UK supermarket chain ditches self-service check-outs | Hacker News Reader

UK supermarket chain ditches self-service check-outs

abc.net.au

28 pointsdev_tty0124 comments

Booths is a very upmarket chain which operates in a limited region of the country.

However I would say that with self checkout machines there are a wide range of experiences. Some self checkout machines (e.g., Waitrose or M&S) are actually pretty okay. They tend not to have the little scales that try to reduce fraud and constantly complain about “unexpected item in bagging area”. My local Tesco express is the opposite. It only has self checkouts with scales - the scales are much too small and don’t accommodate the newer style plastic bags. I hate those machines with a passion, and I feel like Tesco has utter contempt for me as a customer whenever I use them.

Clearly there is a trade off between customer satisfaction, fraud, and business efficiency.

What’s sad is how little improvement there has been in self checkouts over the past 5 or so years. They rarely deactivate the security tags on products, or do anything else useful. Many don’t even accept coupons or successfully read store loyalty cards. They also seem to be used more in stores that probably should have fewer of them. The mini tesco in a major city has people buying alcohol on nearly every other transaction, and people shoplift much more. Checkout workers would help with that. On the other hand, a bigger shop in a more rural location might be well served with “scan as you shop”, which I think is a fantastic invention.

I agree with the sentiment of lack of innovation. The "scan as you shop" was already a thing in Belgium Delhaize supermarket back in 2003/2004. The Tesco checkout till takes paper coupons, but won't use your app ones, unless you trick the till into believing you've dropped a paper copy in the slip provided. Often you are stuck waiting for assistance to let you buy, alcohol or painkillers or demagnetise items (including high value food items like steaks).

What about the Amazon grocery stores that supposedly let you just put things in your bag and cameras detect it? Haven't been to one, so it might be one of those things like self-driving cars that don't work that well in practice.

They do actually work pretty darn well. I would say that's probably the future of checkout as soon as Amazon licenses it to everyone

IIRC, they still need humans to watch you as you take things from the shelves to work out what you've taken, which causes a delay of around an hour in being charged for your shop.

Our local Waitrose was refurbished recently. They have new tills with scales. My guess is the losses were too high on the old system.

>I feel like Tesco has utter contempt for me as a customer whenever I use them

All the mid-market supermarkets are like that in the UK. Our local Tesco is grubby, expensive and the service is poor.

Some bigger Tescos have these wide bagging areas with pretty accurate scales, I find those work much better.

> Many don’t even accept coupons or successfully read store loyalty cards. They also seem to be used more in stores that probably should have fewer of them.

Never had an issue with loyalty cards here in America. You scan and it works. Haven't used coupons in a while.

This is a fairly obscure supermarket chain and in no way indicative of a trend moving away from self checkouts in the UK. Self checkouts are as popular as ever and some are more crap than others. This is usually down to a benign reason like price lookup latency or barcode scanning accuracy. It could also be as pedestrian as Windows running out of memory and not being rebooted regularly. Yes, supermarket checkouts use Windows.

Most of them use Linux (OpenSuse) simply due to the per seat costs of Windows.

I was working in a UK supermarket when we had self-service checkouts installed in 2005 or 2006. The NCR kiosks were running a version of Windows XP. The self-service UI was a facade where behind the scenes it was just running the traditional checkout program, which on cashier checkouts ran on Windows NT. I guess the self-service UI emulated a keyboard and translated the actions that way. At the time we definitely did have to reboot devices regularly.

We switched to the same POS system they used in Waitrose/Tesco's - it is Java based and ran on OpenSuse for clients and think Redhat on the servers due to IBM - being the I.T service provider.

Company is called Flooid/Vision Bean Store.

> in no way indicative of a trend moving away from self checkouts in the UK. Self checkouts are as popular as ever

Indeed. Aldi just recently rolled out self checkout for example

McDonalds revamped their stores here and reduced their in store frontline staff.

There are kiosks but there is a dedicated staff member standing around to help people use it.

It is sort of defeats the purpose and it is slow as molasses and UI nightmare.

Also Uber is too expensive for a happy meal and I loath using the drive through. The display and the speaker barely works so it is repeating and shouting an order 3 times before they get it right.

> It is sort of defeats the purpose

but instead of 3 people stood serving customers you now have 1 helping 6+ place orders. I'm not sure I see how it defeats the purpose.

The throughput rate of the kiosk is lower than that of a cashier and POS machine - it is hunt and peck for what you need - confusing flip menus and there is no quick keys like the POS for selecting condiments or addons for a meal so it takes way longer.

It is annnoying.

I rarely eat an McDonald's, but had gone inside one a few month ago that had those kiosks. I found the experience to be horrendous. Using them was slow, confusing, and extremely frustrating. I decided to eat elsewhere.

It never, ever gets my order wrong, though, which is something I cannot say for the workers with limited to no English comprehension that used to take my orders (accents are hard)

I especially like the ones installed in some US supermarkets with the dark pattern tip extortion screen ads.

If you are using a self-checkout who is the tip supposed to be for?

In the US, the tips are usually to benefit the business.

Great news, there are only a means for capitalist supermarket chains to cut down costs in employees.

Even if it is Booths, maybe it can send a signal.

I am regularly expecting the next level, where besides self-service, we are also expected to take goods from warehouse, full of boxes downloaded from robot delivery trucks.

In the early 90s in NL, Aldi was kind of like this : very basic store, concrete as a floor and some products like milk & chips were rolled in still on their pallets.

You can still see remnants of this in contemporary Lidl/Aldi : milk etc is in their boxes in the refrigerator.

I remember, and the main reason I usually avoided them unless I had no alternative.

As I nowadays avoid self-checkout, to not be yet another statistic number telling the CEO that most employees don't matter.

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