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In the UK, Tesco have been running a 'Scan as you Shop'[0] thing for a couple of years now. Customers pick up a scanner as they enter, scan their items as they go into their cart, and they have special checkouts which read your scanner.

There's a random chance that your scanner will be audited by a human against the contents of your shopping cart. Usually the first time you use it, then it backs off.

[0] http://www.tesco.com/scan-as-you-shop/

Sam's Club has been doing similar for the last year[0], as well. They already have a built-in "check your receipt at the door" flow that customers are used to, so it wasn't that hard to offer an electronic tweak to the existing system.

[0] http://www.samsclub.com/sams/pagedetails/content.jsp?pageNam...

Sounds great if it's not as unbelievably user-hostile as the self checkout machines. Those things are just total crap, every one I've ever tried.

Waitrose have had the exact same thing for many years now.

Stop & Shop in the NE US released this in ~2006

Once I got the hang of it, I've had almost zero problems with self-checkout machines

It's usually one of two things: a purchase that must be approved (either alcohol or some medicine) or scanning the single item barcode of a multi-item

That's surprising to hear. I love them (at normal grocers, not Sam's Club) because I find I am faster at scanning and checking myself out than at least half of the cashiers I encounter.

Tesco also has pushed self scanning tills for years now.

However, the number of employees working at the cash register is still the same because those scanners sometimes do not work and most importantly their user experience is deplorable. So, you frequently have to ask someone for help (and I'm in my mid-thirties and very tech-savvy. I can only imagine how someone twice my age would feel when using these scanners).

Where is that at? I am Omaha and google maps did not show a "Stop & Shop".

I always either get erroneously told to put item in the bag, or have to take an item out of the bag because for some reason it shouldn't be there according to the register.

It's a grocer in the Northeast.

I think there are bigger problems, like how they implicitly assume everyone is a thief and are will to damage usability for everyone because that assumption.

That stupid scale isn't going to stop any shoplifter, but it does inconvenience me every time.

EDIt - Grammar.

They screw up for me about 60% of the time. Alcohol is annoying but understandable. More problematic is the weight sensor that misreads the product after I set it down and forces me to wait for an assistant to click a button that says it's okay. I'll occasionally get the register that isn't calibrated properly and then I need assistance for every item. That's fun.

I have given up on bagging as I check out. It goes crazy every time I open a bag and set it in the bagging area. So now I just pile up my groceries and bag them when I'm done, which wastes everyone's time.

This exists in the US, too. I saw one at Giant in Pennsylvania when I was home for the holidays.

The secret is to hate the environment and just use the plastic/paper that is already there.

For me: When I am doing my weekly food shopping, I just use plastic. When I am grabbing something I forgot or picking up beer or something during the week, I just leave everything in the area, pay, and then bag with my reusables after the fact.

These days I only need human interaction when I buy booze, and that consists of a cashier eyeballing me and approving it.

I worked on that project (Shopping Buddy) and a few later iterations of it. This was before the iPad, we had these huge IBM super rugged tablets on the carriages. We used something like Zigbee to triangulate the precise location of the carriage in the aisle, so we could tell whether the cart was at the beginning, middle or end of aisle 5 or aisle 6 and target ads appropriate for where you were. There was a small scanner for you to scan your groceries as you went. It was ridiculously expensive to outfit one store w/the tech so we ended up with a simpler version using Motorola MC70 handheld scanner guns and ditched the exact triangulation and instead went to more generic stuff where we would just check which AP you were connected to so we would know which third of the store you were on (produce, frozen foods, or middle of the store). That system then got ported to iOS and Android so you could use your phone instead of the scanner. The original version despite its issues was pretty advanced for the time (mid 2000s).

They still have the mobile / MC70 version rolled out to the entire chain now, it's very successful from what I hear.

Tesco started that back in the late 90s and Sainsburys also did it 5+ years ago, then Tesco seems to have had another go at it recently.

edit: Safeway was first, in 1997

The Camden store illustrates the progress Safeway has made in other directions too. As part of its customer friendliness, Safeway was the first of the major food multiples to introduce self-scanning, the system it calls Shop & Go.

http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/uk-safeway-follows-leader/a...

> There's a random chance that your scanner will be audited by a human against the contents of your shopping cart. Usually the first time you use it, then it backs off.

I must be really suspicious-looking because I've been subjected to a "random audit" all 5 times I used it. Gave up because with a weekly shop it's quicker to go to an actual checkout than having someone scan all of my items again.

The idea's good, but my experience of the execution has been bad.

Right. They're user-hostile.

> I have given up on bagging as I check out. It goes crazy every time I open a bag and set it in the bagging area. So now I just pile up my groceries and bag them when I'm done, which wastes everyone's time.

This. Trying to do the following

a) Open one of the cellophane bags that are stuck closely together

b) Put the product I just scanned in it

c) Take my hand away so it reads the weight correctly

...are way too difficult for me to do without the machine locking up and saying "okay, assistance required, let's hold you up until the overworked 1 person for 12 checkout machines gets here". So I do the same thing you do, just throw them in the checkout area and bag later.

It wastes everyone's time, but sometimes allows me to bag more efficiently and use fewer plastic bags.

Tesco's last generation machines are particularly bad, although their newest ones have removed a huge amount of latency from the UI and weighing scales from what I've seen.

If you're shopping for a single item, scanning it and dropping it in the bagging area is sufficient to start the flow, then simply wait a second, click finish, then tap your contactless card is all required to complete a transaction, can be done in under 5 seconds

The best machines I've seen in the UK in terms of user flow are probably at Waitrose, they're just supremely faster to use than those at Tesco

I used this for the first time two days ago. I was pleasantly surprised, and it felt really awesome --almost to a point of guilt-- skipping the checkout lines.

However, once I reached the exit where the man was inspecting receipts, things screeched to a halt. I showed him the bar code on my phone, and he looked at it, exclaiming, "Oh no, Scan and Go. You used Scan and Go."

He then turned to find a powered-off scanning device that he couldn't get to start up, as he muttered, "I wish they'd never started that."

I replied, "As a customer, I love it."

He had to call over a manager, who used her scanner to scan my barcode, blindly scroll through my purchased items list to get to the green button, and declared me good to go.

Meanwhile, I had held up all the people trying to exit behind me. It was still faster than checking out, but hopefully they get proper training for their employees implemented.

I had problems with early generations of self-checkout devices, but I have no such problems now. In fact, I will use them whenever I can.

I used to work in a grocery store many years ago though, so it's possible that I have some skills kicking around in my brain that make it easier for me to use them.

Almost all cashiers in my country are under orders to scan things slowly enough that the customer doesn't feel rushed to put them away. There are discount stores (Aldi and Lidl) that don't do this, and the cashiers there scan things much faster.

Awesome insight! This is why I love HN.

My mother makes uses of it every week and gloats that we don't have the tech available here in Boulder (a tech hub).

Good one :). NE = North East, not Nebraska in this instance though I can see the confusion.

> However, the number of employees working at the cash register is still the same

Actually the ratio of staff:active-self-checkout machines is planned to reduce in each new deployment as customers become accustomed to the machines. Starts around 1:2 and usually sits around 1:4 with a target of 1:8 or even 1:12 at quiet times.

That's definitely a reduction in cashiers since the machines displace existing check-out lines & registers.

Source: an acquaintance is a manager in a Tesco Superstore.

Terrible UX is spot-on.

I was using one of these just this morning: got all my shopping onto the scale/shelf and was getting ready to pay. The machine asks how many 5p bags I used. So I start packing the stuff into my backpack to find out whether I need a bag. The machine pipes up: "Did you remove something from the scale?" The screen has a full screen modal warning that I have to put the shopping back.

I put the things back on the scale and guess that I won't need a bag and I pay using contactless but what if my shopping won't fit in my bag?

I understand why we have to "pack" things onto a scale (it makes it much harder to take things without scanning them) but it has to trust you at some point.

You get what you pay for :-)

The Sainsbury's near me have started to go contactless as well, and it's great.

Our local store installed them to great fanfare back in the 90s, kept them for about a year, then quietly removed them. I was always very curious as to why: perhaps they didn't get used very much, or perhaps customer satisfaction with them was low.

Don't ever use a Chip + Signature credit card at a Tesco self-checkout, they had to reboot the thing when I accidentally used it instead of my regular UK Debit card.

Other than that I really like self-checkouts, usually much quicker and they're excellent for coin disposal (dump all your coins in it and pay the rest by card).

Just say you brought your own bag and put the backpack on the scale. Then put things into the backpack as you scan them. Sometimes it'll request an attendant to confirm that it's empty (probably because it's heavier than most bags).

You're supposed to put your bag on the scale at the start when it asks if you brought bag(s). Fill it, then fill 5p bags if necessary.

I found it depends on the 'class' of the supermarket. The higher class the supermarket, the less calibrated they are to treat you like a shoplifter.

We don't have plastic bags anymore in Seattle. The act of opening a paper bag and setting it on the scale (or simply opening a reusable bag that I'd already set on the scale) is enough to make me "require assistance" 99% of the time.

It's not just to catch thieves, but to catch errors in scanning too. When I was a cashier (this was back in 2004 but these self check outs appear to be running the same UI), about 70% of the time I had override the machine, the person had thought they scanned something but didn't. And it rarely appeared to be an attempt to steal.

I even catch myself doing it. If you are smart you can notice the error, take it out of the bag and rescan and the machine will keep going.

Most people just freeze and wait for help.

I wish more stores employed bag boys/girls. They speed the process up so much. It's a good first job for teenagers and the mentally disabled.

In Waitrose you can use your own rucksack without getting flagged!

>> Don't ever use a Chip + Signature credit card at a Tesco self-checkout

Are UK banks giving these out? I've never come across them before.

Also when something's on sale but the non-sale barcode scans. I think employees are trained to cover the barcodes but it doesn't always happen.

Huh...I had travelled around the UK/Ireland last year and I don't think I saw any of these. Maybe I was hitting the wrong stores, or people were using them and I didn't recognize them.

It's actually an interesting problem to solve. You would think that a particular item weighs the same no matter which store you scan it in, but in reality item weight can vary. Sometimes it is due to the manufacturer changing the packaging or adding a free sample of some other product to the item, but more interesting it could be the region. One chain I worked in had issues w/self-checkout on paper items such as toilet paper, paper towels, etc. The items were all weighed in the home office in Massachusetts and input into the master item file. This worked fine in most of the stores. The stores in Florida however always had issues because, due to the humidity in the air, the paper would absorb some of that and be just heavier enough to trip the scales. Eventually it was fixed by adding a larger weight variance allowance to the southern stores' POS registers.

Yes, but i always think that will take ages ;-)

That is not when the machine messes up for me. If I just got done scanning the 5th case of some beverage and it needs to be weighed what should I do. The screen provides little hint. Sometimes there is a "remove my bags" button but often its not there. If I try to move goods to my cart it complains and stops the process, I put the stuff I Just scanned directly in my cart I get an error.

If you say that the scale does find honest mistakes (which I doubt, I think you just have dumb shoplifters) and I say the scales are strictly harmful to user experience then it seems these things must have a bad UI until some advance comes along.

At M&S, you must wait to get approval after indicating that you're using your own bags. Awful system.

I've had nothing but trouble with the self-checkouts I've used in the UK. I'm quite slow and methodical about it, but the machines always manage to inexplicably fuck up halfway through.

I find in Tesco and the Coop (don't think I've used M&S) they let you say you're using your own bags, but they assume that's a carrier bag and complain at my rucksack. I always leave packing until the end if I can now, although they'll still complain about unexpected items even after paying..

It is typically found in very large stores. I only have only seen this in two Tesco stores.

They're only in big stores, and you could easily miss them if you weren't looking. Also most people don't use them.

Self-checkout registers in Finland have about 1 employee per 6 machines. They work pretty well, I haven't had any issues after the first few months they were launched.

I used them in Tesco many times it's was horrible expirience too. Sometime they didn't work properly or failed to scan something.

What worse shortly after some stores in London got those there was less cashiers working at eventide. So you had to choose between unpleasant expirience or long queue.

Similar at supermarkets in Australia, one staff member could be watching over about 12 self checkouts. They still offer regular registers for people with a lot of stuff and people that don't like self checkout.

The machines are good enough now that I almost never get stuck, although some people are a lot more prone to needing staff assistance to complete checkout.

They're standard issue from American banks these days. I believe you can request them from UK ones too if you have trouble remembering a PIN, though.

The ones in supermarkets in Australia started off with a lot of weight related issues. Seems to work fine now, not sure if they have gotten smarter or just less picky with weights.

A Waitrose I lived near had this system, and I think it must have been fairly successful because they put in a second wall of scanning devices shortly before I moved.

Offhandedly asking why next time you're at a (self-) checkout can't hurt.

At the mall where I live, Woolworths insists on bag weighing but Coles actually has it turned off!

This is awesome, as it's incredibly time-saving. At Woolworths I generally have to look like a doofus holding my next item to scan in front of the scanner for at least 2 seconds while the machine is frozen as it slowly weight-checks the item I just bagged...

At Coles the bottleneck is the speed at which I can bag things. Usually I just cram as many things into one bag as possible (I always repack later) and checking out takes under a minute.

NB: The Coles where I live is toward the back of the mall and reasonably far away from the center's exits. I think this has had an impact on the number of items that go walkies, which is why they were able to disable it. (The Woolworths on the other hand is practically outside - leaving there is like going through airport security, they physically rummage through your bags!)

You can blame that bad UX on the government, not the store. Next time you can just lie. The store doesn't care. They'd be happy to give you as many bags as you need for free if they were allowed.