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.

[ClownLoach]

Thought I should update here.

I have been to the Morena store a few more times since this started (store is the oldest in the company, also division office in the back for all of the Southwest).

The first few times they were asking the customer to scan their card and pointing at the scanner but if someone just kept walking and did the card wave they weren't doing anything about it.

That had changed as of my visit last week. There is now a supervisor in a red vest who is standing in the middle of the entrance pointing customers to the employees at the left and right with the iPad/scanner podiums.

If a customer does not scan the employee at the podium speaks up and directs them to scan. If that does not work the supervisor immediately addresses the customer. I did see the supervisor at one point had stood in front of an entering customer's cart and was having some sort of verbal argument with the customer.

I did deliberately snoop and look over the podium when I scanned my card. In an instant my picture appeared on the screen, large, filling two thirds of the screen. I was shocked as to how high resolution/quality the picture was, which was taken about a decade ago. Seeing that they have stored images that are of such quality it is no wonder that they're using this scanning iPad combo instead of forcing the employee to try to look at the grainy thumbnail photo on the card. After a few seconds the picture goes away on the screen.

I did not see anyone who attempted to enter with a no photo card but I suspect those members have been mostly addressed at this point. I do wonder if they can quickly take their pictures from the iPad if they have no picture on file.

As long as someone is with a member nobody asks them anything. Nobody is checking cards at self checkout (which was really annoying in my opinion when they were doing that). I'm sure one could try to closely follow a member as if they were one and sneak in with them.

Unlike my first visit encountering this test I did not see anyone performing the "door count" with the "clicker" so I'm assuming they have now improved the technology to count for the employees so they can focus on seeing if the person who scanned the card is the person on the screen.

So at this point the scanning is a firm requirement at that San Diego test store.

I am just puzzled as to why this is so important to Costco as the added payroll of a supervisor at the door to direct traffic and enforce can't be cheap. There has to be a shrink and fraud related reason(s) for this. It would not be hard to steal a Costco card then get into stores and purchase high ticket items at self checkout with stolen or counterfeit credit cards. I believe Costco has a unique agreement with Visa that has different terms from the rest of the industry, and I would imagine that expectations of lower card fraud would have enabled lower fees for Costco. So they may be getting pressured to reduce credit card fraud.

[ClownLoach]

It is being reported today that Costco has confirmed a full chainwide rollout of door scanning is underway right now.

My observation has been that Costco moves one or two additional employees to the front door. One to direct customers to the two scanners which are each manned by an employee. They use a simple iPad on a podium connected to a good quality Zebra scanner which instantly shows the photo on file when the card is scanned so they can compare the screen to the customer. This starts to form a minor line which forces guests to clearly be with the member who is entering as they will be stopped at the door. In the beginning they did not seem to do much besides yell at customers who just show a card but fail to scan at the door. This seems to be an adjustment period, as once a couple of months go by they adjust the staffing model and post a supervisor at the door in a red vest who will chase down and turn around anyone who fails to scan in. I would imagine they would have the Super up there earlier if they have a lot of problems. The other issue here is that they are still checking the card at the self checkout, some stores are simply using an iPad or handheld there which gives the member photo once scanned while others try to view the tiny picture on the card. Apparently they are stopping people left and right who are showing up with shared cards, offering them Executive at a $40 discount and Gold Star at a $20 discount. There are sandwich board signs at the entrance and self checkout featuring this limited time discount. I suspect they have the ability to put a block on the card from the iPad as well.

[ClownLoach]

I went to my local store and this apparently started today there. For fun I stood aside and watched for a bit. They have polished this up quite a bit since the initial tests in San Diego. First, apparently people were trying to go in the returns door or exit to sneak past the scanners so now a employee is posted outside the return door. If a person is trying to enter either door she turns them away unless they have merchandise in their possession to return and points them directly to the entrance line.

At the entrance they have pushed the scanner podiums closer together to narrow the path and stop people from walking through the middle avoiding the scanners. I saw all sorts of people trying to play stunts to skip this, and ultimately I was shocked by how many people were being stopped because they had a "borrowed" card - it was about one in seven who were trying to explain why they aren't a member but they have always used grandma's card, their friends card, their dog's card, some fictitious Costco employee told them they could share, whatever. That part is creating a bit of a backup so they were trying to force the entry into more of a single file line so when they encounter a person who isn't a member they can stop and address them while the other scanner person continues to take members. The system seems like it does their door counts for them as well now, a famous Costco metric that is closely tracked in the company. I didn't see either person using the "clicker" to count incoming members.

They must be making money doing this change because it is costly - extra employees moved to the door, the iPads and scanners - and it has to cause some drop in sales. I have to think that they're converting the majority of the cheaters to paid members because they know their prices and offering is so compelling that they will pay for the membership if they have to. With the crime I have heard about in some of their stores (lots of wallet from purse theft) and shoplifting, presumably all by non-members, this will also send those folks packing off to a more hospitable environment for crime. I'm also amazed how quickly people are acting shady on the first day of this when the test stores were a pretty long ways away.

[storewanderer]

Is anything changing at the exit as a result of this technology or is this strictly an entry thing?

It would be nice if they could somehow automate this so if your card and photo matched you could walk in without stopping or waiting in a line and those who had to stop got "moved off to the side" to deal with an employee.

Sort of like you know the airport security with pre-check where many people get to walk right through the metal detector quickly but once in a while the metal detector stops someone for "a random" that person is told to step aside until they can be helped further, and meanwhile the flow of traffic behind them just continues.