Comment by AppleAtCha
9 hours ago
Yeah I agree that it can potentially go wrong but in my experience here in east TN the machines have gotten better to the point that hasn't happened for me in the past few years. Also it seems like the "just walk out" process would have more potential error modes but I never visited one.
Yeah, I've been using self-checkout at my Jewel (grocery store) in Chicago weekly for about a decade (multiple times a week in the past, before I bought my own cart, I walk to it), and had maybe 5-10 issues with the scale in total. None recently.
The best machine I've seen so far is one in my local gas station, where there's just a surface and a camera. Toss whatever you want onto the surface, all haphazard like, check that the screen agrees with reality (it always has so far), and bump your watch/phone/credit card and walk out. We're talking substantially less than 30s, oftentimes less than 10s.
I've had three failures in the last week. I had the "thought my bag was product" problem, the "I somehow double scanned" problem and the "need a reset but no one can explain why." The first and third were on the same visit.
Interesting! Thanks for the reality check. I personally like the home depot ones with the very prominent handheld scanner for big items. Hopefully it will keep improving. The days of waiting in line to check out were terrible and I don't want to go back.