Supermarket Self Service Tills

[Bald Rick]

Not paying by card for a packet of fruited tea cakes costing the princely sum of 79p.

Why not?

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Why not?

Prefer not to make card payments for any transactions of less than £5 in total.

 

[simonw]

Prefer not to make card payments for any transactions of less than £5 in total.

Why? I honestly can't remember the last time I used cash for anything.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Why? I honestly can't remember the last time I used cash for anything.

Personal preference. Helps with day to day budgeting. And stops having my card account stuffed up with transactions for de minimis amounts.

 

[Bald Rick]

Prefer not to make card payments for any transactions of less than £5 in total.

Fair enough, your choice, but I don’t understand why you would want to carry cash for small purchases. I haven’t been to a cash point for 6 months. So much easier without shrapnel floating around.

 

[1D54]

I have numerous cards but apart from online purchases never use any of them. Old fashioned i may well be, but readies have and always will be my favoured way to pay. I have never travelled by rail without a paper ticket either

 

[nlogax]

Fair enough, your choice, but I don’t understand why you would want to carry cash for small purchases. I haven’t been to a cash point for 6 months. So much easier without shrapnel floating around.

Last thing I used cash for was a supermarket trolley, therefore I spent the net sum of zero pounds. Before that..maybe abroad early in 2020 before all this started. All my local shops went to card-only at nearly all their self service tills during the first lockdown.

 

[Class465pacer]

Slightly at a tangent, I'm sure I remember that at McDonalds in an European country (Italy maybe?) if you want to pay with cash you still place your order on the touchscreen but take the receipt to the counter to pay and receive your food. It seemed unusual to me!

You can also do this at your local McDonalds if you click cancel when it prompts you to pay by card.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

I never use self service tills; I much prefer to keep people in their jobs...

 

[Hadders]

More and more transactions are happening through self service tills and through smartshop tills. This has been the trend for several years but has accelerated since covid.

It's a bit like what banks went through when ATMs were rolled out en-masse 30-40 years ago. Everyone wanting to withdraw cash used to have to go to the counter, but the installation of ATMs saw customers vote with their feet and ATMs became the main way cash was withdrawn, counter service still remained but has been in terminal decline.

Self checkouts have got better over the years. There is a labour saving (particularly as the cost of retail labour is closely matched to the minimum wage and this has increased significantly over the last 10 years), but there is also an increase in stock loss. Cash handling is more straightforward and cash loss is lower. The stock loss is much greater where the self checkouts do not have weigh scales, consequently most retailers have stopped installing these and are replacing them.

The payment area of shops is changing significantly and self checkout and smartshop technology won't be the end. Sainsbury's has mobile pay in many Local stores where you use an app to scan your products and pay without having to visit a till. In the last few weeks Amazon Fresh has launched a couple of stores where there are no tills at all. You scan in using their app as you enter the store and take products from the shelf and exit. Camera technology observes what you have purchased and charges your account.

 

[Journeyman]

I refuse to be scammed into using technology that will cost people their jobs. I will always queue up and deal with a human, even if it takes far longer.

 

[cb a1]

I never use self service tills; I much prefer to keep people in their jobs...

I always find this an interesting topic.

When I were a lad, supermarkets were slowly becoming common (there was a small co-op in our town) but I still remember being sent to the bakers, butchers and the greengrocers because that's where you bought your bread, meat and veg respectively.

Supermarkets killed off many jobs by consolidating many shops into one.

I'm not proposing turning back the clock, but when do we, as a society, decide that consolidation has gone too far? What makes supermarket checkout staff the line in the sand that we should say 'no more' to future savings on the cost of our shopping?

When self-service came in I was an early convert and I find them easy and reliable to use, but ... I have become increasingly concerned at the disappearance of employment opportunities for various sectors in society. Gainful employment is not just about money, but about many other things that are important to many people about being a 'valued' member of society. That's not to say that you can't be valuable if you're not employed; just that for some people it is important for them. Employment can give you self-esteem, it can help you make friends, it can simply just keep you occupied, etc. as well as the money earned.

Thus, more often than not now, I will choose the manned checkouts unless I'm in a rush and there's a long queue for those and no queue for the self-service tills.

Alone, I know that my actions are akin to emptying Loch Ness with a thimble, but it's better to try and do something than nothing.

 

[Hadders]

I refuse to be scammed into using technology that will cost people their jobs. I will always queue up and deal with a human, even if it takes far longer.

I admire your principle but do you:

Withdraw cash over the counter at a bank
Pay all your bills in person and never by bank transfer or direct debit
Not use email
Get the operator to connect your telephone calls rather than dial the number yourself

Business and life in general constantly changes and that means the nature of jobs change. For example t the moment in retail there might be fewer staff working on old fashioned tills but far more working in the online side of the operation.

 

[Journeyman]

I admire your principle but do you:

Withdraw cash over the counter at a bank
Pay all your bills in person and never by bank transfer or direct debit
Not use email
Get the operator to connect your telephone calls rather than dial the number yourself

Business and life in general constantly changes and that means the nature of jobs change. For example t the moment in retail there might be fewer staff working on old fashioned tills but far more working in the online side of the operation.

I do try to minimise my use of direct debits, actually. I pay as many of my bills as possible by sending cheques in the post, and when dealing with queries with companies I have business with I will always send them letters in the mail where possible.

 

[Jimini]

I don’t mind either way at a regular supermarket to be honest as a general rule — whichever option has the shortest queue — but in these times, I find it much easier to use self-service tills at Tesco Expresses for example, because you’ve got room to set your bag down in the packing area to pack your stuff, rather than have a cashier slide them under the inevitable Perspex screen at the main tills, where your only option of packing stuff sensibly / comfortably is on the floor!

 

[david1212]

I've always found Poundland's self service tills (and customer service, for that matter) absolutely atrocious! Nothing ever seems to scan, and when it does, you're in with a 50% chance of getting charged the wrong price for the item - particularly an issue now that they've decided to rip us off by making it so that hardly anything is actually £1 anymore!

Then you've got to call one of the (often unhelpful and miserable) customer service assistants to huff and puff their way over to sort it out.

The amount of time this wastes is shocking, yet they never bother to open the actual tills...

You must be unlucky with your store.

The only issue I usually have is anything with an age limit. Just bad timing if the customer service assistant has more than one checkout with an issue at the same time.


Generally I only use them if a few items. From the posts above maybe better now but at my local Tesco with around 20 items at least one issue with weigh / bagging area was normal so I avoid.

 

[Bald Rick]

I never use self service tills; I much prefer to keep people in their jobs...

Do you still place long distance calls via the operator? Or get your insurance at a high street brokers? Etc. Life moves on.

(edit, I see @Hadders has made the same point)

 

[hexagon789]

Slightly at a tangent, I'm sure I remember that at McDonalds in an European country (Italy maybe?) if you want to pay with cash you still place your order on the touchscreen but take the receipt to the counter to pay and receive your food. It seemed unusual to me!

I vaguely remember something similar in possibly Switzerland or it could have been Italy.

 

[Bald Rick]

The stock loss is much greater where the self checkouts do not have weigh scales, consequently most retailers have stopped installing these and are replacing them.

I was surprised to read that. The shops I use are going the other way - taking out the weigh scales tills and installing the smaller card only versions. (Tesco, M&S). Indeed my local Tesco has kept the same units, disabled the scales, and made the same self-tills card only. This is all in the last 3-6 months.

 

[Hadders]

I was surprised to read that. The shops I use are going the other way - taking out the weigh scales tills and installing the smaller card only versions. (Tesco, M&S). Indeed my local Tesco has kept the same units, disabled the scales, and made the same self-tills card only. This is all in the last 3-6 months.

Trust me their stock shrinkage will go through the roof! Video analytics are being considered at as a way of measuring if everything has been scanned but this is very much emerging technology and I doubt this is in place at M&S or Tesco.

 

[SteveM70]

There are three main issues with the use of scales in self service tills:

1 - bad master data in the supermarket’s system causing errors as the weight change on the packing scales doesn’t appear correct. For the big retailers this data generally comes from the supplier via an online portal with no physical check when the stock is first received at a warehouse so it’s unavoidable, but can be quickly fixed once a picture emerges (obviously you’d get multiple errors on day one). These tend to be more for own brand products

2 - the scales can struggle with very light products (greetings cards are notorious) and products where the weight can vary (newspapers)

3 - customer related issues, either accidental or deliberate.

 

[route101]

Slightly at a tangent, I'm sure I remember that at McDonalds in an European country (Italy maybe?) if you want to pay with cash you still place your order on the touchscreen but take the receipt to the counter to pay and receive your food. It seemed unusual to me!

That's useful if you want to customise your order without the language barrier and avoid the charge for using a UK card on a small purchase.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Do you still place long distance calls via the operator? Or get your insurance at a high street brokers? Etc. Life moves on.

(edit, I see @Hadders has made the same point)

Well, no*, but I do still take cash out of the bank the old way... cheque to "self" over the counter...


*The phone calls bit is a moot point anyway as I'm cloth eared - but in fairness I do use direct debit for all my utility bills.

 

[ATW Alex 101]

Slightly at a tangent, I'm sure I remember that at McDonalds in an European country (Italy maybe?) if you want to pay with cash you still place your order on the touchscreen but take the receipt to the counter to pay and receive your food. It seemed unusual to me!

Can be done here too..

On the touch-screen, simply go through until it prompts you to pay by card, then cancel, then abort transaction then it will come up asking if you want to pay at till. The order automatically comes through to the till and kitchen!

 

[Typhoon]

There are three main issues with the use of scales in self service tills:

...

2 - the scales can struggle with very light products (greetings cards are notorious) and products where the weight can vary (newspapers)

3 - customer related issues , either accidental or deliberate.

I once had a problem with a (tv) magazine at a self service till - the assistant told me that it was because of the advertising junk inside, most customers just leave it on the shelves, apparently.

I have been told never to rearrange the shopping in the bags until after I have paid as this can generate errors.

To be honest I only have problems with self service at Morrisons (no staff allocated - it is the person 'on call' for all checkouts) and the Co-op (two machines, difficult to access, staff on main checkouts - 2 - deal with queries).
Asda and my nearest Sainsburys have regular staff who have got it down to a tee. Asda I would always use self service - they have done away with half of the checkouts and replaced them with scan as you shop, now there are usually quite long queues at the remaining ones.

 

[xotGD]

I used to use a Tesco in Leeds where some of the self service tills did not come equipped with a weigh pad. Much better to use, as eliminated the 'unexpected item in bagging area' faff.

 

[Westcountryman]

I occasionally use the self service at our local Lidl. Those seem to be extremely slow and dim-witted.

 

[Calthrop]

I refuse to be scammed into using technology that will cost people their jobs. I will always queue up and deal with a human, even if it takes far longer.

Same with me; but, to be honest, for different and selfish reasons (though I applaud in principle, concern about potential job losses). I'm the ultimate technophobe, and a self-confessed septuagenarian dinosaur: self-service tills fill me with fear and confusion, and I've never yet been able to use one without having to ask the attendant staff member for help. To heck with that for a game of soldiers: I might just as well, and with less misery -- as above, queue up and deal with a human.

I also continue to make much use of cash, and plan to carry on doing so; admittedly in part, just to be contrary.

 

[LAX54]

Not only age limited, but the quantity is limited too. Only 32 ibuprofen or paracetamol at a time.

Last time I was in the USA on holiday, bought some Ibuprofen, bottle of 200 (200mg) for about $6

 

[Journeyman]

Same with me; but, to be honest, for different and selfish reasons (though I applaud in principle, concern about potential job losses). I'm the ultimate technophobe, and a self-confessed septuagenarian dinosaur: self-service tills fill me with fear and confusion, and I've never yet been able to use one without having to ask the attendant staff member for help. To heck with that for a game of soldiers: I might just as well, and with less misery -- as above, queue up and deal with a human.

I also continue to make much use of cash, and plan to carry on doing so; admittedly in part, just to be contrary.

I've given up on cash mainly because I pay for as much as I can on a cashback credit card, which I pay off in full every month. It earns me a decent amount of free money every year. Other than that, I will deliberately use whatever methods of communication involve the most admin as often as I can.