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Comment by rileymat2 | Hacker News Reader

It is not the same, but our local Sam's Club has an app that you can scan all items as you go, and pay inside the app. Then as you leave an employee checks the receipt like they do for everyone else anyway. It works great.

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I've seen that at Sam's Club, and at a couple grocery store chains, but nobody seems to use them at the grocery store. I did once.

I wish Costco would do this too. The lines at my Costco are huge no matter what day or time I visit. Sometimes I'd like to go in just for one or two things, but I decide to get it somewhere else at a higher price just to avoid standing in line behind a dozen full carts. Self-scan would fix that.

I'm guessing since they just got rid of self checkout they're not gonna be doing that.

(I heard they got rid of it because of too many people sharing cards, and no cashier to check the picture. Seems like an easy thing to fix, but oh well.)

Funny, BJs warehouse club still has self checkout lanes.

That seems rather silly. Why not check the reciept + card at exit?

In a shop in Italy if you are a member you can take at the entrance a scanner with you and then just pay in the automatic checkouts. Periodically (there is a statistical model behind I guess) you can be asked to be checked if the stuff you scanned are the same you have. So if you do mistakes, you will be checked more often. It seems to work pretty well, even with the old ladies.

How is that any better though? The receipt checking probably takes just as long as scanning the items through the till.

Unless they just take a cursory glance and just say "well whatever you're probably trustworthy"

At a shop I visit often, the receipt checking is random, triggered by some prediction algorithm based on your history and current cart contents when you swipe your membership card when you exit the store. You get selected once out of perhaps 20 to 50 visits.

As a bonus, you get a small candy bar or similar "sorry we bothered you" gift if the check does not find any errors.

And if there is an error?

In the UK with Tesco's:

You have to scan every item in your shopping. There is no immediate penalty, but who knows what the system does in the background. I guess you could get banned from the system.

Do you get something better if they find they have made an error?

Mainly because Sam's already had receipt checking at the exit, so it's nothing outside of their normal operating process.

At my Sam's, they just eyeball it. A lot of times they just seem to be counting to make sure you don't have extra items, not actually checking the contents. It only takes a few seconds.

I wonder if a "Trusted Traveller"-style program would work. You go through a small vetting process, and you build a solid history with receipt checking through their app, and then you're assumed trusted, maybe with more occasional checking, and higher trust levels?

That's how Tesco's do it in the UK. No vetting other than getting a loyalty card of some kind.

We have similar systems in stores here in Switzerland as well [1]. Very easy and quick. Fraud check is random.

[1] https://subito.migros.ch/de/self-scanning.html

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