13 ms·

It feels like almost all the issues with self-checkout technology come from the attempts to minimise shoplifting, which don't even seem that effective at doing

• emodendroket 3y ago
  > It feels like almost all the issues with self-checkout technology come from the attempts to minimise shoplifting, which don't even seem that effective at doing that. In theory, a system that let you scan products the same way checkout staff do without any weight checks or bagging area rules or other interruptions would be incredibly efficient. Especially if you could do things like scan the same product multiple times if you were buying multiple copies of it. A lot of them literally do work this way and just accept the risk of shrink,.
• idopmstuff 3y ago
  I was at my local Vons the other day and had two identical boxes of rice at the self checkout. Scanned the one in my right hand and put the one in my left hand in the bagging area, then tried to scan the one in my right hand again (this was all to speed things up just slightly). The screen threw up a message asking me to check on what I had put in the bagging area. Below it was a video of me shot from the ceiling, with bounding boxes drawn around the two boxes of right (basically identifying that the thing I had scanned was not what I had put in the bagging area). I was actually pretty impressed... at my work we do some computer vision work, and we're dealing with fairly high-resolution, static images. This managed to draw perfect bounding boxes on a video, and the whole thing processed in less than a couple of seconds. Seems like if you can do that, there ought to be other ways you can speed things up. Currently for produce with no bar code, I have to type in the name of the produce and then weigh it. They ought to be able to identify it as a zucchini via computer vision and skip the first step, at least.
• expazl 3y ago
  > It feels like almost all the issues with self-checkout technology come from the attempts to minimise shoplifting, which don't even seem that effective at doing that. In theory, a system that let you scan products the same way checkout staff do without any weight checks or bagging area rules or other interruptions would be incredibly efficient. Especially if you could do things like scan the same product multiple times if you were buying multiple copies of it. Our local supermarket has this. A phone app you scan things as you go, and when leaving you scan a QR code, swipe to pay, then you get a code to open the gate out and you leave. It's incredibly smooth. Also, this means you can just put your bags in your cart and bag while you shop, so you just completely skip checkout, it's a breeze. I don't understand your point about scanning multiple times though. If I'm buying 5 of something I scan one of them, and just increase the count to five.
  • bobbylarrybobby 3y ago
    Many self checkout systems check for the weight of scanned items, so if you scan an item you have to put it down (“please place item in the bagging area”) in order to continue.
• cameronh90 3y ago
  In Waitrose (UK), they often don't have any scales, and as a result, there can just be one staff member watching over 20+ machines. By comparison, the other day I was at Tesco and they had introduced these new large self-checkouts for trolleys (aka carts in US), but about halfway through my trolley, I started getting an error for every item I scanned. Turns out, the max weight for the scale was 20kg.
  • jefftk 3y ago
    At the machines I've used in the US the way they deal with this is having you move your items off the scale into a bagging area (which is actually also a scale internally, though not one that needs to be officially calibrated).
    • cameronh90 3y ago
      When I say scale, I did mean the one in the bagging area, not the produce scale. Turns out they'd increased the size of the bagging area but not the scale underneath it, so every item was giving me "please place the item in the bagging area".
  • dazc 3y ago
    Waitrose are in the process of updating the self-checkouts to full trolley-style machines. My local store is not that large but has 12 of these now in place of the previous 4 old-style machines. Despite many claims that people don't like them it is surprising how they are almost always in full use.
    • zilti 3y ago
      The thing with liking it or not is: do you dislike it strongly enough to wait an additional 10 minutes to be served at a traditional register instead?
• radarsat1 3y ago
  That's exactly how it works in the Netherlands, you just scan your items and go. There are no weight checks and you can scan items more than once and edit and remove things from the list. Apart from getting a poorly executed random check sometimes (which is far from effective for the purpose of avoiding theft imho) it actually works really well.
  • s1artibartfast 3y ago
    I believe the difference is living in a high trust society.
  • dahfizz 3y ago
    Enjoy your homogenous, high trust society. We are all jealous.
    • Freak_NL 3y ago
      Nah, don't worry. Theft at self checkouts is turning into a national hobby¹. 1: https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2024/01/05/de-diefstalcijfers-stijgen-wat-kunnen-supermarkten-daartege-doen-a4186135 https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2024/01/05/de-diefstalcijfers-stij...
      • Pepe1vo 3y ago
        Every time I read one of these articles the naivety and tone-deafness from supermarkets over these self-checkouts amazes me. "In order to make more money we made customers self-report their purchases during a cost-of-living crisis while we were booking record high profits and now these customers are _under reporting_ their purchases, how dare they!!" They should've seen this coming from miles away.
        • icoder 3y ago
          The way you phrase it (but maybe I get you wrong) suggests that the customers are somehow in their (moral if not lawful) right to do this because of previous policies from the supermarkets. They (supermarkets) may have been wrong, but so is stealing. They don't cancel each other out, nor do two wrongs become a right. I'd say stealing is always a net negative effect for the whole. But if you're saying that the entire context explains a lot of the behaviour, and could possibly be predicted, then yes I agree.
• ddmf 3y ago
  Yes, exactly my thoughts - and they seem to use lower spec hardware leading to a perceivable delay between scanning -> putting on to weighing station -> able to scan next product. Unless this is as designed too, for whatever reason, but this is what stops me from using them as I get frustrated. The other thing that stops me from using them specifically in Lidl is that you cannot put a hazelnut croissant and an almond croissant in the same paper bag unless you take one out before you put it to weigh.
  • CM30 3y ago
    That's another good point. Self checkout machines are likely designed with lower specs in mind due to shops needing to either needing to have more of them (since there are often only 1 or 2 regular checkouts compared to 10+ self checkouts) or because they feel the expense of a better touch screen/recognition system is better justified if it's for a system the staff are using rather than the general public.
    • mjbeswick 3y ago
      I work for a big UK supermarket as a developer working on their self checkout software. The tills have better specs than you would expect, as they are running 30 or so containers using Docker. They are not cheap!
• slfnflctd 3y ago
  > scan the same product multiple times if you were buying multiple copies of it My local Walmart allows this. Not sure what the impact on their 'shrink' is, but they must've decided it was worth it to keep lines moving. It's a very busy store.
  • bombcar 3y ago
    It seems to be a setting the manager can choose to change. Some Walmarts near me basically seem to have the scale off (a ten pound unexpected item doesn’t even phase it) and others seem tuned quite narrow. I wouldn’t be surprised if they could change it based on time of day. And changing it based on rewards card or loyalty would also seem to be possible.
• Mashimo 3y ago
  > In theory, a system that let you scan products the same way checkout staff do without any weight checks or bagging area rules or other interruptions would be incredibly efficient. I think coop/365discount has that. You scan the items with a mobile phone app while taking them of the shelf. You just show the digital receipt to the cashier while jumping the queue.
  • rcxdude 3y ago
    My experience with those is again they are ruined by overzealous anti-theft measures. Someone needs to come in and scan random items, which means you can't pack as you go, and it doesn't seem to let up even when it's tied to a loyalty card so they know you've used it before. After the system said the whole shop needed re-scanning, completely obviating the advantages, I've just stopped using it.
• alpaca128 3y ago
  > In theory, a system that let you scan products the same way checkout staff do without any weight checks or bagging area rules or other interruptions would be incredibly efficient How would it be more efficient than a traditional checkout? There's no way the average person can match the speed of a cashier who does that every day, and at least the supermarkets I've visited don't have enough self checkout machines to balance that out. Maybe it's just me but I genuinely don't get the point of self checkout. Are some shops so slow at reacting to long queues that it makes self checkout actually faster?
  • KptMarchewa 3y ago
    Because you don't stand in the queue to the cashier and don't have to wait minutes till the buyer in the front finds all the spare change they need.
    • Detrytus 3y ago
      Instead you stay in the queue for the self check-out, and have to wait minutes till the buyer in the front figures out how to scan their items.
      • KptMarchewa 3y ago
        I've never seen a queue for a check out where regular queue wasn't 3x as long. To a single till no less.
  • Freak_NL 3y ago
    The point is cost savings for the supermarket. That's it. Some customer prefer them, but usually that is the effect of deliberately understaffing the remaining cash registers, or the customer being completely unable or unwilling to interact with strangers. Supermarkets are now grudgingly admitting that self checkout systems cause a significant increase in loss due to theft, but that it is still cheaper than hiring actual staff for the registers. In the Netherlands the current state of affairs in supermarkets with self checkout registers is that theft is on the up. People justify 'forgetting to scan an item' by the (perceived or actual) greed shown by supermarkets in terms of shrinkflation and the rising cost-of-living. Supermarkets did really well during the Covid-years, but customers didn't benefit from that in the slightest. An additional problem is that the staff attending the self checkout registers are often young (because it is a position which would waste the skills of the more experienced employees), and they get bullied and berated by customers pissed off for getting selected for random (either actual or directed by the staff watching the cameras) checks.
• goosedragons 3y ago
  It's 100% that. One of the grocery stores near me has no weight checks or baggage area rules. I can easily bag my groceries into my backpack directly, at other stores my backpack is too heavy to be considered my bag and so if I want to do that the attendent has to override it so I never bother. Then since there's no weight check you never run into the "unexpected item in bagging area" or "please place item in bagging area" issues ever where the scale/item weight isn't acting as expected.
  • bombcar 3y ago
    It’s strange here. The Walmart is tuned quite lax, very forgiving. The local grocery store screams for an attendant if a fruit fly farts on the scale.
    • spdif899 3y ago
      In my area there are two grocery chains across the street from one another. One has a self checkout that lets you bag your items however you want, has a wireless scanner for scanning at your convenience, and just has one polite attendant monitoring to help with issues or enter birthdate for alcohol. The other has one that screams at you about unidentified items in the bagging area if you so much as look in its direction, and cameras jammed in your face with a screen wrapped in white LEDs to make it obvious you're being recorded. Guess where I prefer to shop :-)
• k4rli 3y ago
  I just scan the barcodes on my phone and place everything in bag as I go along. Before leaving the store a QR on the POS kiosk display is scanned with the store phone app and I just need to select on POS if I will pay through app (pre-added card info) or physical card/cash. As simple as it gets. No one checks the products. Occasional random checks happen but the checking frequency probably depends if past checks have found issues, so I get a bag check once a year max.
  • deleted 3y ago
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  • htrp 3y ago
    Where are you and which store is this (general terms)? I use the mobile phone checkout for one of the stores I go to. Every time when leaving, they manually inspect every single item in my cart.
    • soziawa 3y ago
      In Switzerland the two major grocery stores have this system. You need to establish trust first, for the first few months you'll get more inspections. But I haven't been checked in years now.
    • michaelmcdonald 3y ago
      The chain "Meijer" has this option. It slows down the process while you're actually finding the items in the store, but drastically speeds up the checkout process as the cashier only has to "verify" between 3-7 items. They just randomly grab them from whatever is on top of the cart, scan them, and away you go!
      • engineer_22 3y ago
        Walmart now has this. The first time I used it I was asked to allow a random screening of 3-7 items, but since then I have not had to deal with that. Just scan and go.
  • 3y ago
• valzam 3y ago
  I have never understood the point of theft prevention at a self-checkout via the weight checks etc. If I want to steal something I just ... don't scan it? And keep it in my backpack. I don't see how the buggy weight checks serve any purpose other than annoying honest customers.
  • bombcar 3y ago
    It’s a security feature sold to the stores against a possible but rare attack - barcode swapping. It even occurs with human checkers but it’s quite rare (barcodes are fixed now, or the stickers destroy themselves if you try to remove them like at Goodwill). The attack apparently would have you swap a barcode but still on camera scan it which I guess theoretically makes it harder to prosecute but I kinda doubt it. It also helps catch misscans which is probably much much more common (someone scans an item, they thought it scanned, they put it in bagging area).
    • HPsquared 3y ago
      It can also help the customer - it stops you scanning twice (and paying twice) for a single item.
      • solardev 3y ago
        A pop-up could more easily do that without being annoying. "You already scanned Miracle Food. How many total are you buying? Just one / enter a number / I'll scan each one manually"
      • Izkata 3y ago
        More likely it's for absent-minded customers who don't realize the item didn't scan. If there's a sudden weight without a new barcode scanned, the error message on the machines at the store I use say something like "unexpected weight, please remove item and scan again".
        • Workaccount2 3y ago
• DanielHB 3y ago
  > In theory, a system that let you scan products the same way checkout staff do without any weight checks or bagging area rules or other interruptions would be incredibly efficient. Especially if you could do things like scan the same product multiple times if you were buying multiple copies of it. The supermarkets in Sweden work like this, the only thing some of they do is random checks. In some chains you do need to sign up with your ID ahead of time though so they keep track if you get caught in a random check.
  • HPsquared 3y ago
    The big supermarkets in the UK have a "scan as you shop" system. There is a portable scanner you take along with the trolley and scan each item as you put it in the trolley (directly into a bag - avoiding the bagging step). You then just go to the self-checkout and pay for what you scanned. They do spot checks at the checkout, especially for "new" customers. It's tied to your identity (need to scan a store card to unlock the scanner). I think it's a timesaver... even though it takes a bit of time to scan each item with the portable scanner, you get to skip the "unload from trolley -> scan -> load into bags" at the checkout.
    • DanielHB 3y ago
      yeah that is the case in Sweden as well, but you can also scan at checkout if you want. The random checks are the same for either, but there is no weight system or cameras or rfid or anything else besides the random checks to prevent theft
    • bee_rider 3y ago
      We have that in some chains in the US. Stop and Shop, for example. It is much better. I think it is not as popular in some areas of the US because some parts of the country have very low trust.
    • icoder 3y ago
      Yeah some supermarkets in the Netherlands even let you do this with your phone (camera). Haven't used it for a while but even some years ago it worked quite good.
• Buttons840 3y ago
  Sam's Club in my location is like this. Their self-checkouts are a computer screen with a mobile scan gun. You pick up the scan gun and scan all the items in your cart however you want. Then you pay, then someone checks 2 or 3 items randomly on the way out to ensure they are on the receipt. People are saying the same can be done with an app, but I don't want to install another app.
  • Buttons840 3y ago
    Oh, and the person who checks receipts isn't just casually looking. The person checking receipts randomly scans a few items in your cart and then scans your receipt and the computer tells them if anything they scanned in your cart is not on the receipt, so it's a legit check, and it's fast. The whole thing takes about 15 seconds per cart, and if there is a big line they have the option of just letting people go without getting checked, so I've never had to wait.
• deleted 3y ago
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• thinker5555 3y ago
  > It feels like almost all the issues with self-checkout technology come from the attempts to minimise shoplifting, which don't even seem that effective at doing that. Agreed. And in some cases the issues almost feel like they're on purpose in order to drive people away from using the self checkouts. For example, when I use self checkout at my local grocery store, I have to hit a button to tell it I want to use my own bag, and then put the bag in the bagging area so it can presumably weigh it, and a moment later it allows me to start scanning items and placing them inside. That's fine, but the problem that I run into _every_ week is that the first bag works fine, but after that, when I hit the button to say I'm using another bag, once I place the bag in the bagging area, it flags me for putting unscanned items in the bagging area. It "lets it go" after a moment, but when I need to move on to bag #3, it complains again, stops, and forces me to wait while a store worker comes over and has to watch overhead video of me placing my empty bag in the bagging area for both bags 2 AND 3! I have tried so many ways of being extra careful about how I'm placing the bag, but no matter what I do, it complains about every bag after the first one. I've tried leaving previous bags in the bagging area, I've tried removing them after each bag is filled, I've tried standing or moving differently, being quicker or slower about placing my bags, and no matter what, every other bag after it starts complaining, it stops and I have to wait for the store worker to verify and let me keep going. I've even tried just putting my bag on the floor and bagging items there, but then it complains after every 10 "unbagged" items since they're not hitting the scale in the bagging area, even if I hit the "don't bag this item" button after the scan. While the whole thing is a major inconvenience, it's STILL better than waiting in a line for an actual cashier (and sometimes an additional bagger) who will feel the need to chat me up just because I'm standing in front of them, and inevitably not pack things into the bags the way that I want.
  • penjelly 3y ago
    > while a store worker comes over and has to watch overhead video of me placing my empty bag in the bagging area for both bags 2 AND 3! this is insane to me and if a manager was involved they should be fired. I dont think its reasonable to review video of a customer without probable cause they were stealing. In this case, the machines are so buggy (as you illustrated with your case) that a machine complaining is NOT probable cause. How to alienate your customers 101...
• mc32 3y ago
  Self-checkout relies on high trust. There are places where this works and shrinkage is manageable, but that seems to be higher income areas. So it works in Norway or Japan, but put this in Indonesia or Honduras or even in small city USA and it’ll run into problems. It can work in areas of larger cities where most of the clientele are high income, but it’s bound to fail in most other areas.
• jtbayly 3y ago
  I disagree. The majority of the problems that I run into with self-checkout are related to not being able to buy items I picked up off the shelf like Mucinex or children's cough syrup or alcohol without getting an employee to check me out... at self checkout. What's the point of "self" checkout if somebody is required—not by failure of the system but by rules—to come help me several times during the process? Edit: at least with alcohol I know it’s coming. But it feels like every time I try to use self-checkout I’m foiled by surprise rules about particular items.
  • MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago
    > What's the point of "self" checkout if somebody is required—not by failure of the system but by rules—to come help me several times during the process? In my nearby Walmart they have a dozen or more self-checkout stations which only require a few staff in total. Most people don't need assistance.
    • Izkata 3y ago
      Yeah, mine has 1 person overlooking 8 self-checkouts, and most of the time they're standing there doing nothing. I've only needed help like 5 times in several years, when the scale messed up.
  • PhasmaFelis 3y ago
    My favorite is when the system says "help is on the way" and then very obviously does nothing whatsoever to notify the attendant. I have to catch their eye myself every single time.
    • BobaFloutist 3y ago
      I think the light above you changes to blinking red, which they're expected to notice on their own but often don't.
    • chankstein38 3y ago
      This happened to me at the store last night! I tried to weigh something and the scale was mad so it locked up the whole process (dialog on the screen saying "Scale needs reset. Help is on the way!" and no ability to scan the rest of my stuff) then just sat there. I turned to the attendant and said "Oh it didn't even tell me you needed help" Like wtf. At the very least let me continue scanning the rest of my groceries so I can be done once this person helps me instead of still just 2 scans in..
• throwaway2037 3y ago
  I have used multiple self-checkout stations in the United States that weigh items. If you add two cans instead of one into your bag, the computer terminal will inquire about it. And security: You only need a single person standing there to scary away 95% of shoplifters. I watched a YouTube video from the channel "Not Just Bikes" about grocery shopping in Amsterdam, Netherlands showed a supermarket where you carry the "pricing gun/lazer" with you and "beep" each item as it enters your basket. I have no idea how they reduce shoplifting. Can anyone comment?
  • nopurpose 3y ago
    Scan as you shop minimises shoplifting by requiring random spot checks. When you about to checkout, person comes and re-scans few items in your bags, if all were scanned you are good to go.
  • Goz3rr 3y ago
    You can get randomly selected upon checkout where they will sample a few items from your bag, and if it finds a discrepancy they will rescan every item you have. These hand held scanners have been a thing for over 10 years, way before the current iteration of self checkout stations. They continue to exist side by side with self checkout stations at supermarkets mainly. It also should be noted that I have not seen a single self checkout station in the Netherlands that puts restrictions on how you scan your items. It doesn't care about weight and in what order you scan and put items into your bag or if you just keep holding the items, and I never have any issues with this system breaking or complaining about anything.
  • bee_rider 3y ago
    We have that in some places in the US as well. Stop and Shop has little mobile scanners or apparently you can use an App instead. They say they might randomly check your bags when you leave, but it only happened to me once.
  • philwelch 3y ago
    HEB has those now. They also do a weight check but they just weigh your entire cart at the end.
• afavour 3y ago
  IMO it's exactly this. Back when I was a teenager I worked at a supermarket and was able to scan a basket of shopping incredibly quickly. But the self checkout machines have so many pauses and errors that it's impossible to do anything at speed.
  • engineer_22 3y ago
    At Walmart, where I often shop, they have an overhead camera watching to make sure every item gets beeped. Sometimes I get stopped for that. Maybe that system is the bottleneck to faster scanning, or maybe they want to try to avoid double-beeping items and pissing off their customers so they set up a debounce. It would be great if stores were more open about their implementation.
• JoeAltmaier 3y ago
  The small Target downtown in the college town I live by, has only self-checkout. No human beings at all. Further, my contact in the Target data center says the scales are disable (too many problems) and the camera showing you on the little screen over the kiosk, doesn't go anywhere but that screen. So it's working for them, so far. You'd expect maybe more shoplifting in a college town, lots of poor students under strain and so on. Still the place is thriving.
  • tristor 3y ago
    > You'd expect maybe more shoplifting in a college town, lots of poor students under strain and so on. Still the place is thriving. Most data on the issue of shoplifting in the industry show that the people who shoplift are not ones doing it out of necessity (e.g. they're poor and can't afford those items), most shoplifting is done out of intention and not necessity. This includes categories like underaged people stealing items that are age-restricted, or people stealing items that cause shame to purchase (like condoms, pregnancy tests, et al), as well as the now commonplace problem of shoplifting gangs in the US who steal en masse to list items via Amazon Marketplace, eBay, Facebook Marketplace, and other online markets. People who are productive adults in society very very rarely shoplift, and in the cases that they do it because of mental issues, like kleptomania.
• Kuraj 3y ago
  This has been my experience. Rossmann does not do weight checks and using theirs is a breeze.
• bigbuppo 3y ago
  Companies want insurance to pay for their losses, and it turns out the only thing the videos find on self-checkout stands is that customers are frustrated that the machine is calling them a thief, when the shoplifters, big surprise, don't stand around in line for 15 minutes to walk out the door without paying. The loss prevention person at the door is more likely to find items you left behind than to stop a shoplifter, but insurance demands it. And the false positives on those little loss control tags is so high that most of the time workers aren't even going to look your direction if something sets it off. Once again, this is all crap required by insurance. Shoplifters don't care about any of this. They just grab what they want and leave.
  • selfmodruntime 3y ago
    Do retailers really have insurance for loss and theft? I thought they'd just factor it into pricing.
    • timabdulla 3y ago
      Highly doubt it. You can't insure the inevitable.
      • johngladtj 3y ago
        Sure you can, it just costs more than taking the loss
    • spicybbq 3y ago
      I work for a retailer and we certainly do not use a third party insurer, and I don't see why any other consumer retailer selling inexpensive merchandise would use insurance. It is priced in. In fact, we use RFID tracking to know when goods are stolen, not to save money, not to catch shoplifters, but to improve inventory management and ensure that we get a replacement item on the shelf to avoid losing sales.
      • selfmodruntime 3y ago
• m463 3y ago
  Some places turn these things off. At target I never got "unexpected item in bagging area" or those weight check problems.