I have no bad experiences with self-checkout. None.
Going to a staffed-only checkout feels like going back 20 years in time. They take up more space, they can move slower, suddenly customers will kill the speed because they need to look for their coupons, pay with change, or whatever.
1. The people who say they have had a problem actually have had a problem, and some other people have gotten lucky.
2. The people who say they have had a problem are lying, or deceived.
The article actually ends with "shoppers are likely to find themselves disappointed and frustrated most of the time." - and that is clearly false for me and everyone I know. "rarely" or "occassionaly"? maybe. But not "most of the time".
Bold of you to assume you're not the minority.
All they need to do is drop everything to learn one of the most competitive and hardest cross-disciplinary skills and jump into a shrinking market!
You scan the products. Confirm that you've scanned everything. Want a shopping bag, yes/no? Pay.
That's it. The scanners work. Payment work. Getting a receipt works.
Maybe I've just been lucky, who knows.
Me: I don't have to scan, check I've scanned everything, enter the number of bags, put groceries in those bags. Instead I put my stuff on the belt, I pay and walk out w the groceries--and the cashier is a pro at scanning and bagging, whereas I am not.
Plus, it's not like these stores are going to pass along the labor savings to us. They'll just pocket the difference.
I remember the time before self-scan machines, and the lines were not shorter. Even "10 items or less" registers had huge lines.
They are not hard to clear issues and I could do them myself but only the cashier has the ability to clear those errors and sometimes there is that one customer that is taking the 1 cashier for 8 stalls for like 5 minutes complaining about a coupon.
I think dismissing the issues is sure fire way for more issues to come up.
Not me (aged 60, happy with using self-checkouts in general, resigned to the occasional glitches)