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1247 points mangoman | 1 comments | 05 Dec 16 14:57 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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Someone1234 ◴[05 Dec 16 15:26 UTC] No.13105907[source]▶
Companies have been discussing "checkout-less" stores since forever, but nobody has been brave enough to do it due to the perceived threat of shoplifting.

And while shoplifting is a legitimate threat, are non-shoplifters going to be turned into shoplifters without a checkout? Are normal shoplifters stopped by checkouts? These are the core questions, and until it is tested nobody will know for sure.

Target is getting awfully close to this. With their Cartwheel app you're meant to scan all your items as you shop (so it auto-applies coupons and discounts); but they haven't taken it to the next logical step and allowed you to provide your Cartwheel output at the checkout for checking out.

I will say that the way Target has implemented smartphone barcode scanning makes me think that there might be a future in all this. It is extremely painless, they just need to stop kicking you out of the scan screen when it finds a discount (i.e. it doesn't kick you out if no discount is found, but does when a discount IS found, that's problematic for efficiency reasons).

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bbrks ◴[05 Dec 16 15:30 UTC] No.13105954[source]▶
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/

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draw_down ◴[05 Dec 16 15:33 UTC] No.13105999[source]▶
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.
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raverbashing ◴[05 Dec 16 15:39 UTC] No.13106048[source]▶
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

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dpark ◴[05 Dec 16 15:51 UTC] No.13106163[source]▶
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.

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1. coleca ◴[05 Dec 16 17:38 UTC] No.13107317{3}[source]▶
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.