Theft and complaints are taking a toll on self-checkout. Now, Walmart (WMT) wants you to pay $98 a year for Walmart+ for the self-checkout privilege at some stores.
Retailers Scale Back Self-Checkouts
The Wall Street Journal reports Retailers Scale Back Self-Checkouts to Curb Irritation and Theft
Attention, shoppers: Retailers are rethinking your cashier job.
Store operators are modifying how they use self-checkout stations in a bid to boost their bottom lines and improve the shopping experience for customers.
Some retailers are pulling kiosks out of stores as a way to keep a lid on theft. Others, including Target (TGT), Dollar General (DG) and the regional grocery chain Schnucks, have limited how many items customers can bring to self-checkouts to avoid bottlenecks and alleviate headaches for staff.
Schnucks now limits its self-checkout lanes to 10 items or fewer. While the primary intention is to improve customer service and checkout efficiency, Simon said the company expects some reduction of theft as well. “This item limit will help us maintain our costs while keeping the prices lower for our customers,” he said.
About a fifth of people who used self-checkouts said they accidentally took an item without paying for it, according to a survey of 2,000 shoppers last year by LendingTree. Some 15% of self-checkout users admitted to stealing an item on purpose.
Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, said it removed self-checkout lanes and replaced them with cashier-staffed lanes at locations including stores in Cleveland and Shrewsbury, Mo. When checkout access is limited, some stores are designating self-checkout lanes for Walmart+ customers, who pay a membership fee of $98 a year.
In 2022, Dollar General said self-checkout was so successful and popular with customers that it tried making some stores entirely self-checkout. A year later, CEO Todd Vasos pulled back on those plans.
“We had relied and started to rely too much this year on self-checkout in our stores,” Vasos said on a December earnings call. “We should be using self-checkout as a secondary checkout vehicle, not a primary.”
In March, the company said it would remove self-checkout for stores with the highest levels of shrink. For remaining stores with self-checkout, it would limit customers to scanning five items or fewer.
Do You Like Self-Checkout?
I cannot stand it. My wife prefers it.
Something always seems to go wrong for me. You cannot scan beer or wine, the bar code won’t read, and Costco has a limit on the cost amount.
The latter hit me at Costco this week when I tried to scan a whole beef tenderloin. I had to call an attendant a second time for beer. Loose produce is generally an issue.
Besides, trained clerks are faster, assuming you can find one. But it’s theft issue that will kill self-checkout at grocery stores. Double up a package of T-bone steaks and poof, the store just lost over $30.
RFIDs can take care of general merchandise, but RFIDs in hamburger?
Now Walmart wants you to pay for the agony of self-checkout. No thanks.
A Rise in the Incentive to Steal
On April 27, I noted Growth in Spending Exceeds Growth in Income for Most of the Last 10 Months
A deeper dive into personal income and outlays for March shows significant signs of consumer stress to maintain standards of living.
Only twice in the last 10 months has growth in real income been greater than growth in real spending.
Count dishonest folks struggling with food or rent among those who like self-checkout. The number is sure to rise as the economy slows.
take it away im not paying them for me to do the work next they’ll be asking for tips
our local wally mart has rows upon rows of self checkout – with about 10 lands with cashiers
loads of wally mart employees watch people checking out
guess that THEFT loss must be from BLUE STATES
Well, you certainly didn’t FACT CHECK that story. You just lost a reader.
Walmart should be paying me to self-scan. I should get a discount on every item I pay for without the assistance of an “associate.” There’s no way I’ll pay extra for the privilege of performing a retailer’s responsibility. I’m already doing it for no pay. The retailer should be satisfied with that.
I’ve watched the Wal-Mart self-scan human monitor watch customers scan and bag an entire basket, not pay, and walk out the door. Doing nothing. Not even calling a manager. “Oh well.”
They won’t act to prevent theft. Afraid an employee will be shot. Or they know police and courts won’t do anything, so figure what’s the point. They’d rather shift the cost on their law-abiding customers. Who won’t complain or shoot them over it.
They don’t f with those they fear. They don’t fear their loyal customers, and f with them instead. We live in law of the jungle times. It’s better to be feared than liked.
Accidentally had in my cart an expensive SD card that had fallen in such a way as to be lost among the bags. As I walked out of the store, the alarm went off because it was tagged. No one stopped me because no one was at the entrance. I thought it was a mistake so I went to my car and discovered the card after I loaded the bags. Because I have an awareness of God seeing me because I’m a Christian, I suppressed the inclination to just take it. After coming back into the store which set the alarm off again, I sought out one of the checkout supervisors who was alerted by the alarm and told her I needed to buy the item She looked shocked I bothered to come back in and buy it. Loss of any faith in God, who sees our actions even if others don’t, has made theft a simple matter of choice because there are no more penalties or, most importantly, no sense of guilt.
I once walked out of a Walmart with the sense that I didn’t scan something. I looked at my receipt and realized I was correct. I took the item back in, and scanned and paid for it.
BTW, I’m an atheist. God doesn’t have to watch me, because he apparently made me honest.
showing a belief in being made it’s a start.
I was never a big Walmart shopper to begin with, occasionally go there for groceries, but since the closest store shut down all the self-checkout I now pretty much avoid it. Lines too long to justify the “big savings” which often amounts to a penny less on some items.
Okay. I’ll bite. I went to the grocery store a couple weeks ago, and the only available checkout option was an entirely unattended group of self-checkout stations. Only two of the five stations were functional, but I fortunately managed to pay and leave without any major errors. Other customers had to put items back on the shelves (hams and turkeys, beer and wine, and certain other items aren’t allowed, and there’s a strict limit of 15 items) or go through the system multiple times. But I’ve had self-checkout machines that would’t dispense correct change (the store doesn’t take cards except supplemental nutrition assistance) or couldn’t ring up meat right (charged me triple the sticker price), and I had to accept it. So the errors go in the store’s favor too.
Walmart should charge a membership fee like Costco but taylored to their particular demographic – perhaps $1.19 every time you enter.
*tailored.
I’m assuming the OP was being smug.
The irony.
At the Burbank Walmart around 2 months or so ago, the vitamin aisle seemed half empty and what remained was now locked behind plexiglass. During Covid it became a habit to grocery shop at 7am. Still do. Few people in line for manned checkout at that time. A luddite on self checkout.
Old man Mish yells at clouds… I mean mechanized cash registers.
Walmart intended self checkout to speed up the checkout process, but Soros and the Marxists used it to facilitate more shoplifting and more theft.
Seize the money from Soros and his Open Corruption society “non profits”, reimburse stores (both Walmart and mom-and-pop). If Soros doesn’t like it, he can move back to Hungary
Doesn’t that fiend have a domicile near Greenwich CT? Prob fits right in with the home-grown Wall Street sociopaths.
He has a mansion in NYC
Strange how a billionaire who spends his fortune trying to destroy the USA is allowed to be free among those he has vowed to put under totalitarian control. A truly evil human being whose son will take over from his father the funding of anarcho-tyranny.
Dear Walmart:
Fix your ******** parking lots.
Clean up the trash around your stores!
All the $$$$ in the world and you need a UTV to navigate some of the lots I have been in.
Also, i’ve noticed some have got rid of all the parking lot trashcans.
The parking lots are an abomination.
Let me guess the stores that charge $100 a year will only have 2 checkers at peak times.
These morons are seriously over complicating things.
I shop at Walmart and Costco. Local WMT store discontinued self checkout for a few months, now self checkout is open, I use self checkout all the time and use the handheld scanner to speed the checkout process. Costco self checkout sucks as there is no hand held scanner. The employees assigned to self checkout have scanners and will scan your items if the employee is available. Much prefer self checkout especially at local Costco.
they changed the checkout at some or all stores the employee will do large items, eggs and some awkward items and of course alcoholic beverages you have to do the rest and put it on the platform and then back in the cart.
Why does Walmart have 20 checkout lanes, and maybe one or two are open? The rest of us being forced into self-check out lanes, which often breakdown and fail? Walmart makes $Billions in profit, start paying decent wages + benefits…
Because they can raise prices and make checking out miserable, and people will still shop there. Why wouldn’t they?
I’m glad to see stores following the data / money and adjusting the balance of self vs clerk checkout to optimize the speed vs theft problem. No single solution fits every situation.
Employees are many times the thiefs. Self checkout avoids it.
Grocery self checkout has no waiting where I live, and I have plenty of time to check that prices are as advertised before I pay. Prices are wrong more often than you would expect for those of you who don’t check.
It all comes down to time and convenience for me. I will go to whichever looks quickest. My time is too valuable to waste. Which is why my wife and I both prefer shopping online when possible.
Either way; these are first world problems that we are complaining about here. We are all fortunate to live in the land of plenty; many poor souls on this planet do not have electricity, running water, and adequate shelter. While we complain about things they can only dream of having.
We have only First World problems.
Imagine one’s time being SO TOO valuable to waste buying groceries…BTW, we almost always avoid self-checkout, as it’s offensive by the retailer like WMT where I’d have to often wait in line to self-checkout. The gall, and besides, there are people that want to work and need those jobs. I recently made a scene in Lowe’s and wrote to them complaining about no staffed check outs available and that I wouldn’t participate if that was their business model. Today, I noticed both registers at our local Lowes staffed. I did use the self checkout since I only have a pvc coupler and an outdoor faucet to buy.
You have time to waste and use it to make scenes at retailers. Nice.
LOL. Then the top post above has Mr Kaplan shopping at Walmart AND Costco! …really guys? …….. I prefer to spend my saturday morning time at my local diner(its in an airport, run by a foodie, food is good) anyway we spend and hour saturday morning solving all the worlds problems………… Its funny though how Monday morning nothing ever changes
Bingo!
I must remember to ask the butler to ask the cook if she prefers self-checkout or an attendant.
that’s what joe biden will do
was in grocery just yesterday in nyc. self checkout was a breeze
I prefer a cashier but I don’t want to wait in line a 1/2 hour to check out because there aren’t enough cashiers.
Ask for the Manager and complain. Make sure everyone in line hears you. :0
I do. I’m very vocal and loud.
I don’t like waiting in line either, but I’ve never had to wait in any checkout line for 1/2 hour. It may SEEM like it’s that long, but it’s usually 5 minutes, maybe 10 at the most.
Play the game like Ken Griffin at Citidel with high-frequency trading or ticket reseller brokers. Get in line, then sell your spot for $5 to someone behind you to move up.
This was a poorly researched article by someone.
Walmart+ is like a lamer version of Amazon Prime and includes GROCERY DELIVERY and Gasoline Discounts, among other things.
It’s NOT just self-checkout.
Cheers!
There was no mention of what Walmart+ did or didn’t included other than the checkout option. Anyone that pays any attention to the information WMT provides whenever one uses their app, website, etc knows it includes no minimum on shipping, delivery, discounted gas, paramount+ and I think access to special straight talk plans. I don’t think I’m the only reader that understood that it included more than the option of self checkout but, for the purpose of the story, focused on that option as a Walmart + customer.
I think most theft for those that do self checkout is coming from younger people that weren’t “indoctrinated” by their parents that it was wrong to steal. I sort of saying that tongue in cheek but those over 60 probably know what I’m talking about. Individual freedom has come at the cost of collective responsibility. Those at the top (including corporate executives) have pushed the balkanization of western societies and this is one of the results. I doubt self checkouts save much money and it’s likely the trend will go even further toward theft as faith in institutions continues to decline and old people die out.
one word: Instacart. You open the app, click on what you want and presto it’s delivered to your door an hour or two later from any big box store or grocer. No need to drive to store and waste time walking around looking for stuff and buy things you don’t need. Leaves extra time for researching investments and posting comments on Mishtalk.
On the rare instance wife makes me go to big box store, Sam’s has an app where you scan the bar code as you put stuff into the cart then you simply walk out the door. No need for self or manned checkout. That is the best experience so far aside from Instacart.
noticed that you didn’t mention the cost(s) of the delivery services.
I got a one year membership for $19 on promotion. It’s free delivery on orders over $35 or $10 (depending on store). Some Chase credit cards offer free or reduced membership fees too.
But there is a cost to everything. I don’t have a car so I don’t pay for insurance, maintenance, tolls, fuel or other expenses. I also don’t waste time driving there, walking around then driving back, that alone makes it worth it beyond the car expenses. I value one hour of my time at $350 so it makes sense. All that saved money goes into my investment portfolio.
Of course, everyone needs to do the math and figure things out for themselves. Unfortunately, not too many people here know what math is so they stay poor by spending every dollar that comes in and can’t figure out how to get ahead.
Wow!
Are you $525/hour for over eight hours?
Would be better if Bezo delivered everything to the doors and included an autographed dick pic.
Yeah, let’s abolish serendipity for good.
Nothing ever came of it anyway.
Does the Costco scanner know the difference between a gold bar and Hershey bar? I know the idiot students at the elite universities don’t when Mark Dice asks them on campus.
Theft, like corporate taxes and minimum wage laws, increase product cost.
Food theft will continue to get worse for a variety of factors and anti theft enforcement is no where to be found.
I like the Costco membership model as it does limit theft. Sadly, the grocery country club model should not have to exist, but must exist out of practicality.
Inflation and theft go together.
I personally have no problem with self-checkout.
As for Walmart ‘pulling back’ on self-checkout… I guess I have to see how many stores out of the thousands they operate are involved. My guess is that we are talking about a very small number of locations. I personally have not seen any Walmart stores where they have reduced or eliminated the self checkouts.
I have to defend Costco because my experience with their “self-checkout” has been nothing but flawless. My take is that self-checkout at Costco is not a labor saving initiative but a customer experience and flow initiative. It gives customers with small quantity purchases a fighting chance. My experience has been that their self-check area is well staffed and I have waited no more than 10 seconds for someone to scan liquor or address an issue. As to loose produce, 99% of Cosco produce is bagged or packaged and that if it is a single loose item, it has a bar code. Cosco has it right. I was at a Target today and 100% of the self check-out lanes were closed. Costco continues to be best in class.
Yeah, definitely not a labor-saving initiative, at least not at the Costco I most frequent. There they usually have one Costco worker assigned to each self-checkout. Seems like kind of a waste of manpower.
I like Costco and I’d prefer to see them get rid of the self checkout. It’s a losing direction because younger people are increasingly more likely to steal when using a self checkout. People are losing faith in the system and that means less faith in following laws.
Actually, I had a bad experience at Costco self-checkout. The scanned price was incorrect, and when I retrieved the shelf sticker proving I was right, I had to go to manager, who scanned it on her system, and lo and behold, I was right. They had no explanation for why the self checkout scanner was wrong, and I don’t know if the manned counters were aligned with the managers prices, but buyer beware. Given the premium on speed, I wouldn’t be surprised if some percentage of prices are incorrect when scanned at the self checkout lines.
How many stupid things can they think of?
I keep waiting for Costco or Walmart to “Thank me for my service”. /sarc Seriously, about the only time I’ve used it is when having just an item or two and the regular lines were insane. This trend is another example of turning us all into the equivalent of traveling by bus in some 3rd world country…only without the chickens. (well, no chickens YET)
I tried them out at first but found them not very fast nor useful. I also resented the random check of what I just checked out by security. Made me feel like I was in Oregon or somewhere like that where theft is expected. I never use it now.
Man here in Florida you either self checkout in 3 minutes or less (20 item limit at Walmart) or you wait 15 minutes in a line. It’s a no brainer to self checkout.
That said, I go to the store less often than ever since Walmart here will deliver for free if you order 60+ worth of stuff and these days that’s trivial to do.
I live in France where you can self-check if you want but also you can be served if you want. I do not go to the mega-stores but go to the local ones where they appreciate your business. I also go to the weekly open-air markets where you can get served like a human being. I rarely wait over 5 minutes for anything. We can also get free delivery if you are over 60 years old or if you spend over 50€.
A regional chain where I live swore they’d never do self checkouts and they finally started a couple years ago. Now you have to use them if you want to get out quickly.
Baker’s supermarket in Omaha was probably the last large supermarket chain that would bring your groceries out to the car – they didn’t have cart corrals. They were number one in the market until Kroger took them over and put in cart corrals and self checkout.
Maybe they need to re-recalculate the ADDITIONAL persons (seven???) they will have to put behind cash registers for every self-checkout they close. I cant believe the MBAs will allow this as it would go against their prime directive .. namely, costly, slovenly human employees are to be replaced any way you can. You could steal half the store and it still wouldnt add up to the additional employees youd have to re-hire. And Jewel (Chicago food store) seems to being dooing fine with them.
Don’t worry, the Jewels in Chicago metro will be great when Kroger buys them!
I love self check out. I can move much faster than the clerks and pack my items as I desire. Problems are few and far between for me. I’ve learned to always check the meat I buy to ensure it has a barcode. Rarely does the barcode not work. I default to the self check at every store I visit if it has one.
I wouldn’t pay to use them though. So if my local Walmart decides to start charging to use the self check then I guess it’s back to the line with the clerk for me.
It’s NOT paying to use the Self-Checkout, it’s WalMart’s answer to Amazon Prime and you can get stuff delivered too, similar to Amazon.
This was some sloppy reporting or a lack of understanding of what Walmart+ offers for customers / subscribers.
Cheers!
“Something always seems to go wrong for me. You cannot scan beer or wine, the bar code won’t read, and Costco has a limit on the cost amount.”
Yet the ever so braindead indoctrinati continues to excitedly shriek “how high” every time some middlebrow huckster tells them to jump up in the air and cheer for “self driving” AIs…..
Truth is: Self checkout is far, far ahead of the complexity anything that any current level of AI is within even decades of handling. Leaving the much complex rest of the hype centuries away.
The two are nothing alike.
One is simply reading barcodes that have to be scanned.
AGI for Driving is one of the most complex problems ever attempted to be solved by mankind.
The fact that you’re trying to compare the two means that you understand little about either one.
Lol! Nailed it. Great comment!
“..trying to compare the two..”
When even the former is currently beyond reach…… That’d be the “reading barcode” problem. Which is; for now; too hard….
Self driving is only attempted “solved” in much the same way as “managing” that mystical thing referred to as “the economy” are: Uncritical yahoos can be suckered into wasting effort on near anything; as long as they get paid for it by an even more gullible peanut gallery of welfare recipients flush with stolen wealth.
“We” can not read barcodes. Nor, increasingly, tie our shoes and count beyond the fingers on one hand. Just as housecats can not. Until housecats can do those things; whatever they are mindlessly involving themselves in regarding teleportation; does not in any way even begin to qualify as “attempting to solve” it.
The sole and only effect; is putting untold amounts of resources; stolen from potentially productive people and undertakings; in at one end. Then wasting it all. Such that nothing of any value will ever be taken out the other end. Pure capital destruction. Pure and simple.
I noticed more onerous checks at Costco. Now, some stores have customer self-scanning in at the entrance, resulting in bottlenecks.
Also, the self-checkout staff randomly ids again.
Definitely, not a good omen.
Is there some coincidence for this trend, and what does it portend?
They randomly check ID at the self-checkout to make sure the member is present. Costco makes almost all of their profit from the membership fee which is why they don’t want members lending their cards to non-members.
My wife catches REAL clerks making mistakes nearly EVERY TIME we check out now. Quite often an item is double-scanned. We are beginning to believe that Check-out Clerks are COACHED to double scan.
Our local Fred Meyer MARKS, clearly on a shelf, if a meat item is TWO for one, and you pay for the item that is higher priced. TWO DAYS AGO, my wife said, “Wait a minute, that was TWO FOR ONE!” The clerk made us wait until the bagger went back and verified it.
That same day, My wife noticed a higher price on an item that was from the Garden Rack by the front door. It was marked $3.99 and then they CHANGED IT while we were in the store. It range up for $4.99!
People will shop lift when angered by prices. That is for sure.
Cashiers have been trained to steal since time immemorial. My father managed or owned retail stores his whole life. Early in life he was told to lean an expensive item like a broom against the checkout counter and charge every customer for it. If they walk away with it it’s fine, if they don’t, their problem. (He did not follow this instruction.)
Don’t forget the extra crap bags for the dogs.
Twitter/X won’t let me take your survey as I’m not signed up there, so I’ll tell you here.
I’m in the varies/depends camp. I used to be a cashier at Meijer (a Midwestern chain) and was pretty fast and had fun with customers, laughing and joking. Then along came covid and screwed it up royally, but that’s another story.
When I’m by myself and have a smaller shopping order, I like using self-checkout. It makes things go a lot faster. If I have a larger order or am taking my mom (92 years old and doesn’t move really well), we go to a checkout lane with a cashier no matter how big her order is. Guess she’s old school that way, never used a computer or cell phone either.
But paying $98 a year for the privilege? No thanks. Meijer handles the potential theft problem by having a bit of a convoluted self-checkout area, where you have to wind around a little bit to get to the stations and the self-checkout cashier supervises what’s going on there from the exit side. That, and they have some plain-clothes security people and an employee by the door to discourage theft. Doesn’t prevent it 100% as there will always be the bold and obnoxious who will try to get away with it, but it helps.
This is a poorly researched article. Walmart+ is similar to Amazon Prime and has many other benefits for the members. Just like Amazon Prime does.
Mish should have done better research or the reporter for the article he referenced should have paid more attention.
The point was paying for the “benefit” of self-checking, contrasting that to self-checking being deployed over the past 15 years as a way to cut costs and customers being compelled to use it. This column isn’t a sales pitch for Walmart+ .
Up until recently retailers were pushing customers to self-check by staffing few or no registers, but theft and unintentional errors are reversing that trend. Mish highlighted this particular development, which some will find interesting.
I continue to be amazed at how much i get from this blog 20+ years after reading it daily.
I don’t mind self checkout with a few items but there’s absolutely no question theft is occurring rampantly AND a trained associate with better scanning equipment and bagging “spinner” can do about 3:1 in terms of getting through customers. And I would prefer it if I had that option. We’ll see if that returns to all stores or just some. I, of course, would NOT be paying $98 for the “privilege” of acting as a Walmart employee despite my generally favorable impression of their enterprise. I may choose to be a Wmt+ subscriber at some point and would then do it in a few-items pinch.
But overall sadly most companies are becoming like my former (unnamed but very large) employer where the employees and the customers are the enemy–they only want the profits. They want the valuation of Nvidia or Amazon or Netflix and to have shareholders get wealthy but those damn employees and customers are in the way so they layoff as many employees they can get by with and put the screws to the customers until the breaking point.
Inflation is causing so much disruption and there’s 2 sources for it–bipartisan, nearly indiscrimant profligate government spending for decades; Fed monetization of said spending and artificially low interest rates to generate the very inflation we have now.
Everyone is basically trying to rapidlly adjust to the insanity.
Expect more crazy stories like the “charging for self checkout” post.
I dunno about the rest of the country but Walmarts here in Florida at least have the absolute slowest checkout lines I’ve ever seen in any store. The revolving spinner is not that fast (and they don’t fill the bags) and it seems everyone in the store takes forever to pay by whatever card they use (very rarely see cash used). I hate going to Walmart because the checkout is so slow. If I have 20 or less items in self checkout I can be done in under 3 minutes time, maybe 4 if I am getting Beer and need someone to verify the purchase (I’m of age).
If they get rid of self checkout lines will only get worse (not uncommon to wait 15 minutes).
At least Walmart here has free delivery on online orders over 60 so I take advantage of that whenever possible.