The failure of self-checkout technology
The failure of self-checkout technology
Unstaffed tills were supposed to revolutionise shopping. Now, both retailers and customers are bagging many self-checkout kiosks.
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They seem fast, fine, and issue-free in Australia and no one with a bunch of items uses them.
If anything, they're costing businesses because people streamline shopping for necessities instead of taking time to load up a cart. They've been out for years now and I certainly spend less for it; both money and time shopping.
Yeah but on the flip side, supermarkets in Australia use them in place of staffed checkouts to save money, at the expense of speed and convenience. I like them if they're there as a time-saving option, but not as a replacement for staffed checkouts.
I prefer my self-scanned shopping over putting every single item in my cart twice at a conventional register.
It sure takes longer because scanning while shopping is still slower. But the advantage of packing my stuff once the way I want it, makes it worth it.
Aren't you still putting every item in your cart twice by using self check out?
No, my favourite store has hand-held scan devices, so I can pack everything the way I want to from start to finish.
Only when I buy a handful of things I use the stationary scanner at the self-checkout.
They're all I use and the only issues that sometimes crop up are age checks, which a lot of places have solved with the option to remotely approve. It's so much faster as even a small shop can fit many more of these machines in than human-manned tills. This is in England though, while the article seems to talk mostly about US chains.
The article even says that most people actually prefer using them, and that usage has increased, but most have also had issues. I doesn't say how often they've had issues though. Having a machine be a bit wonky once doesn't put people off them forever, as the stat implies.
There's some weird assumptions being made in this.
Agreed. In Italy we've had those for some years now in big stores, and while they haven't replaced traditional checkouts and likely never will, they provide a nice and fast way out, especially for people who bought few items.