They’ve now opened the self-service checkouts at Sainsburys in Brookwood (Knaphill). I decided to brave it and try one. I walked away after 2 minutes having had my sanity tested to the extreme.
The first test of my patience was trying to persuade the machine I was using my own bag (my backpack). You have two options – press START or USE YOUR OWN BAGS. I had to keep tapping the screen a dozen times before the thing recognised my choice. I wouldn’t mind, but these were big big buttons in the middle of the screen.
The second test was getting the machine to recognise my bag. You’re prompted to put your bags in the bagging area and then you can begin scanning. But no! That would be too EASY. No, after I had put my bag in the bagging area, the machine told me that I needed an assistant to verify the bag. Verify the bag? After lifting and putting down the backpack a few times I gave up and flagged down one of the three assistances hovering by. Once he scanned his ID badge, the machine allowed me to scan. Hallelujah!
Alas! Things went down hill after scanning the third item. Having scanned it and put it into my backpack, the machine decided to accuse me of having an additional item it didn’t recognise. How? It was at this point I gave up in fear of steam blowing out my ears and fire snorting from my nose. I put everything back in the basket and went around to the nearest manned checkout and completed the entire transaction in far less time than it would have if I had persevered with the machine.
The self-service checkout machines appear to use the same operating system as that of the machines at Tescos (but obviously branded and customised to the store they’re sitting in). Until some other manufacturer steps up to bat and devises a machine that actually bloody works, there is no chance in hell I will ever consider using one of these things again.
I dont find them too bad – that is until I want to use my own bag , and have the exact same problems as above. I think a major improvement that needs to be made, is if we are going to have automated checkouts, they could at least make them look like Summer Glau.
Those things are the devil. I’ve used one once, for one item. After finally getting it to start (same button problem), I scanned my one item and it insisted that I put the herbs down on the grubby bagging shelf before it would let me pay. When finding my wallet, I rested my backpack on the shelf and triggered the infamous (thanks to Bill Bailey I think) “unexpected item in bagging area” warning. Bloody useless. It doesn’t even seem to cut the numbers of staff they use, because they have two staff for four self-checkouts and two often seem to be out of service (flashing red light on top) whenever I’ve looked.