New York
CNN
—
The backlash against self-checkout is growing, and stores are starting to dial back on the technology after it exploded over the past few years.
Booths, a British supermarket chain, said it’s removing self-checkout stations in all but two of its 28 stores. In the United States, Walmart, Costco, Wegmans and other chains have also revised their self-checkout strategies.
“Our customers have told us this over time — that the self-scan machines that we’ve got in our stores … can be slow, they can be unreliable (and) they’re obviously impersonal,” Booths managing director Nigel Murray told the BBC.
Paul Melling/Alamy Stock Photo
British supermarket Booths is removing self-checkout machines.
Customers at Booths also frequently misidentified which fruits and vegetables they were buying when prompted by self-checkout machines. Alcohol purchases also were not smooth transactions through self-checkout because employees had to verify customers’ ages.
“Some customers don’t know one different apple versus another, for example,” Murray said. “There’s all sorts of fussing about with that and then the minute you put any alcohol in your basket somebody’s got to come and check that you’re of the right age.”
A spokesperson for Booths told CNN that employees checking out shoppers was a better customer experience.
