6 ms·
Walmart customers getting hostile at self-checkout – they blame anti-theft tech
- smileysteve 3y agoSelf checkout effects my time (especially when served lines are available for a large grocery order). They also impact my tolerance for reusing my bags, because anti theft video and scales make it very difficult to adjust your bags.
- pg_1234 3y agohttps://archive.ph/eSK8G https://archive.ph/eSK8G
- Simulacra 3y agoI loathe the camera and the little screen that shows me standing at the self check out. It is degrading. Self check out needs to go away.
- janosdebugs 3y agoThe camera could go away instead of the whole system. I don't know how much a problem theft is on the other side of the pond, but we have self-checkout on a product weight basis in Austria and it works just fine.
- isthatafact 3y agoSelf-checkout, when implemented in a sensible way, is fast, efficient, painless. and generally pleasant. The article is describing a bad implementation that apparently uses some "AI" nonsense to insinuate that a customer (and probably most customers) is attempting to steal. It sounds even worse than the weight sensors that many earlier self-checkout have used, which, besides being error prone, made it impossible to put groceries into any kind of re-usable bag or backpack until after first finishing scanning and paying for everything while attempting to balance the entire load of groceries onto a tiny platform/scale like some reverse jenga tower game.
- cge 3y agoAt least in California and Europe, most self checkouts I have seen either have a button to note that you've put your own bag on the scale, or just ignore weight put on the scale before you start scanning. Are there self checkouts that don't do this?
- frereubu 3y agoMy experience of those buttons (Sainsburys in the UK) is that they fail at lesat 50% of the time and require someone to come over to verify the bag before you can continue scanning.
- downut 3y ago"Self-checkout, when implemented in a sensible way, is fast, efficient, painless. and generally pleasant." As stated, the quoted sentence above says nothing; it has no content because of the caveat. Let's simplify on the way to dragging reality back in: "Self-checkout is fast, efficient, painless. and generally pleasant." I have never ever seen an implementation that makes bulk goods checkout, as is required for say vegetables/fruits/grains etc., "fast, efficient, painless, and generally pleasant." How could it be? You have to look up each item on a stupid touch screen, weigh it, and bag it. Lots of potential for callous mistakes that are annoying as hell to fix, so I never fix them, and now I'm a criminal. Ok, so now they're bagging up the bulk goods so they can barcode the batch, and... I get to buy 3lbs of zuccini, with a bad one visibly lurking in there, or nothing. Awesome technology thanks bros.
- crazygringo 3y ago> You have to look up each item on a stupid touch screen, weigh it, and bag it. It's pretty easy at Whole Foods. You hit a button for "produce", type "gr" and select "green pepper", confirm and you're done. I've never had any trouble at all. I can't even imagine what exactly could go wrong?
- isthatafact 3y agoMaybe I do not buy enough different vegetables in a single trip to feel at all inconvenienced by the weighing vegetable problem. I also understand that some people will always prefer employee/human checkout for various reasons. I would expect that AI could help to identify what vegetable is being weighed, but it will probably never know whether or not that zucchini is "organic"/"bio". As a fairly low tech (but maybe too costly) solution, I could imagine a system where the vegetables at the store live on a scale that spits out a bar code value based on the weight of what a customer removes, which the customer would then take to scan at checkout.
- Mountain_Skies 3y agoThe camera and screen seem to be there as a deterrent. I hate them too but they're easy to avoid by not shopping at locations with them. My guess is their existence is based on the "shrinkage" rate at each store. Of course, this choice becomes more difficult if you don't have the means to travel further, something much more likely for those who live in an area with high shrinkage rates.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ruined 3y agoit won't go away, they need that for the district attorney
- crazygringo 3y agoI'm genuinely curious, what is degrading about it? Stores are already full of cameras. Things like ATM's all have cameras filming your transaction too. What's different about a self-checkout one?
- Noumenon72 3y agoBesides anger being used as a standard deflection tactic against rule enforcement, I imagine people who have been successfully stealing from these for a while feel entitled to do it and get angry when contradicted.
- joezydeco 3y agoMany of these stores have completely eliminated human cashiers and gone 100% self checkout. Which, as others have noted, is really difficult with large items or very full shopping carts. On other forums people have told stories of abandoning full shopping carts when confronted with 30-45 minute waits to check out. Turns out that those human cashiers were pretty fast. So some of this anger is directed at the store not being able to staff cashiers, but having plenty of staff around to confront customers over inaccurate checkouts.
- ghaff 3y agoSelf-checkout is fine for a few barcoded items. But a cart of stuff at a grocery store/Walmart? Even if you're fast at scanning, the space is just not setup to process half a cart's worth of goods. Self-checkout has generally improved but some stores have basically eliminated too many human cashiers.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoI like the self checkouts at Winco, they say 15 items or less or something like that. Which I think is the best of both worlds. The only improvement would be implementing a single queue for the cashiers.
- pjc50 3y agoSome UK stores have a "scan as you go" system: scan with a handheld or even your phone each item as it goes in, then just self-check the whole lot in one go with (usually) no further checks. Although this has been broken at my local store for a while, and I wonder if that's more widespread and/or a reaction to shoplifting.
- vinyl7 3y agoMaybe the typical price discovery tactic of increasing prices until sales drop off is not telling the whole story. Maybe when people start stealing more and more, it means that prices are too high. Alternatively, the COL of skyrocketing and people can't keep up anymore. This infinite growth economic structure is unsustainable.
- TuringNYC 3y agoI think the sense of injustice may sometimes be to blame. Let me elaborate. There have been times at Whole Foods when item after item isnt scanned, now you have to wait for an attendant. Usually they have 1 attendant for 10 machines, so now you've queued up to be helped. Except there are times where attendants just go randomly help people, or help people who are loud or pull them in. If you have 3 or 4 people waiting for help, unable to proceed, the attendant should help in the order they needed help. You shouldnt see new people suddenly being helped if you've been waiting. In any case, this has been so infuriating sometimes that I literally just walked away. I left everything, including frozen goods right at the checkout counter. I didnt know what to do to be helped on a fair basis.
- willcipriano 3y agoTry assertiveness training. This won't only be a problem in self checkout. "Miss, I have been waiting before this gentleman here" Other people aren't loud, they just aren't a timid church mouse. Stand up for yourself.
- recursive4 3y agoYou wait patiently and accept humans are not and will never be perfect FIFO queues.
- TuringNYC 3y agoLoved this reply! The engineer in me demands mechanical fairness from an unfair human world. At the same time WF is owned by Amazon and i'm thinking, why isnt there a FIFO Queue number on the screen flashing for the attendant. A Product Enhancement ticket I wish I could submit. Heck, once this is implemented, they could even have a rating for attendants who arent following the flashing number queue.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoFolks blaming the timid customer. But the blame belongs with self-checkout alone, changing a normal expected experience into chaos and frustration.
- danielfoster 3y agoI imagine these angry encounters will substantially decrease over time as people realize they can't get away with missed scans anymore
- albntomat0 3y agoI’ve had significant issues with some particular models of self-checkout. They have some sort of weight check after scanning an item, to see if I’ve placed it in the basket. I assume they’re matching up the items known weight, with the change in the weight in my bag. However, it’s implemented poorly, with frequent false positives. Furthermore, there’s a race condition between scanning the item, the machine saying “place it in the bag”, and the actual weight check. If I move too fast, the item is in my bag before the check starts, and I have to wait for assistance. Maybe folks are frustrated that their theft is being caught, but high frustration seems to be the base case here.
- pleoxy 3y agoThe weight check is the worst. Most stores I go to have it disabled and it makes the process go smoother. Not perfect though, it occasionally flags me for some kind of miss scan and I have to wait for an employee to clear it. Most of them are chagrined at delaying my checkout. I try not to be rude, but I often want to get on with my day. More recently they don't give us bags anymore, and it seems like a lot of the theft detection has just gone out the window because of the current environmental push that's got all the processes messed up and need to be re calibrated. So far I just don't remember to bring my own bags and if I have a smaller number of items I just grab the gun and scan them all in the cart because it is a hassle to pull them out and put them all back. I've never been flagged when using the gun.
- albntomat0 3y agoI got accustomed to pausing whenever the machine was speaking, to avoid the race condition I mentioned above. I went with a friend to a different store, in a new city, and she was very confused by the weird set of behaviors I had learned to keep the original machines happy.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- entuno 3y agoThe article seems to be based on the assumption that the anti-theft technology is perfect, and that if it flags then that always means that customer has not scanned an item (intentionally or otherwise). But given how many issues you get with every other aspect of the self checkout process (items failing to scan properly, machines being broken, "unexpected item in bagging area", etc) that seems to be a very generous assumption. And when someone has had to wait in a queue to use on of the working self checkout machines, has to go through scanning all of their own shopping (which is stores have managed to get customers to do for free so that they can make more money), has to wait for someone to come over to "assist" them when the machine complains about something, and is then (directly or indirectly) accused of trying to steal from the store because of a faulty self-checkout machine, it's not a huge surprise when they get pissed off about that.
- zdragnar 3y agoEarly self checkout machines had a lot of fiddly things that could go wrong, but the Walmart near me easily has the most forgiving machines I've used. Maybe stores that experience more theft keep the restrictions tighter?
- danielheath 3y agoNear me they adjust them from time to time, so I never know whether this week is going to be full of “you moved too quickly, call an attendant to look through your bags” or if it’ll wave you through.
- lacrimacida 3y agoIm glad that you had a good experience but forgiving for you may be an accusation of theft for another, based on some cues that could very well be wrong. I personally dislike this trend of skimping on cashiers and having people do their own checkout. If they had both it wouldn’t be a problem though…
- ghaff 3y ago>I personally dislike this trend of skimping on cashiers and having people do their own checkout. I suppose we can hope the technology gets better. But given labor shortages, it's hard not to see a future with more automation and self-service.
- cushychicken 3y agoI wonder if there’s a tipping point where lost sales due to customer frustration exceeds ROI on loss prevention features and self checkouts. I also wonder how close we are to that tipping point.
- pmorici 3y agoThey are closing stores in SanFrancisco due to high theft. There is your tipping point.
- doubloon 3y agoSome locations of Target (US supermarket) have started disabling self-checkout at 8pm, and also limiting self checkout to 10 items or less. So they are literally de-automating their process. Not sure but it seems to do with theft - they have also started locking up or electronically tagging certain items as well. I think this is probably because the "Target philosophy" is they dont want customers to go through the trauma of the Walmart experience, nor others around them to have to witness it. Target never checked receipts, I've heard they just silently record everything on video (they have dozens of cameras all over the store) and ban you once you've stolen X amount of stuff. I guess that wasn't quite cutting it so they have moved back to cashier checkout.
- balderdash 3y agoI get hostile at self-checkout regardless. It’s slower (even without the errors), all the errors are infuriating making it even slower, and I should receive a discount for the labor I employed doing someone else’s job. This is on top of being annoyed that I’m in the self-checkout to begin with because they have 10% of the regular lanes open… if someone then stopped me and accused me of stealing I’d just ask for a full refund…
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoMy Target mini-store downtown has no checkers at all. It's self-check or nothing (or steal I guess). I hate self-check. Always buying that fruit or piece of lumber or whatever that won't scan or has no sticker or whatnot, then having to navigate the touchscreen to find it among their 1M items. Fortunately this store ignores the scale (so no 'put item in bagging area' nag) and even though it shows you on a screen from a surveillance camera, those signals go no further than the station. No bandwidth in Target's in-store network for all that video; no storage for it either. And the mini-store is made items, not a lot of produce for instance, meant for students and loft-residents to buy readymade lunch or whatever. So everything is coded.
- op00to 3y agoI’ve read of multiple instances where Target specifically saves recordings of customers at self checkout to wait until a customer steals enough to get to felony theft at which time loss prevention sets in. I am apt to believe target stores all their self checkout video, or simply has other cameras not connected to the kiosk that record individual customers actions at self checkout.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoMy contact in their data center, responsible for those kiosk's software, says otherwise about the kiosk cameras. There are other cameras at portals; I know they can 'look' at those remotely. My sons used to finger their friend in Minneapolis as they entered then text him a location/timestamp so he could look it up and enjoy their greeting.
- rini17 3y agoIs this an American thing? In Europe these "unexpected items in packing area" errors which require staff to come and clear are taken in stride and became a bit of a meme.
- daft_pink 3y agoI frequently encounter issues at self-checkout where I scan an item, hear a beep, assume it's added to my total, but the previous item hasn't registered on the scale yet, so it doesn't add the item. These systems are often rigid, hard to use, and differ between stores. Sometimes, customers are blamed for theft, but it's not always intentional. Many struggle with these systems. Why can't they make self-checkout user-friendly?
- SkeuomorphicBee 3y agoSacrificing customer comfort and customer goodwill is the new forefront of business optimization, and it is reaching levels where every interaction with every company always leave a bitter aftertaste for the customer. It all started with the famous tale of the airline that saved millions by giving passengers one less olive each, and it became a race to the bottom with companies continuously trying to find the crappiest experience that customers will still tolerate. The self checkout theft prevention measures are just the latest example, where they purposefully make the machines a bit hostile to everyone, making everyone's experience feel bit worse in order to prevent a percentage of thefts. It burns customer goodwill, but at the end of the day they decided that too much goodwill won't bring profit, so they might as well burn that goodwill to try and extract something from it.
- BossHogg 3y agoI don't see how more people don't understand self-checkout to be the uncompensated labor that it is. You're not getting paid, you're not getting any discount (certainly nothing meaningful). It's jobs lost for your local community and pure profit filling the pockets of distant fat cats.
- HDThoreaun 3y agoI prefer self checkout to cashiers. Why should I be angry that the store is saving money?
- brudgers 3y agoOn average I have been shopping in a Walmart more than once a week for more than six years. So I saw the rollout of checkout cameras. There's almost certainly facial recognition and radio frequency thumbprinting involved in the whole process of shrinkage mitigation because: 1. The first systems I saw had a camera pointed at me and a display showing that image. There are still some of these systems deployed, but the more recent one's don't show a selfie shot...but I am not naive enough to believe my face isn't being captured. 2. I take my phone in the store with me. A big box store has some properties similar to a faraday cage, yet the cellular signal is strong enough to suggest internal hotspots. Walmart would be foolish not to try to negotiate data access with providers. Walmart is not foolish and has the leverage to negotiate such a relationship...I mean they even sell cell phone plans in their stores. 3. I use the Walmart app in the store to find things on my list because all Walmarts are little different. So Walmart has my exact location and ID. 4. All of this data gets validated when I pay by credit card. 5. And of course there are cameras in the parking lot and my van has a license plate. A privacy nightmare? No more than the rest of the world. This stuff goes on everywhere there is sufficient technology 24/7 for far less reasonable reasons. Though YMMV of course.
- goochphd 3y agoIt is unsurprising that some customers are growing agitated with self checkouts. Others have mentioned issues with weights and "accusatory" automated voices, but recently I ran afoul of the computer vision technique used to detect theft. A machine flagged me twice for holding produce in my left hand while trying to find the item number on the screen with my right. Both times an employee had to come and override the system. It's just a machine but when people are being accused of theft while just trying to buy their groceries, frustration will grow. Since then I've gone back to cashier based checkout. I wonder if we will see more people doing that in future.
- SkyPuncher 3y agoI had a similar thing happen. I grabbed something four of my cart to scan it, but realized it would be better suited with another, later group of stuff. When I set it back, I got flagged and had to wait. Mind you, I don’t think I ever took this more than 6 inches away from the cart. I certainly didn’t scan it or even get it near the canner. Just moving it around was enough to get me flagged. Really put a bad taste in my mouth. That’s something I’ve seen everyone do in order to bag their groceries into logical groups.