4 ms·

Albert Heijn in the Netherlands interestingly seems to have none of the mentioned problems. You swipe or scan your items and place them in your bags however yo

Albert Heijn in the Netherlands interestingly seems to have none of the mentioned problems. You swipe or scan your items and place them in your bags however you want. If you scan a beer bottle they let you keep going and someone watching sees that you are an adult just remotely ticks a box before you get to the checkout stage. There is no scale checking the weight of your bags, the only annoyance is that occasionally a worker comes over before you complete your transaction to randomly check what you put in your bags. Aoart from that it's all very fluid. On the other hand I have experienced all the mentioned problems in Canada at a Provigo in Quebec. So I think all this is really just a matter of implementation and actually caring about user experience. All if these issues are solvable, the store just has to decide it cares about these issues and not accept a suboar solution. One difference I'll note, of course a bit of a wild guess, is maybe one of culture. In North America people really don't want to be bothered by random checks, they feel it's a violation of their privacy or personal space. So everything, including security, has to be automated as much as possible. In Europe people are used to the idea of random checks maybe because it's part of the experience of taking public transport.

ethbr1 3y ago
> In North America people really don't want to be bothered by random checks Data point that Walmart does perform random checks of bag-to-receipt as people exit the store.
- rascul 3y ago
  They're completely voluntary. You can just keep on walking.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    Not-so-secret: that's true of any store employee I'm not aware of any brand that, by policy, encourages and trains its employees to physically intervene. And you cannot imagine some of the brazen shoplifting I saw on HD security camera footage. There's a massive chasm between what's socially acceptable from neighborhood to neighborhood.
cinntaile 3y ago
> In Europe people are used to the idea of random checks maybe because it's part of the experience of taking public transport. As a European I can't relate. I don't want to be randomly checked.
- radarsat1 3y ago
  I don't mean it as any kind of rule of course, it's a massive generalization. But in general in Europe we are more used getting on the train without a barrier and then later having to show our ticket to the conductor who walks through the train, compared to having to pass an impenetrable barrier by showing our ticket just to get onto the platform. Obviously both systems exist in both places, but I think the former exists more in Europe. It is just a comparison of course, take it as you will. I do find someone checking my bags randomly bit annoying but I prefer it to fighting an automated system that manages a poor approximation of figuring out what you put in your bags. At least in the Netherlands I have not seen that latter kind of system here, and I suspect it's precisely because people would not like it.
nicholasbraker 3y ago
Apart from that I get the sense from this article that the author is scanning articles at the checkout counter instead of scanning them during the shopping process itself. Either by using a handset supplied by the store or with a mobile app (which the Albert Heijn both offers). When you're done, it's simply a matter of scanning your customer loyalty card and pay. Ofc random checks are part of the process.

ethbr1 3y ago

> In North America people really don't want to be bothered by random checks Data point that Walmart does perform random checks of bag-to-receipt as people exit the store.

rascul 3y ago
They're completely voluntary. You can just keep on walking.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  Not-so-secret: that's true of any store employee I'm not aware of any brand that, by policy, encourages and trains its employees to physically intervene. And you cannot imagine some of the brazen shoplifting I saw on HD security camera footage. There's a massive chasm between what's socially acceptable from neighborhood to neighborhood.

cinntaile 3y ago

> In Europe people are used to the idea of random checks maybe because it's part of the experience of taking public transport. As a European I can't relate. I don't want to be randomly checked.

radarsat1 3y ago
I don't mean it as any kind of rule of course, it's a massive generalization. But in general in Europe we are more used getting on the train without a barrier and then later having to show our ticket to the conductor who walks through the train, compared to having to pass an impenetrable barrier by showing our ticket just to get onto the platform. Obviously both systems exist in both places, but I think the former exists more in Europe. It is just a comparison of course, take it as you will. I do find someone checking my bags randomly bit annoying but I prefer it to fighting an automated system that manages a poor approximation of figuring out what you put in your bags. At least in the Netherlands I have not seen that latter kind of system here, and I suspect it's precisely because people would not like it.

nicholasbraker 3y ago

Apart from that I get the sense from this article that the author is scanning articles at the checkout counter instead of scanning them during the shopping process itself. Either by using a handset supplied by the store or with a mobile app (which the Albert Heijn both offers). When you're done, it's simply a matter of scanning your customer loyalty card and pay. Ofc random checks are part of the process.