
socialismisok 4y ago
- kepler1 4y ago
  Really, you don't think there's organized crime around those items too? And even if not that particular case, it's just ok to do that? Yeah, why do we have prices on those things anyway. Ok, "socialismisok"...
  - socialismisok 4y ago
    If someone is desperate enough to steal food for their child, I'd rather have Kroger write off the loss than see a kid go hungry. I can't bring myself to think that the other outcome (Kroger saves $3, child good hungry) is the just outcome. Should we have great social safety systems that prevent anyone from going hungry? Yes. Do we? No. So in the absence of support and safety nets, I'm just not going to fault anyone who is dealing with the stress of "my child is starving but I can't afford food" and decides to pocket a couple containers of mashed carrots and peas.
    - _-david-_ 4y ago
      Every state has support for children, pretty much every largish church will as well, along with thousands of charities. Children are the least likely people to be not have help. It is possible a parent doesn't know about these resources but they are there.
    - kepler1 4y ago
      I feel the same way about your personal belongings, socialismisok. What does it hurt if someone steals your catalytic converter once in a while, or smashes your window in, or mugs you. Small inconveniences, oh well. They probably needed it more than you did. I volunteer your stuff to be donated to such charitable causes.
      - socialismisok 4y ago
steve76 4y ago
Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
Good I very much hate self check-outs. Maybe if they offered discounts for use, maybe if they worked better, but the current practice of just off-loading labor on the customer I do not like. On a side rant, is anyone else bothered as much as I am at how self-checkouts force this tediously slow pacing for doing each step. You can't just scan-scan-scan-pay. Instead its scan...."place item in bag"...pause... now you can scan the next item. Do it too quickly and it freezes up. The regular checkouts don't have this issue. Drives me absolutely crazy.
- lervag 4y ago
  In Norway, self checkout is more or less scan-scan-scan-pay. It works well, in my experience, and most stores also have the traditional regular checkout. I'm curious if the shop-lifting challenge is similar in Norway. I would expect not, since it is a very trusting society, but I have never seen any real numbers on this topic.

32 points by mikequinlan 4y ago

Some years ago, a Microsoft millionaire decided to open a coffee shop in Kirkland. There were no prices posted. The idea was the customer ordered coffee, and paid what he thought it was worth. I asked the cashier several times what a reasonable price would be, and I would pay it. She absolutely refused to give any hint what a reasonable price was, and said I could pay nothing if I thought it was worth nothing. I don't recall what I paid, but it was probably too much. I felt uncomfortable about the whole thing. I didn't want to underpay and take advantage, and I didn't want to overpay and be a sucker. It didn't last long, next time I was in the neighborhood it had disappeared.

jhbadger 4y ago
I remember a wine bar in the 1990s in Washington DC like that. It was even worse because while people can generally ballpark what a cup of coffee (or a fancier drink like a latte) costs from experience, wine can vary tremendously in cost. Was I drinking a $3 glass of wine or a $15 one? I generally had no idea. But like your coffee shop, it wasn't long for the world.
WalterBright 4y ago
In a related story, my dad told me about a popular cafe in Los Angeles during the Depression that was the same model, pay what you think the meal was worth. They had lots of business. Occasionally someone would pay nothing, and would be met by other customers outside, who would beat them up, saying "this cafe is one of the good guys, don't you dare take advantage." And word would get out.
- hericium 4y ago
  Well, that escalated quickly.
- bitshiftfaced 4y ago
  This may hit at why the parent poster felt discomfort. You're not paying only for your coffee, but also your reputation.
  - twiceaday 4y ago
    And also other peoples coffee who didn't pay enough for theirs. Sounds like a free to play game actually.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    > but also your reputation Not exactly. I value my honor, and honor is what you do when others are not looking. The cashier had no idea who I was. As I've remarked before on HN, my father told me that honor is what separates men from animals. And men get to choose whether they are men or animals.
- stevage 4y ago
  There was a business, Lentil as Anything, that operated on a similar principle here for years. There was a pretty big customer segment that ate there often and paid nothing though. It went out of business last year. Very sad. Just mismanagement more than anything,
riffraff 4y ago
My bank is a community-oriented one, and works on a "pay what you wish" model, but it's careful to suggest tiers: X pays for your account, X*2 pays for someone who can't pay, Y funds whatever. It makes you comfortable about the experience.
- vel0city 4y ago
  Pay what you wish model? I sure would love my mortgage to be a 30 year at 0.01% APR. Something tells me if all the rest of the customers asked the same that bank wouldn't be around very long. Its not a bad thing for both parties to be up front with what is reasonable to them.
  - riffraff 4y ago
    Sorry for the confusion, I was only referring to fixed account management costs. They have been around for 25 years.
- adrr 4y ago
  I wonder how much people pay on average especially when most people don’t pay for bank accounts. Curious if your bank charges fees like overdraft?
pyuser583 4y ago
How can I know what it’s worth before I drink it?
- vel0city 4y ago
  How do you know that wine is worth $30/glass if you've never had it?
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    I buy cheap wines because expensive wines don't taste any better.
  - politelemon 4y ago
    Wine gets a lot of "marketing" around it before you've had it, in order to mark up the prices. As consumers you're conditioned to expect to pay high prices for certain metadata about the wine. The question should be, in a double blind glass of wine, how do you know what it's worth?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
socialismisok 4y ago
There are a number of leftist and anarchist owned cafes around that operate at least partially on a pay what you can, or PWYC model for parts of their menu. Places like Lazy Cow Bakery in Seattle or The Anarchist in Toronto (https://theanarchist.ca/ https://theanarchist.ca/). As someone who has been homeless and penniless, and now makes a senior engineering income, I really really appreciate the places that do this.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  PWYC is quite different from pay what you think it is worth. On the Lazy Cow Bakery web site, they list prices: https://www.lazycowbakeryseattle.com/copy-of-order-form-1 https://www.lazycowbakeryseattle.com/copy-of-order-form-1 BTW, after reading their interesting web site, I don't think they are leftists at all. Their business model is based on making money through voluntary agreements and exchanges. "our workers get part ownership of the bakery and to make decisions about their wages and work hours" Sounds like free market capitalism, not leftism. "Located inside our bakery is our free community fridge & food pantry. Donations are welcome anytime during normal business hours." Sounds like charity, not leftism.
  - thinkingemote 4y ago
    "cooperative" is the keyword to search for.
    - eternalban 4y ago
      in the old days, when cursive did not present a challenge and only silent films had subtitles, you could tell these capitalists apart: http://www.islandbreath.org/2010Year/11/101103jpmorgan.jpg http://www.islandbreath.org/2010Year/11/101103jpmorgan.jpg
  - sofixa 4y ago
    >> "our workers get part ownership of the bakery and to make decisions about their wages and work hours" > Sounds like free market capitalism, not leftism Sounds like workers (part) owning the means of production, so socialism. A cooperative, where workers participate in ownership and decision making, is something inspired by socialist ideas and ideals, so it's pretty leftist by definition. The fact that it takes place within the framework of free* market capitalism doesn't make it an extension of the latter.

Test0129 4y ago

I'm surprised more places aren't doing this. These self checkout devices are incredibly popular and usually understaffed. Walmart in my experience is the only place doing this right. Every time I end up there I go through self checkout and invariable have to get all my bags checked against my receipt. Otherwise it's on the honor system. That never works. But I'm sure there's some actuarial equation to this.

Overtonwindow 4y ago
I have never had my receipt inspected leaving a Walmart. I’ve heard about this, and perhaps I’m a pessimist, but I wonder if they only do this at stores with high shrinkage. In other words, only the bad neighborhood Walmarts.
- vel0city 4y ago
  I knew someone who would routinely shoplift clothes from Walmart. They'd essentially change all the clothes with new ones while at the store most times they'd go. They were never challenged leaving even though they'd walk past the greeter wearing a completely different outfit than when they came in. Not that I endorse such a thing, I did not approve of that person's actions. I mentioned it once when leaving, the greeter shrugged. Some places just price in the shrink and honestly don't care.
- nickthegreek 4y ago
  I won’t allow it. If they try, I say no thanks and keep walking.
detaro 4y ago
If they check all the time, are they really saving over having cashiers?
- formerkrogemp 4y ago
  I worked in grocery for a decade until going into accounting. The labor saved by self checkout is ridiculous. The hours for front end staff were reduced by an order of magnitude in my time there. They were always pushing us to pull people to self checkout to reach the required utilization rates and other ridiculous measure-targets. It started at 20% self checkout utilization rate, then creeped up over the years to 60%. Of course that means less staff.

Overtonwindow 4y ago

I confess that the moment I saw self check out being installed at a grocery store in 2000, I felt the future was at hand. 22 years later, I go out of my way to avoid them. I hate self check out. Have I become a Luddite? Lazy? I think I just really like the convenience of someone else ringing all of that up and putting it into the bags, etc. Edit: perhaps the future is to charge customers more who want full service. You can either check out and bag your own, or for some price more you get full service where someone else does it.

WalterBright 4y ago
I use both, with an internal evaluation about which is faster. Self-checkout is always slower, because you must complete one item at a time, and I don't have the codes for the produce memorized. With the cashier he can scan multiples at a time, has all the codes memorized, and I bag while he scans. So I look at the lines, the amounts in carts in the lines, who is in the lines, and make my guess which is faster.
abawany 4y ago
I still prefer them and go to one whenever I can, but that's because I just dislike the fake chit chat at regular checkout counters.
coffee_beqn 4y ago
I mean the store is making you do their very low paid tedious job for free on an inferior machine. It’s not exactly a barrel of laughs. I usually self checkout but I have an issue at least 70% of the time
tomjen3 4y ago
Self checkout would be a great idea, if you used the same software the cashiers used. Unfortunately, like every software made since 2010, its gimped so that it doesn't scare people, so its too slow. I used a scanner at home to scan my books (they are just usb keyboards, so surprisingly easy to integrate in e.g a spreadsheet), and the scan was so quick. I could go through all my grocecies in basically no time if all I had to was scan them. So I always pick the cashier, and then start reading on my phone while standing in line. This essentially reduces the wasted time close to zero, even if it does not reduce the wall time to zero.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

steve_adams_86 4y ago

I had a really strange experience at a self checkout just two hours ago. The employee monitoring the terminals suspected I was entering items incorrectly (intentionally), and came over to review my basket and what I’d entered. She became flustered when she saw everything was correct, then began rapidly and somewhat forcefully checking the rest of my items through. Was it that she didn’t trust me? Was I doing something that looked suspicious? Maybe there’s a lot of shop lifting and their job security is at risk when it occurs on their shifts. In any case it made me regret choosing self checkout – I’ll definitely think twice in the future. Ironically my wife steals things in self checkout constantly and I never have (nor would I), but somehow I’m the one who gets picked out for a thorough check. I feel for that employee, anyways. I was a little frustrated and bothered by it at first, especially when she began checking my items through for me. Then I realized she must deal with people being pretty awful and lying to her all the time – I wouldn’t last a day.

Overtonwindow 4y ago
>> Ironically my wife steals things in self checkout constantly Not to pass judgment on your wife or anything like that, but I’m very curious: Has this changed the way you feel about your wife or her judgment? I was just thinking to myself that if my wife said that she stole things constantly through self check out, I would advise her that it would be wise to stop. To me it’s reckless, you may never get caught, but you might get caught, and who knows what incident that might create.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Some people are just really bad at self checkout - they’re not trying to steal.
  - merlyn 4y ago
    Some self-checkouts are really slow and sucky. I can scan things faster than the register can take it. It gives me a beep, I move on. Then I see the register is missing items, and getting out of sync with the scale function. Most things I buy are light-weight, so the computer decides to just fudge it and move on. (And if you notice after the fact that you've moved it onto the belt, you can't take it back, the system will hang and block you from going on until you put it back). I'm not trying to steal, just their hardware can't keep up, and I'm not going to slow down to watch to make sure every beep corresponds to a successful item rung up.

Barrin92 4y ago

It's something I wondered about whenever I see those fully-automated store prototypes. Whenever you have a system like that you'll soon find out how much creativity the most mischievous people have. The ability of people to get around this stuff is pretty much limitless in ways you can't even imagine when you put safeguards in. I think they'll pretty much only work out in places that have such strict laws and culture around theft that people don't even attempt it.

gnicholas 4y ago

For those who didn’t read the article, they’re not ending “self-checkout” with dedicated lanes and scanner machines. This is a smartphone app system that they briefly rolled out and have now paused/abandoned. It did not require going through a line at all, which presumably made it much easier to ‘accidentally’ not scan an item here or there.

paulpauper 4y ago

We're not just talking about self-checkout, but an app that bypasses checkout completely. New York (CNN Business)In 2019, Wegmans, the cult-favorite northeastern grocery chain, rolled out a new mobile app that allowed customers to scan, bag and pay for groceries while they shopped and then skip the checkout line altogether. Not surprised it failed

AndrewDucker 4y ago
My local little Sainsbury does that. I use it all the time. It's very handy. The larger one a bit further away let's you do all of that except that there's still a checkout for paying at and they do a re-check of a few items every so often.

georgyo 4y ago

I used the SCAN app exactly once about a year ago and loved it. However it only worked that one time. Every other time it could not connect. It was truely great, it put so much trust in you. Self-checkout stations don't let you remove items, but this app let you edit the cart as you liked. Scanned something twice, not a problem. Put something back? just remove it. Checking out was a 30second task, and it did feel a little weird. I had a whole cart full of stuff, scanned my phone, paid, and left. I put a lot of care into making sure everything was there and accurate, but I can see how easy it was to abuse. Easily could have not scanned half the things in there. An interesting thing was that it didn't actually save much, if any, time. Maybe even took sightly longer overall. Scanning with the phone every time you added something means pausing in the store to do it, switching between scan mode and shopping mode wasn't seamless for me. Putting something back after you scanned meant fiddling with your phone for a little bit. Maybe if I was able to do it more then once it would have become significantly faster.

socialismisok 4y ago

kepler1 4y ago
Really, you don't think there's organized crime around those items too? And even if not that particular case, it's just ok to do that? Yeah, why do we have prices on those things anyway. Ok, "socialismisok"...
- socialismisok 4y ago
  If someone is desperate enough to steal food for their child, I'd rather have Kroger write off the loss than see a kid go hungry. I can't bring myself to think that the other outcome (Kroger saves $3, child good hungry) is the just outcome. Should we have great social safety systems that prevent anyone from going hungry? Yes. Do we? No. So in the absence of support and safety nets, I'm just not going to fault anyone who is dealing with the stress of "my child is starving but I can't afford food" and decides to pocket a couple containers of mashed carrots and peas.
  - _-david-_ 4y ago
    Every state has support for children, pretty much every largish church will as well, along with thousands of charities. Children are the least likely people to be not have help. It is possible a parent doesn't know about these resources but they are there.
  - kepler1 4y ago
    I feel the same way about your personal belongings, socialismisok. What does it hurt if someone steals your catalytic converter once in a while, or smashes your window in, or mugs you. Small inconveniences, oh well. They probably needed it more than you did. I volunteer your stuff to be donated to such charitable causes.
    - socialismisok 4y ago

steve76 4y ago

Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago

Good I very much hate self check-outs. Maybe if they offered discounts for use, maybe if they worked better, but the current practice of just off-loading labor on the customer I do not like. On a side rant, is anyone else bothered as much as I am at how self-checkouts force this tediously slow pacing for doing each step. You can't just scan-scan-scan-pay. Instead its scan...."place item in bag"...pause... now you can scan the next item. Do it too quickly and it freezes up. The regular checkouts don't have this issue. Drives me absolutely crazy.

lervag 4y ago
In Norway, self checkout is more or less scan-scan-scan-pay. It works well, in my experience, and most stores also have the traditional regular checkout. I'm curious if the shop-lifting challenge is similar in Norway. I would expect not, since it is a very trusting society, but I have never seen any real numbers on this topic.