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We've had that in France for years, and noone uses that as far as I can tell. The main usage I see is mainly self checkout. Please note that I'm biased toward
by phh 3y ago
We've had that in France for years, and noone uses that as far as I can tell.
The main usage I see is mainly self checkout.
Please note that I'm biased towards dense areas. We have on-the-go scanning in super stores as well, I feel it's not being used but I could be wrong
- beardyw 3y agoYes, same in the UK. Most stores have scan as you shop, but most people do self checkout. I get the impression scan as you shop is seen as being a bit prissy.
- weinzierl 3y agoAs a German it is always a culture shock to see how popular self checkout is in the UK, even though I see it used more often recently in Germany too. I think Germany is about a decade behind...
- drusepth 3y agoWait until you see how popular it is in the US! I can't remember the last time I saw someone use a manned checkout line; my local grocery store has 1 manned lane and 12 self checkout lanes, and the manned one is almost always empty.
- dxbydt 3y ago> 1 manned lane and 12 self checkout lanes, and the manned one is almost always empty its empty because it’s considered rude to burden the poorly paid checkout person when you can self-service. Once all of the self-service lanes are occupied, the sentiment shifts and customers uneasily queue up in the manned lane, frantically watching if the self-service lane clears up so they can jump out of the manned lane. One of those freak cases in behavioral econ where the causality is very straightforward and explicit.
- hot_gril 3y agoWait, I've never seen the manned lane empty. People use whatever is fastest.
- ssl-3 3y agoI've certainly observed what looks like that kind of behavior, but I don't personally feel rude at all for using the services of a cashier. In my own shopping, I just use whatever seems likely to be fastest or less hassle -- for me. If I've got a bunch of stuff, I'm heading to the cashier because they're better-equipped to handle a volume of stuff than I am at self-checkout. But if it's just a couple of small items, then the self-checkout seems fastest: Scan, plonk, scan, plonk, invoke the incantation so that it can take my money[1], and pay it. (Unless one of those small items involves something like beer or something else requiring an ID check, wherein: It's back to the cashier.) [1]: In my neck of the woods, Wal-Mart gets this best, with as few as one button-pushes required to pay and leave (and there was a time when it was zero button pushes to use a debit card at self-checkout there). Dollar General gets it worst, requiring at least 8 button pushes (with three different input methods! it requires input on two different touchscreens and one physical keypad) to pay them and get on my way.
- JohnFen 3y ago> it’s considered rude to burden the poorly paid checkout person when you can self-service. It is?? I missed that memo. But in my part of the US, the manned cashiers always have a line for them, too.
- ryandrake 3y agoI actually prefer manned check-out. It tends to be much faster. The checkout people tend to be wicked fast at swiping groceries in front of those scanners, much faster than I can dig into the cart, find something, fumble around scanning it, then place it in that little post-scan cubbie---ughhhhh. And manned checkout is already parallelized: Next customer queues up groceries while current customer is being serviced.
- graemep 3y agoI hate self-checkout. As far as I am concerned you are a decade behind us in a decline!
- JohnFen 3y agoI hate self-checkout as well. The frustrating thing is that stores have fewer cashiers, so there's always a line. But often that line is shorter than the one for self-checkout.
- scotty79 3y agoOh. That's a shame. In Poland (nearly?) every Lidl has self-checkout.
- mateo1 3y agoThere's a simple formula that makes you chose it: they keep as few manned checkouts open as possible, as long as the wait for the manned checkouts is inconvenient enough the majority of people will use the self-checkouts.
- bigger_cheese 3y agoYep this is my experience here in Australia, the manned checkouts are understaffed the stores want to deliberately funnel you into the self checkout.
- mateo1 3y agoIt's also a step towards individualized pricing, which many people, myself included, absolutely hate. This can be done with self-checkouts but it'll work much better with handheld scanners. Normal price: 3x, member price:2x, individualized price: scan to find out. Big chains plan to gamblify the prices in the next few years using their "member cards" points, some chains are already up to this with specific penetration targets before they move forward. And this is not insider knowledge they're upfront about it.
- _xivi 3y ago> We've had that in France for years, and noone uses that as far as I can tell. Why not? what makes it unpopular?
- JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 3y agoI don’t know if it’s really unpopular, but it’s only used at self checkout in Decathlon which is a chain of supermarkets selling sports equipment and clothes.
- realusername 3y agoYou have to remember every time to scan what you get which is a bit annoying and tedious. And then if you are unlucky you hit a random "let's recheck everything" at the cashier which nullifies all the work that you have done.
- hot_gril 3y agoSame reason I usually don't go to self-checkout.
- realusername 3y agoYeah that's basically the same issue. I do think the self scanning is even worse than the self checkout because at least at the self checkout you scan everything once at the end when you're done. The fact that you have to remember to scan every time you put anything in your basket is just worse for the mental load I find.
- pessimizer 3y agoIf manned checkout is a dishwasher and self-checkout is handwashing dishes in the sink after the meal; scan-as-you-shop is eating next to a little basin where you wash each utensil as soon as you're done using it, before you're allowed to return to the meal.
- 3y ago
- weinzierl 3y agoWe have it in Germany for years too (in densely populated areas) and my subjective impression is that next to none was using it for a long time but that it's picking up slowly. For one thing I think these things take years for broad acceptance and for another the current scanners with their bright and large displays are just what was needed to make it attractive for the young and elderly.
- Animats 3y ago> scanners with their bright and large displays Give a retailer a large display, and they will fill it with ads, with the important info in tiny type. Or even a small display. I've seen user-facing credit card terminals where the small screen is 3/4 ads, 1/4 transaction. If they'd just put up "Place card against screen here" marker that was 1) where the antenna is, and 2) fully synchronized with when the system is ready for a card read...
- noodlesUK 3y agoI see a couple people using it at the shops near me in the UK (but it's not that popular here either). It's pretty universally available in the bigger shops, but rare in the little metro shops. I really like just slinging my bag in the trolley and running around the store with a scanner. It's dramatically easier than unpacking a trolley for self-checkout or the old school checkouts. It's annoying when there are security tagged items though, because it defeats the purpose of the self scanning.
- rootusrootus 3y agoSimilar in my area (in the US). We've had scan-and-go at the local grocery/everything store for many years, but I really don't see that many people actually using it.
- gniv 3y ago> We've had that in France for years, and noone uses that as far as I can tell. Which part of France are you in? Where I am, Paris suburbs, I see it used all the time in Carrefour. There is a learning curve, which I think inhibits wider usage. I used it a couple of times, and every time I forgot to scan stuff, or forgot whether I scanned stuff, and had to go over the last scans to check.