Vox Goes After Self-Checkout

[Devonai]

Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia?  Wow.  I'll put them in my prayers.

I was clearly referring to the Hilbert-Huang Transform.

[grampster]

Sam's Club has a hand held scanner.  You scan your card and then scan the purchases.  I don't even take most of the stuff out of the basket when I scan it.  Stick the Discover card in the slot etc etc get the receipt, and move on down to the exit.  There is a checker at the door to compare your basket full to the receipt.

Our local Meijer has replaced most of it's humans with self check out.  What is mostly annoying is they closed the two quick check outs for when you have less than 10 items.  So they are forcing you to either stand in the long lines with heaped up baskets for the 2 or 3 items you have at human checkouts or go to the self check out.

[MechAg94]

The Walmart self-checkouts are pretty good and always have been.  They must have done a lot of research and in-house trials before they rolled them out.

Home Depot used to have major problems with the scale being too sensitive and getting upset if it thought the item you put in (or next to) the bag was off by a few grams.  They've improved that vastly; if anything going too far in the other direction -- that might just mean that they are video monitoring the checkouts closely.

A couple of weeks ago at a Kroger near Houston, I saw some fresh turmeric roots and I bought a couple.  They did not have a PLU sticker, so at the register I had to do a "look up item" by name.  It wasn't in the computer.  I was about to wave an attendant over, when I thought "what if they just misspelled it?"  Sure enough, I typed 'T' and started scrolling thru all the items that came up, and near the end of the list there it was, "Tumeric" :D

You may be right about making improvements.  The self checkout is one of the reasons I can deal with going to Home Depot.  I don't have to wait in line for the single check out person. 

That is one reason I don't shop at WalMart much anymore.  It seems they always as few cashiers as they can get away with and the self-check stations often have a line.  In addition, half the cashiers are very very slow once you get there.

[slingshot]

I have always thought that using the self-checkout should come with a 10-20% discount due to the labor costs being shifted to me.

I think that would be a great inducement to get more people to the self check out lines.  It takes less manpower for the store, hence less cost.

[MillCreek]

Sam's Club has a hand held scanner.  You scan your card and then scan the purchases.  I don't even take most of the stuff out of the basket when I scan it.  Stick the Discover card in the slot etc etc get the receipt, and move on down to the exit.  There is a checker at the door to compare your basket full to the receipt.

In the holiday season, the local Costco stores have people with a hand scanner standing in the checkout lines before the register. They scan every thing in the cart, scan your membership card, and all you have to do at the register is pay.  Things go much quicker when the cart does not have be unloaded and reloaded.

[Ben]

In the holiday season, the local Costco stores have people with a hand scanner standing in the checkout lines before the register. They scan every thing in the cart, scan your membership card, and all you have to do at the register is pay.  Things go much quicker when the cart does not have be unloaded and reloaded.

Huh. I've never seen that here. Though I've noticed this year that, holidays aside, the second person at the checkout will stop me from putting as much stuff on the conveyor. It used to be just heavy stuff, but now it seems to be most stuff. Which ties into the "faster without loading and unloading" hypothesis.

I also never take boxes from them anymore. I bought one of those fold up "milk crates" they sell there and keep that in my 4Runner. Then I just load that up with the smaller stuff and it's way easier to carry than a random cardboard box. Plus then they don't have to pack stuff for me and the line goes that much quicker.