Costco Door Scanning Rolling Out

[Alpha8472]

Costco self checkout is terrible since there are no handheld scanners. I had to lift huge items onto the scanner and then onto the weighing pad.

There are so many heavy bulk items at Costco. I would rather have a cashier at a compact cash register scan my items. It is a time consuming process to lift items just to scan them.

Surely they can come up with a better compact register to increase the number of checkout lanes.

[storewanderer]

Costco self checkout is terrible since there are no handheld scanners. I had to lift huge items onto the scanner and then onto the weighing pad.

There are so many heavy bulk items at Costco. I would rather have a cashier at a compact cash register scan my items. It is a time consuming process to lift items just to scan them.

Surely they can come up with a better compact register to increase the number of checkout lanes.

They STILL don't have hand scanners? What is the matter with them?

The Sam's Club self checkout has only a hand scanner. I don't really like touching it, but I don't even unload anything. I guess if I was really concerned I could go get a napkin from the snack bar and use it as a shield from the hand scanner. I keep everything in the cart, pass the scanner by it all, take it to the exit with my receipt and all the barcodes kept facing up so the exit employee can quickly do their receipt scan then scan whatever items they want to scan. It is really easy.

[Alpha8472]

I just pick up some free gloves from the 7-Eleven Slurpee machine or some free gas mits from a Shell station. Then I have free gloves to use at self checkout machines.

[mbz321]

Costco self checkout is terrible since there are no handheld scanners. I had to lift huge items onto the scanner and then onto the weighing pad.

There are so many heavy bulk items at Costco. I would rather have a cashier at a compact cash register scan my items. It is a time consuming process to lift items just to scan them.

Surely they can come up with a better compact register to increase the number of checkout lanes.

All they had to do was keep two dedicated lanes (eg. the ones they removed for 'self' checkout) as 'express lanes' 10 items or under, maybe staffed without an assistant and none of these self checkout machines would have been necessary. (Or maybe multiple registers in that space with short/no conveyor belts.) Between shrink and losses due to easy card sharing and other fraud, I highly doubt Costco is saving that much money in the long-run.

[storewanderer]

Costco self checkout is terrible since there are no handheld scanners. I had to lift huge items onto the scanner and then onto the weighing pad.

There are so many heavy bulk items at Costco. I would rather have a cashier at a compact cash register scan my items. It is a time consuming process to lift items just to scan them.

Surely they can come up with a better compact register to increase the number of checkout lanes.

All they had to do was keep two dedicated lanes (eg. the ones they removed for 'self' checkout) as 'express lanes' 10 items or under, maybe staffed without an assistant and none of these self checkout machines would have been necessary. (Or maybe multiple registers in that space with short/no conveyor belts.) Between shrink and losses due to easy card sharing and other fraud, I highly doubt Costco is saving that much money in the long-run.

This is also a black mark on the Toshiba self checkout which has had very strong implementations at CVS, Ahold, Kroger, and Safeway/Albertsons. Wal Mart was using it in Canada and tried it in a few US Stores but ultimately went with this new "Apollo" software which as I understand it is something Wal Mart came up with itself. The Toshiba is a lot easier to use than the NCR self checkout.

Costco front ends didn't used to have conveyor belts. They used to be basically a desk with the cash register on it and checkout was a "cart to cart" thing. Usually one person standing there moving items from customer cart to empty cart yelling out item numbers to the cashier who was typing the item numbers into the register. That model with a scanner gun and one employee could easily work for 10 item limit transactions.

[ClownLoach]

Costco self checkout is terrible since there are no handheld scanners. I had to lift huge items onto the scanner and then onto the weighing pad.

There are so many heavy bulk items at Costco. I would rather have a cashier at a compact cash register scan my items. It is a time consuming process to lift items just to scan them.

Surely they can come up with a better compact register to increase the number of checkout lanes.

All they had to do was keep two dedicated lanes (eg. the ones they removed for 'self' checkout) as 'express lanes' 10 items or under, maybe staffed without an assistant and none of these self checkout machines would have been necessary. (Or maybe multiple registers in that space with short/no conveyor belts.) Between shrink and losses due to easy card sharing and other fraud, I highly doubt Costco is saving that much money in the long-run.

They're not saving money with self checkout because they couldn't cut the staffing under their union contracts. Which basically dictate operations nationwide. The entire point of self checkout at Costco was to increase overall registers. They definitely have tested express lanes in the past, I can think of at least three times over the years. Obviously it has some sort of negative effect on their business so they never have rolled it out.