Self-checkout and Shrink

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arizonaguy
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Re: Self-checkout and Shrink

Post by arizonaguy »

Jeff wrote: February 11th, 2021, 7:17 pm I love using Scan and Go myself at Sams Club. Its super easy and when the lines are long, you just walk out. I've actually done the opposite and charged myself for something twice by accident and the person noticed it at the door (she counted the items in my cart, I had 8 and my receipt said 9).

I think one day everything will eventually be locked in a vending machine style where you need to pay as you grab the item. Would make sense you think for smaller stores, but larger would be awful to do this.
I use Scan and Go every time I go to Sam's Club as well. I like how you can just walk up to the receipt checker at the exit after you are done shopping. Walmart and Kroger's implementation requires you to go to a self-checkout station first which eliminates part of the convenience.

As far as the topic of Costco self checkouts, Costco's system makes no sense for the type of merchandise that Costco sells. A bulk warehouse which sells a large number of large items shouldn't require the customer to take large items out of a cart, put them on a scale / scanner, and then put the items back into the shopping cart. If Costco had a gun that customers could use (like Target, Walmart, Home Depot, and Sam's Club do) to scan bulky items in the carts it would make more sense. I would admit though the last 3 times I've been to Costco and used self-checkout it really was more like an express lane as Costco employees were in front of the self-checkout station and had scan guns and scanned all of the items in my cart themselves.
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Re: Self-checkout and Shrink

Post by buckguy »

Having a gun at Costco would make sense. They don't always have them at Home Depot, btw, and it's a problem because some of their stores often don't have a regular check-out open.

There is a subset of people who don't buy a lot on a trip to Costco, so self-check will work well for them. People who truly have trouble manipulating bulky items will eventually figure out that they should go to a regular check-out.
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Re: Self-checkout and Shrink

Post by babs »

arizonaguy wrote: February 12th, 2021, 7:58 am
Jeff wrote: February 11th, 2021, 7:17 pm I love using Scan and Go myself at Sams Club. Its super easy and when the lines are long, you just walk out. I've actually done the opposite and charged myself for something twice by accident and the person noticed it at the door (she counted the items in my cart, I had 8 and my receipt said 9).

I think one day everything will eventually be locked in a vending machine style where you need to pay as you grab the item. Would make sense you think for smaller stores, but larger would be awful to do this.
I use Scan and Go every time I go to Sam's Club as well. I like how you can just walk up to the receipt checker at the exit after you are done shopping. Walmart and Kroger's implementation requires you to go to a self-checkout station first which eliminates part of the convenience.

As far as the topic of Costco self checkouts, Costco's system makes no sense for the type of merchandise that Costco sells. A bulk warehouse which sells a large number of large items shouldn't require the customer to take large items out of a cart, put them on a scale / scanner, and then put the items back into the shopping cart. If Costco had a gun that customers could use (like Target, Walmart, Home Depot, and Sam's Club do) to scan bulky items in the carts it would make more sense. I would admit though the last 3 times I've been to Costco and used self-checkout it really was more like an express lane as Costco employees were in front of the self-checkout station and had scan guns and scanned all of the items in my cart themselves.
You can't take a large item, scan it and place on the scale at Costco. I'm pretty strong. I lifted a heavy item, attempted to scan it, and placed it on the scale. It threw up an error message that I should leave it in the cart. Turns out on these large, they don't want them scanned and places on the scale.

I don't blame stores for not providing handheld scanners. It's too easy to fake scan an item. Self checkout doesn't mean unstaffed. It can be more efficient than a regular checkstand but you need proactive, involved staff manning it.
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Re: Self-checkout and Shrink

Post by TW-Upstate NY »

Personally, I could never understand the whole concept behind it. Let's use the $15 minimum wage as an example. In a 24 hour store, that would work out to $360.00 for one hour of labor to staff a self-checkout area. That's sound like a substantial amount of money and it is BUT you can't tell me that more than that much merchandise does not walk out the door on a daily basis because the store chooses not to spend that kind of money to properly staff the area. You're basically putting customers on the honor system at various times of the day with sometimes not so good outcomes for the store. All it would take is for someone to go through the self-checkout and not scan a few small but expensive electronics items. In the case of a grocery store, a few people not scanning expensive cuts of meat and there goes your purported savings. As it is, shrink is a huge problem even without self-checkout and this only adds fuel to the fire. And let's put theft aside and look at self-checkout from a consumer's point of view. You go into a store for a few things and are in a hurry so you decide to the use the self-checkout. You get over there and there's somebody with a full basket who has no idea what they're doing and is scanning items very slowly. They then disable the machine which means an attendant (if there even is one) has to come over and fix the problem. In the meantime, that line is backing up even more. Personally, I've had that happen and left merchandise there and walked out. Now the store has to pay somebody to put that stuff back on the shelf. I also told you last year about the experience I had at the local Target when I tried to pay with cash at their newly installed self-checkout and the attendant had to handle that part of the transaction. It wasn't because I had disabled the machine in any way but because that's the way the system was set up. Try that on a busy weekend afternoon instead of a slow early morning when I was there. I think self-checkout should be one thing-EXPRESS ONLY-limit the number of items.
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Re: Self-checkout and Shrink

Post by Romr123 »

I've tried self-checkout at Costco and it's just not very satisfactory. I'm not a heavy Costco shopper (rarely more than 10 items) and when compared to the hyper-efficiency of their regular checkout, I'm not sold. BJs, conversely actually has a good self-checkout which is good for my size orders and remarkably efficient.
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Re: Self-checkout and Shrink

Post by storewanderer »

Romr123 wrote: February 12th, 2021, 12:56 pm I've tried self-checkout at Costco and it's just not very satisfactory. I'm not a heavy Costco shopper (rarely more than 10 items) and when compared to the hyper-efficiency of their regular checkout, I'm not sold. BJs, conversely actually has a good self-checkout which is good for my size orders and remarkably efficient.
BJ's and Costco are both using the same Toshiba Self Checkout Software and the same POS system. What is the difference between the implementation at the two chains?

BJ's may be running a much older version of it but I thought they upgraded.

I know this doesn't mean much- Raleys and Save Mart both use NCR Software for POS and both use the NCR Self Checkout. The Save Mart one works quite well (though it has gotten slower/bugs out more often in the past couple years when they moved it to a new interface), the Raleys one is awful, slow, and full of bugs and has been from the first day they installed it.
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Re: Self-checkout and Shrink

Post by veteran+ »

TW-Upstate NY wrote: February 12th, 2021, 9:33 am Personally, I could never understand the whole concept behind it. Let's use the $15 minimum wage as an example. In a 24 hour store, that would work out to $360.00 for one hour of labor to staff a self-checkout area. That's sound like a substantial amount of money and it is BUT you can't tell me that more than that much merchandise does not walk out the door on a daily basis because the store chooses not to spend that kind of money to properly staff the area. You're basically putting customers on the honor system at various times of the day with sometimes not so good outcomes for the store. All it would take is for someone to go through the self-checkout and not scan a few small but expensive electronics items. In the case of a grocery store, a few people not scanning expensive cuts of meat and there goes your purported savings. As it is, shrink is a huge problem even without self-checkout and this only adds fuel to the fire. And let's put theft aside and look at self-checkout from a consumer's point of view. You go into a store for a few things and are in a hurry so you decide to the use the self-checkout. You get over there and there's somebody with a full basket who has no idea what they're doing and is scanning items very slowly. They then disable the machine which means an attendant (if there even is one) has to come over and fix the problem. In the meantime, that line is backing up even more. Personally, I've had that happen and left merchandise there and walked out. Now the store has to pay somebody to put that stuff back on the shelf. I also told you last year about the experience I had at the local Target when I tried to pay with cash at their newly installed self-checkout and the attendant had to handle that part of the transaction. It wasn't because I had disabled the machine in any way but because that's the way the system was set up. Try that on a busy weekend afternoon instead of a slow early morning when I was there. I think self-checkout should be one thing-EXPRESS ONLY-limit the number of items.
Exactly!!

The labor savings versus the shrink the increased shrink rate is compelling. I have done this analysis for a couple of retail grocers and it usually comes out the same. Shrink absorbs and labor savings.
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Re: Self-checkout and Shrink

Post by storewanderer »

veteran+ wrote: February 13th, 2021, 7:02 am
The labor savings versus the shrink the increased shrink rate is compelling. I have done this analysis for a couple of retail grocers and it usually comes out the same. Shrink absorbs and labor savings.
Every increase in the cost of wages and benefits which are a given and ongoing will only bring the equation on these self checkouts and the projected "cost savings" more favorable to the self checkouts. Emphasis on the word "projected" there.

The one that I am struggling with more is the "scan as you shop" concepts. The Kroger "Scan Bag and Go" (which is still available to me locally) as well as the Sam's Club or Wal Mart programs with this. I just do not see how in any way shape or form those things make any sense; they are hard to use specifically absolutely awful at Kroger with a large number of items, produce, etc;, shrink opportunities constantly, and just awful user interface.

Oh, Whole Foods just installed self checkout in the location in Reno. They took out 4 express lanes (which 3 were usually open; even 2 would be open late at night) to do this. NCR software. First self checkout I've ever seen at a Whole Foods. It takes me longer to self checkout my small transactions there than it took to go through the cashier.
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Re: Self-checkout and Shrink

Post by veteran+ »

To properly man self checkouts that effectively mitigate all the situations that enable and allow theft is the issue.

Customers are also very creative in ways to work around the system (like even removing the organic sticker on produce and weighing it as a regular produce item).

In some stores it would require substantial numbers of clerks to oversee, to the point that you almost need one clerk per register to properly supervise (extreme case). That translates into payroll dollars. In some busy high theft stores it becomes futile, might as well have a regular manned register.

I have seen the lines for self checkout move SLOWER than regular registers because customers are piddling around, going slow, trying to find their credit card, difficulty in finding the bar code.............the list is endless.

Fresh & Easy was the perfect scenario of learning about everything that customers do to mess it up besides the normal issues with the machines. It was a concentrated situation because there was no other alternative for check out.

Depending on the store volume and customer base is what should be considered when staffing the self check outs..........and this is often what is not happening. When you are chintzy with your self checkouts you will have BIG shrink!
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Re: Self-checkout and Shrink

Post by cjd »

I have noticed lately Walmart and Home Depot (really the only two retailers in my area with SC) always have two attendants at the SC areas at any given time. (Walmart having four actually, with two for each corral of SCs).

Lowes' SC is a joke, just two stations, and usually they aren't even open (I think sometimes just one might be).
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