Self-serve checkout? Pay attention to what you're doing!

[unclevlad]

So this just happened.  Market run today.  Get what I need for the next few days.  A few rather slow checkout people who don't know how to use the self-serve checkout, but ok...get through that.

 

Scan everything.

 

Finish and pay.

 

"Attendant needed.""  Huh?  She's stepped away, but comes back.  Finish and pay.  SAME THING.  HUH???

 

She gets that cleared, I go to pay...tap, tap, DING.  OK

 

Wait.

There should be a transaction confirmation on my phone.  Nope.

But it's printing the receipt....

 

Look at receipt......wait, I didn't pay with a debit card.....

 

What happened...the person before me did NOT clear the transaction.  This particular self-checkout has one more step after tapping/swiping card;  you have to hit Finish and Pay on the screen.  THAT's the last confirmation.

 

Double check...yeah, the first item on *my* receipt is cheap canned coffee, which I never buy.  Then it's my stuff.  

 

So that person got charged for everything I scanned.  BUT that person was long gone.  So they're gonna get a rather unpleasant surprise.

 

The fact that this person also used a debit card, means he may not have any recourse.  This guy was in a hurry, didn't do things right.  I feel a little bad about it but in no way guilty...finding who this person was, doesn't strike me as practical even if I was.

 

PAY ATTENTION to the on-screen messages when you use a self-checkout.  When the receipt starts printing, that's the signal that the transaction's closed. 

 

 

[Asperion]

I have had something similar to this before.  As a result,  I prefer human cashiers when possible and if not will take much more time than required and insist on a printed receipt.  While checking out  I scan one item,  make certain there were no problems (multiscan, need verification,  etc), then move on to next item and repeat process until all items are scanned.  Then I will pay,  make certain payment is verified,  get receipt,  and verify transaction is closed.  Only then will I be satisfied that everything is good and leave. On average,  this makes me move real slow and will annoy everyone behind me,  but I feel that the agrivation is worth it to be sure that there are no uncorrected errors. 

[Ternaugh]

I use self-service cashiers only when forced, usually at Home Depot or Wal-Mart. I don't shop at those stores very often now.

 

When I do use one, I tend to follow a similar strategy as Asperion, and I take as long as I need to process each step.

[unclevlad]

I use them regularly.  The trick is to just either watch carefully, or know what *should* be happening by sight and sound and just monitor that way...because checkout personnel mess up sometimes too.  One store uses 30% off stickers on meats fairly often;  they're big, something like 1.5" square or so?  And yellow.  But checkers just mechanically scan and miss them from time to time.  Considering the price of even mid-level beef cuts, that can be a fairly substantial savings lost.

 

But to each his own.  I like using them but I'd hate to see them disappear completely.

 

BTW, there's MANY good reasons to not shop at Wal-Mart....