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Comment by Faaak | Hacker News Reader

I really like those that you can find in Switzerland (either in Coop or Migros).

The basic assumption is "trust the customer". Thus, the self-checkout devices don't have the annoying "you must weight the article you just scanned".

You just scan them one by one, add them to your bag, pay at the end, and that's it. Sometimes (it happens to me around 1/year) you get a random search, which is not that bad as they just randomly scan ~10 articles from your cart and it just beeps (i guess ?) if they're not paid for in your receipt.

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Waitrose in the UK is like that. They seem to place trust in the customer which feels nice. I don't know if they have some clever ways of monitoring customers, but it feels good not to be treated with suspicion. I've never had anyone check my bags.

Sainsburys annoys me every time. The slightest delay in putting the scanned item on the scale and it starts nagging you, very loudly. I avoid them as far as possible. M&S is the same - nice place to shop in, but self checkout is unpleasant.

The machines at one supermarket chains in Denmark are exactly the same as at Sainsbury's, even with the same woman's voice if you set it to English on the starting screen.

However, they are much less annoying here. I assume it's all just parameters that are tuned to local requirements.

(Have you swiped your Nectar card?)

Can't believe I had to scroll this much to find someone mentioning how good this is in Switzerland (where the implementations trust the customer) vs other countries (where you have to weight everything).

I scan everything beforehand with their device, then head to the self-checkout with a shopping cart full of items (already put into bags), I scan the QR code there and I pay. Done.

The whole operation is like 20 seconds max, and it's how it should be.

Using self checkout in the UK, US or in Italy is a nightmare. First of all, they don't trust you by default so you have to weight everything (this operation takes on average 10s per item). Half of the time the systems are broken (in terms of UX) and you need to do things in a specific order (e.g: you can't scan a rewards card with the other items - you have to do it BEFORE even starting to scan the products).

Trust like in Switzerland is a very rare thing in most countries, you will seldom see newspaper stands with money boxes where everyone is expected to take one single paper out and leave the money in the tiny box, anywhere else this would fail.

I don't know about newspapers in Switzerland, but self-checkout machines don't usually weigh items in France or Belgium either (or the Netherlands, if AH stores in Belgium are representative of those in the Netherlands) and these countries probably aren't as fetishised to be trustful as Switzerland seems to be.

In some models, you can just open the lid and take the newspaper if so inclined.

https://www.gettyimages.de/detail/foto/row-of-newspaper-vend...

> Trust like in Switzerland is a very rare thing in most countries

I’m in an Eastern European country and have the same machines in some supermarkets, no scales, no gates just scan the stuff and go.

That would’ve been unimaginable 15-30 years ago. Theft and violent crime rates were sky high. Having your home broken into or even getting mugged in broad daylight wasn’t that special (these days you have a high chance of getting a story in a national newspaper at least if you get mugged).

Of course it’s far from perfect and there are other issues that need to be solved. However under the right circumstances significant change is possible even during relatively short timeframes.

These are a thing in the United States, the country about which the article is written: https://l450v.alamy.com/450v/c8xnfn/usa-today-news-racks-new...

Same experience for me, those in Coop and Migros work very well. Good barcode readers and fast UI, you can actually scan your stuff quickly if you know where the barcodes are. Those of Manor have a less reactive UI and strange touchscreens (you have to push softly for them to work or the ignore your tap).

Have also used some in the UK a few years ago, and the UX was much worse. Usually slow user interface, some of them are even speaking to ask you to put down every single article... might be fine as tutorial, but so slow if you actually use them regularly.

The Coop and Migros ones generally work well I find too, although if you get an age checked item, they can be a bit slow in some stores to acknowledge you.

The touch screens for the ones in Manor are terrible OTH, they seem to require a very precise light touch, but not too light, I find it strange that the more "upmarket" Manor has the worst ones.

The funniest thing is that when you're stopped in the flow for some weight discrepency in the UK, the attendant will quickly type in their code and null the error without investigating it at all, move on to the next customer who's blocked with the same thing and repeat. Seems to totally void to point of having these anti-trust systems.

Agree, the experience could be _signiifcantly_ improved with this assumption of user behaviour. Would be interesting to do a study to see how many people acutally take advantage of the "non weighing" systems.

Co-op in the UK has that as well. I don't know if it's the same for every area, but the one near friends of ours that we pop into on the way to theirs just has a scanner.

They also run facial recognition on anyone who uses them though :/

This article mentions the south of England but they’ve rolled it out country-wide since:

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/coop-facial-recognition

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