Comment by hrktb
6 years ago
Speaking for France, a lot of supermarket who introduced self-checkouts have further invested in developing scanning apps operated by the client on their phone as a parallel solution. Basically a low-tech amazon-go solution, where the client is its own casher.
Those bring their own set of issues, can be difficult to understand and use from the customer, yet they still felt way easier to deal with than the SCO experience.
We've had this for years with Waitrose, who just give you a scanner that you can take round the store. I think more recently they let you do it on the phone. Then you just pay at a special checkout and leave. They also have no-scale checkouts where you scan and leave (these are still attended). Usually if you buy something very expensive it'll flag up for a "random" check which always happens to be the expensive item.
The handheld scanners are easy to use. All it has is a trigger for scanning (which everyone knows how to do), scroll buttons, and a delete button if you make a mistake.