Finally they are getting the message.
Some other retailers have said they also will be dialing back.
Of course they try to spin it as not theft related, but that is obvious that’s what is behind it. It is in their Profit forecasts to shareholders. It is costing them on the bottom line.
That’s one of the Only things that gets a CEO’s attention
Here is part of the Spin;
At a handful of stores, Target has restricted self-checkout to customers buying 10 items or fewer. Customers buying more than that are required to use full-service lanes with cashiers.
A Target spokesperson said the test was designed to shorten wait times and “better understand” shoppers’ preferences.
“Our guests tell us they enjoy interacting with our team,” Target Chief Operating Officer John Mulligan said on a call with analysts Tuesday about the changes. The company has “refocused” its checkout areas and has since seen a 6% increase in customers using full-service cashier lanes across its stores.
Target and other retailers have [expanded self-checkout machines in recent years.]
Self-checkout was designed to help companies save on labor costs and speed up checkout for shoppers.
But the promise of self-checkout hasn’t always played out.
Self-checkout machines sometimes break. Customers often face errors and glitches when scanning items, requiring employees to come over and assist them. This erases potential labor savings and makes self-checkout slower, in some cases, than full-service checkout — the problem it was supposed to resolve.
Sam’s Club has a system were you scan items with your phone through their app as you place them into your cart. You pay with the credit card you have entered into the app. A person at the door does some kind of superficial check as you leave.
I don’t go to a corporate store to interact with a team. This isn’t like living in a small Midwestern town, shopping at a mom-and-pop owned store, where you see the same people over and over and get to know them.
In NL certain supermarkets are also reducing self checkouts. Of course this isn’t theft related. Nobody in their right mind would accuse their customers of such behavior without scaring them away. But they think it would significantly reduce the number of “forgets” and “mistakes” of their beloved customers.
Lenin once said, “Trust is good, but control is better”
Huh. Everywhere I’ve ever used it, the place where you put your groceries after scanning is a scale that knows how much every item weighs, so unless you know exactly what something weighs and have a method, you won’t get away with anything shady.
You are assuming everything is scanned. You can take an item from your cart and put it right in your bag skipping the scale. Self check out is truly an honor system.
From what I have seen if any item is placed in the bag without scanning it, the system senses the unscanned weight on the bagging platform. That causes an interruption to the checkout process. However, the system cannot tell the difference between, for example, a non-organic squash and an organic (more expensive) squash when the item number is entered manually.
The plastic bags are on the scale too. If you put an item in the bag, it gets weighed. There is no skipping the scale (unless you shoplift into some other kind of bag you brought in, but again, that has nothing to do with the checkout system.)
No, because the sale is already complete by the time you leave the checkout. The scale/register knows what your order should weigh and you can’t finish the sale unless it’s correct.
I think you’re just describing garden variety shoplifting, which doesn’t have anything to do with the type of checkout you use.
I’m talking about the checkout system used by the local Smith’s grocery store, a Krogers brand. Each item goes from your cart, over the scanner and then into a bag on a checkout turntable where the weight is matched to the sku. Some items will have a bar code while others like some fresh produce will meed to have the sku number manually entered on a touchscreen and weighed. More or less the same system used by my local Home Depot and Lowe’s where most things have sku’s on a label. Shoplifters still try leaving without checking items out thru self checkouts or manned checkouts but that has been going on for decades.
Do you know people that won’t use the self checkouts? It seems like nearly half of the people I talk to refuse to use them. If a cashier isn’t available they will even leave their cart setting there and walk out. They claim they want to protect the workers jobs. I think some are just afraid of the self checkouts.
Big shame
Self checkouts don’t try to make small talk to me or touch my food with hands that I have no idea where they’ve been.
I’d be happy if more places implemented a system where you just have an account and you can pick stuff up and walk out with it and be billed without a checkout, as long as there were decent privacy and security controls.
People are often afraid of change. I find self checkouts faster, easier, and I’m less pressured to go through them quickly, and it means one fewer person handling my food. I always take them where they are are available.
Only place I’ve ever encountered that is walmart (which I avoid for numerous reasons), who ironically don’t have self checkouts, and as a result, have by far the slowest moving checkouts of any of the big chains. I don’t think I’ve ever waited less than 20 minutes there, while 95% of the time in target I can go straight through.
