CycleChat Investigates - Self Service Tills

What do you think of self service checkouts?

  • I love them. They speed me swifty onwards with my purchases.

    Votes: 29 34.9%
  • I can't stand them. They're not actually any quicker and take jobs from real humans.

    Votes: 37 44.6%
  • Meh. Don't care so long as I get my shopping.

    Votes: 12 14.5%
  • I don't have a TV.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • I'm a shoplifter.

    Votes: 5 6.0%

  • Total voters
    83
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Mike_P

Guru
Location
Harrogate
On the other hand, Aldi self-service tills are vile. They seem to be designed for people with a basket.
They are signed in my Aldi as baskets.
They've recently sacrificed two normal tills for a bank of 6 self service ones at my local Aldi.

I'm not sure what the thinking was, I assume to try and lessen queue's building up, but at busy times it really hasn't worked.
That's what they did in mine and it took a short while for people to get use to the two full tills not being there and moving further along than that immediately adjacent which was always rammed.
I do not use the Co-Op, not because they do not have self service, but because they are far more expensive locally than Aldi or Lidl.
Like Waitrose the Co-Op can have some good offer especially injunction with their app
Just bought 8 apples which I have weighed as 750g for £1.10. Nicely dated as sell by May 11, or E11 in their code that no customer can understand they think.
 
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Alex321

Veteran
Location
South Wales
Without getting too political in here and risking a rap on the knuckles from Spokey 😁...maybe have a look at the billions paid out to shareholders ?
They're still making huge profits,slashing jobs and squeezing suppliers...they're doing just fine.

You just prove my point.

"Huge profits" is meaningless when it is talking about how many £. And so are dividends.

It is profit margins which matter, and theirs are NOT high - nor are any of the other major supermarket chains.

And again, dividends per share, not total amount.

I'm not suggesting they are struggling, but they also aren't taking the excessive profits some seem to think.
 

markemark

Über Member
Maybe it's a location thing. But around here the tills often only have a person or two and everyone uses the self service. They are massively quicker and from what I can see people are proficient at using them. I don't tend to go to big supermatkets as that's done online. Mostly in store are the smallest stores with a few items.
 

SpokeyDokey

67, & my GP says I will officially be old at 70!
Moderator
Without getting too political in here and risking a rap on the knuckles from Spokey 😁..
:laugh:

I'm gardening at the moment and currently in for a pit stop...

... but, I have been wondering, whilst cutting & strimming, if I had sent the thread off in a NCAP direction.

I didn't fancy having to self-flagellate. ^_^

Or alternatively, having @Pat "5mph" give me a rollocking. 🙄
 

Electric_Andy

Heavy Metal Fan
Location
Plymouth
I can see people are proficient at using them
I think this is a big factor, it takes a lot of time for the masses to adapt to a new way of shopping. Years ago I always used to see people getting angry when seemingly everything they did resulted in an error message. Now it's very rarely I see anyone having any difficulty. If you bag an item and it says "please bag the item" then I find taking it out and dropping it in the bag from a height does the job. Recently the only time staff have to assist is when I've got paracetamol or alcohol
 

Jody

Stubborn git
I love and hate them in equal measure.

Sometimes they are convenient but they take jobs away from people but some are then employed to look in your bags and make sure you're not nicking anything.

Saving on wages but then losing millions in theft.
 

Pat "5mph"

A kilogrammicaly challenged woman
Moderator
Location
Glasgow
news at work this morning... we're apparently getting another 7 self service tills, so that'll be 14 and 5 normal tills
Wow, yours must be a big store.
I think my local Aldi has 5 normal tills and 8 self service, installed a couple of months ago.
I love the self service tills, as I buy little but often.
I think that for folks with full trolleys a manned checkout is actually quicker.
Maybe now would be the right time for Aldi to update their reduced stickers to labels you can scan?
The poor person at the self service tills is forever putting through reductions, a bit of a waste of his time imo.
 

Mike_P

Guru
Location
Harrogate
Local Waitrose has had a reshuffle; there were five self service before the main tills and then another four with the tobacco kiosk on the way out. Needless to say those four could be guaranteed to be available whilst people were queuing for the five. They have moved them all plus the tobacco kiosk before the main tills. Not sure if they have increased the number but there is a clear reduction in the main tills.
 
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