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Comment by prklmn | Hacker News Reader

We as consumers will see no gains from using self service checkouts. I am doing the job that someone once did for me so that Target can make more money. Those efficiency gains for Target are a direct burden on me.

Also, I’d argue that self checkout is not faster than having someone checkout and someone bag for me, maybe it seemed faster in that scenario, but it’s unliekly faster in general.

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I'd argue that's a lag in price, though. Even if Target doesn't lower their prices, as self-checkouts get more and more ubiquitous (I mean, they kind of have, but they aren't necessarily the standard), if a Target competitor wants to lower their prices to steal customers it's now easier to do so because they're making more money as well. The lack of benefit to the consumer is due to the lack of competition, but with adequate competition this technology would definitely bring down prices.

1 self checkout terminal is usually not faster than 1 cashier. But 1 cash register is usually replaced with multiple self checkout terminals and then the process is definitely sped up. Mainly due more bandwidth to mitigate slow customer bottlenecks. Especially when the self checkout is the kind where you scan the groceries while shopping and don’t need to re-bag them.

The time from when you start the checkout procedure until you leave the store is probably not faster on average. However since you can have six checkout machines in a space that used to have one checkout person the time from when you get in line until you leave the store is quite likely a lot faster.

When I don't have to wait for the person in front of me to figure out which pack of gum to get, and then find her checkbook... A well trained cashier is faster than me once I get to the front of the line (particularly when I have fresh produce - I don't know which code to type in), but with self checkout I'm generally faster overall just because I don't wait as long in line.

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