Ugh, the new, remodeled, Ikea in Seattle got rid of the self checkouts. Checking out now takes at least 15 minutes. Sometimes more. It's awful.

Any idea why? I've never seen a store add them and then remove them.

Actually, lots of stores are removing self-checkouts nowadays.

They tend to be a lot slower than cashiers, lead to more theft, and few people like to use them anyway.

Source? I've heard quite the opposite...

Edit: according to an international study theft increased from 1-2% to 4% but 60% of the people polled said they only stole it because the item wouldn't scan. This seems to be a technical and UX problem. There is a lot of room for improvement with the machines and from my experience it varies by store.

Otherwise 75% of people said it made their experience faster.

I wasn't able to find any evidence of 'lots of stores removing them' though...

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/bryanpearso...

> I wasn't able to find any evidence of 'lots of stores removing them' though...

IKEA is phasing them out in Germany, and all German store chains that had self-checkout have since removed them, or are in the process. There is not a single chain that is actively deploying new ones, or keeping them.

Strange, quite the opposite experience here in Canada.

Our biggest pharmacy (Shoppers Drug Mart) and dollar store (Dollarama) both with thousands of stores are going to be deploying self-checkouts soon. Various grocery stores and big box stores all over the city already have it.

Ikea only has 2 stores in the area so even if they remove it it won't be that noticeable in terms of deployment...

It may be Imea is trying more of a customer service thing for certain stores ala Amazon's focus on human interactions vs actual ROI or popularity.

Huh, that's surprising. Two of the three supermarkets near me have phased out cashiers almost entirely.

Same, my local grocery store added more machines after an initial phase and there are disproportionately bigger lineups to use them than the cashiers.

Not to mentioned Ontario, where I'm from, just passed new minimum wage laws ($15CAD/hr) and a bunch of retailers are responding by investing in self checkout for the first time.

That was the motivation as well when the 9€ minimum wage was passed here, too, but they've removed all of them since.

Cashiers are much faster than self checkout, and you still need to employ one person for every 4 self checkouts to prevent theft.

Around where I live, beside Walmart Superstores, those supermarkets that added some self-checkout have since removed them. Self-checkout is such an abysmal experience in supermarkets especially if you buy things like produce that I'll actively avoid any store that uses them extensively.

I have less of a problem in convenience-type stores but I'm usually not buying much stuff and rarely produce.

Maybe it's differing design of machines or something. The only time I'll use a manned checkout these days is if I'm buying alcohol. Otherwise, the automatic one is generally far quicker, and there are usually far more of them.

One of those frustrating problems that's already solved, but in pieces too widely scattered to do anyone any good.

Well, automated checkout with RFID tags is nowadays a viable solution, and first stores are deploying it.