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Comment by CurrentB | Hacker News Reader

So if you close your eyes and visualize a grocery store experience where you put stuff directly into your tote bags or your backpack and walk right out, with 0 time spent on anything after you have everything you need, this doesn't seem like something completely beyond self-checkout to you?

I've used plenty of self checkout lanes too and it's roughly the same satisfaction as going in a cashier lane. It's still X + Y steps where X is the number of items you have an Y is payment related steps.

(It's possible that I just hate lines (and self checkout?) way more than other people)

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>So if you close your eyes and visualize a grocery store experience where you put stuff directly into your tote bags or your backpack and walk right out, with 0 time spent on anything after you have everything you need, this doesn't seem like something completely beyond self-checkout to you?

Not at all. It seems like a tiny, infinitesimal even, improvement over self checkout. Waiting in line is annoying, spending a minute or two scanning groceries is not. At least in my area, self checkout moves fast enough that I rarely have to wait for one to be available.

Now imagine you are shopping for a family of six for an entire month and you have two carts bursting with groceries. Still think it's only a tiny improvement?

No, I think it's a nightmare, because these stores are ridiculously small and don't have multiple carts and a parking lot. They're concept stores in urban areas that they can't monetize effectively

In the Netherlands, the two leading supermarket chains have handheld barcode scanners. You can walk around the store, scan whatever you put in your bag as you do it, and then the cashier just reads your scanner and charges you.

There are random spot checks of course, but I don't think this would work elsewhere, not with the high level of citizen trust that there is here. I'm sure they lose some money to people enticed by easier stealing, but the flow of people is so much faster that it's probably worth it many times over.

> this doesn't seem like something completely beyond self-checkout to you?

No, not really. It's more convenient and faster, sure, but it's not an incredibly significant sort of thing. And the cost/benefit ratio of it (considering the privacy implications) is nowhere near favorable enough for this to seem attractive to me.

It sounds great until something goes wrong.

Everything sounds great until something goes wrong.

What is stopping you from doing this and just not paying at all?

"In Just Walk Out-enabled stores, shoppers enter the store using a credit card."

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