I've stopped using self-checkout because I always run into troubles. In one store when I accidentally double-scan an item, I have to press the button to call someone, and it takes 5 minutes for someone to show up.

In another store you need to place your groceries onto a weighing shelf, and somehow I couldn't figure out what to do to make the machine happy.

For produce and pastries that don't have a bar code you have to navigate through a stupid hierarchical menu and I just couldn't find some of the items...

At some point these machines hopefully will improve (just like automatic ticket machines have improved), but for now I still prefer waiting in a normal checkout line.

> I've stopped using self-checkout because I always run into troubles.

Kroger's self-checkout is absolutely obnoxious, they've hooked it into some machine-vision stuff to try and stop you from stealing, but it literally stops you about every third item no matter what you do.

I can't really fathom how you can include "scan, scan, scan, weight, scan, scan, scan, checkout, touch my credit card, go" in your comment and consider that comparable to "leave." For routine grocery shopping the technology is incredible.

That said, I'll grant that it's also creepy AF. The bigger issue for me, though, is that Amazon is so fucking awful at physical retail inventory management (both the selection of items that should be there and the selection of items actually available for purchase) that the Go Grocery in Seattle went from being "this is how I buy groceries" to "there is zero chance they'll have most, let alone all, of the items on my incredibly boring grocery list."

Amazon still wins, though... I end up walking the other direction and going to Whole Foods...

The selection is directly tied to the JWO technology which almost by definition gets confused by brands whose product line labels (e.g. flavors) are too similar, which is the common case not the exception. Sure, they have the same price but then the breaks automated reordering from the DC. The only solution is to not carry variations of a product, which then leads to crappy selection. Fine for a convenience store not fine for general purpose grocery.

source: I owned a chain of specialty food retailers as well as a warehouse, and this issue even stymied humans at times!

Don't the cameras pay close attention to the grabbing of the product?

> With self-checkout, you don't need an account which is crucial for travelers.

At non-Amazon branded JWO locations you insert a credit card in the machine when you walk in, no account needed. I recently encountered one like this at an airport.

I just returned from a trip in Asia where 50% of machines did not accept any of my cards. In one case (parking garage) I asked a passerby to pay for me with their card, and gave them cash.

While I enjoy that I can pay everything by card at home, and mostly stopped going to the handful of places that don't accept cards, I do appreciate the fact that cash is usually available as a backup.

Many American credit cards don't support some of the security features required in other countries. For example they might not support the card itself knowing your available balance so that small transactions like parking can be done entirely offline, and the parking garage collecting a cryptographic proof from your card that you have $3.50 available in your account. Remember that to do this, your card has to offer such proof in whatever currency the parking garage uses.

How can this work if you have online or recurring charges? It seems like a lot of work to still not know the balance.

It isn't a perfect system. The bank guarantees they will pay for any charges that the card digitally signed, and the bank will take any losses.

Most banks typically authorize the card to make ~$150 of payments or so offline. Anything bigger, or for risky customers or those with a low balance, it needs to be an online transaction.

The benefit of offline transactions is they can be done in under half a second, compared to the 5-10 seconds online transactions take. For things like opening the barrier in a car park, 10 seconds is too long.

I was at Kastrup (Copenhagen) and saw a 7-11 Go self-serve. I didn't get to try because it hadn't opened (I was on an early flight), but I can see this working.

https://twitter.com/CPHAirports/status/1520015132050481153

Good point, hasn't seen this but makes sense. Obviously both JWO and SC depend on credit cards being accepted.

> I'm not even sure how much floor space JWO saves vs self-checkout.

Not sure JWO is about saving floor space. It's more about saving the customer time. A grocery line on a Saturday afternoon is frustrating. Imagine Costco having this.

JWO works with products sold by weight (like produce -- it uses sensor fusion with weight sensors), large items and identical-looking items too. I tried it last week at Amazon Fresh. It works.

I worry how accurate it is. An error of just a few grams overcharging a customer will get Amazon in trouble with regulators. While just a few grams less cuts out the whole profit margin.

Remember that the Amazon weighing shelves have to deal with someone putting produce across two shelves (ie. A an apple balanced so it is partially weighed by one shelf and partially by another).

Since the shelves are large (ie. 10 foot tall), they also have to deal with the buffeting air from air conditioners in the shop, while still detecting someone taking a 5 gram SIM card pack...

> Late night in Stockholm train station, I bought one bottle of fizzy water and checkout added 30 seconds or so.

This seems like a situation that would be improved for all concerned parties if there was a vending machine in the station.

Well, a vending machine would have limited inventory. Whereas you can buy a lot more stuff at a store. I was at Stockholm Centralstation and used the self-checkout there too -- it works fine if you have less than 5 items (which you typically would).

The Co-op grocery store in Stockholm Centralstation also has self-checkouts but it's self-checkout is a lot slower when you have 20-30 items in your cart, and you have to catch a train.

> a vending machine would have limited inventory. Whereas you can buy a lot more stuff at a store.

You bought one bottle of water. You're not benefiting from the store. The store owner isn't benefiting from you using his store instead of his vending machine. Store customers aren't benefiting from you using the store instead of the vending machine.

If it works in the Shanghai subway (daily ridership roughly ten times the population of Stockholm), it'll work in the Stockholm stations too.

I think you’re replying to the wrong person.

Also, people usually buy stuff like a drink, magazine, chewing gum, books, maybe other snacks from a store. Not sure how a single vending machine would be able to vend all that. And even if you could — I’ve seen Japanese vending machines — you’d only be able to carry a very small selection.

Can't argue with US it seems ;-)

What's wrong with the usual check-out process? It also creates extra jobs for people that, most probably, would have difficulties finding new ones (some of the lady cashiers at the super-market close to me are well into their 50s). Plus, it forces you to have a little human interaction, that hasn't killed anyone, quite the contrary. More human interactions, even with strangers, less "what pills should I take to make my life less miserable".

They could add back in the job where someone else presses the button in the elevator for you, that would also create jobs.

No need to be whimsical about it. But, yes, that's par for the course coming from an IT-focused forum, to hell with people in need of low-paying jobs, and we also don't want to speak with them, our lives are way too important for that.

I feel like we should be slightly more ambitious with ensuring the wellbeing of people than keeping around pointless jobs? At the least, if we're stuck on the government ensuring that there are jobs of some sort, it seems like jobs say more actively better the community (say library staff, community center staff, etc) would be much more fulfilling?

> around pointless jobs?

"Pointless jobs" for whom? It definitely puts food on the table for said persons' families, that is definitely not "pointless". Or do you think a lady in her 50s will just hop into any job at her discretion? (no, "community stuff" will just not cut it, you need at least a university diploma for that).

And this comes after those discussions on the tens of thousands of pointless jobs inside FAANG companies, a discussion that we had a few days ago. Jobs which are paid very handsomely, btw.

If we are compelling companies to pay for people that they would otherwise not, that seems like a job without use.

Give people welfare without giving them jobs that are drags on progress.

> (no, "community stuff" will just not cut it, you need at least a university diploma for that)

Give me a break. The world functioned fine before any and every random job required a university diploma and would be better off if people stopped asking for them. You would think on a site worshipping the famed hacker-without-a-degree this opinion would be absent.

> Or do you think a lady in her 50s will just hop into any job at her discretion?

Come on, this is an obvious strawman

Ideally, as more jobs are automated and less work is needed, a robust welfare state would provide people with income so they wouldn’t need to do jobs that exist purely to employ someone.

Many people who work such jobs are mothers who wish they could spend more time with their children, adults who wish they could care for an aging parent, students who should have more time studying and socializing, etc.

“Creates extra jobs” has a pretty direct linkage to “drives higher prices”.

If the job is extra/not needed, some consumers will rationally prefer to self-serve (for whatever connotation if that you prefer).

Then those "not needed" will rationally (and in many instance literally) kick those rational consumers in the head, in order to have something to put on the table. It's as simple as that. And then it becomes a race of "let's better fund the police so that we'll keep the not needed at bay" vs "maybe it's just not good policy to kick the not needed while they're down, maybe it's not all their fault".

We should be expecting a smaller proportion of the population to be working in most sub-sectors of the economy each year, as new, innovative areas provide opportunities for relatively inexperienced people with high aptitude to work more productively and earn higher wages. It's fine having people bagging groceries at supermarket checkouts, but that isn't really going to work out in the coming years if those same people are going to be demanding state-of-the-art medical treatments, developed-world retirement benefits and cutting-edge consumer goods.

While we're at it, let's add staff to "checkout" code from source control. :-)

Decathlon has RFID based, no-scan self checkout. You put all the items in a bin then pay and leave. Worked really well the few times I’ve used it

I avoid using self checkout because I don't want to perform work that ought to be performed by the business. When did I become an employee?

Typically, in my situation self checkout is substantially faster than waiting for someone to do it for me.

I don’t see why I should stand in line when I could exert myself for 90 seconds and be out of the store 5-10 minutes quicker.

When you traveled to the store, walked the aisles etc. For no hassle, use ecommerce/delivery.

I agree and start to do this always now.

> it works pretty well these days

Maybe in select stores?

I personally experience more headache than great UX using self checkout in most stores.