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Comment by commiepatrol | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if stores lose money on self checkout lanes. Just yesterday I witnessed something for the first time(for me) and I wonder how often this really happens. I was in line for the self checkout, there were about 6 machines and they were all being used. In one of them there was a guy with lots of groceries and he was slowly scanning everything. Then when he was done he pretended to pay and then just walked out. At first I didn't understand what happened but the machine he was using just remained there in non-ready state and nobody was touching it afterwards. After it was my turn I walked up by it and noticed that it still displayed "$220 due".

The guy went through the trouble of scanning every item he was going to steal and then just walked out.

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Employees are likely more expensive then theft.

Does that system not require customers to scan the receipt before they're allowed to leave through the bars?

That would slow down the system too much. It'll probably work if self-checkout lanes were actual lanes that can have an individual gate at the end, but in most cases self-checkout is an open area with a single exit that everyone funnels into - putting a gate there would slow it down to a crawl.

I live in Berlin, and this is standard here. There are 6 self checkout stations with a single exit. Once you are done scanning items and have paid, your receipt has a barcode you have to scan to exit. It always takes longer to scan your items than get through the gate, so I’ve never had to wait.

Disclaimer: I'm in Germany and self-checkouts are still kinda rare where I live.

I have never seen such a system where you had to scan anything after the fact or there were even some bars/obstacles to be able to leave.

That said, I'm very indifferent. The one at IKEA seems to work fine, the one in the local hardware store I've had problems both times I tried to use it. First there was no barcode on some item I had (maybe if you do it more often and only have 4 things you will check beforehand?) and the second time it wouldn't accept my card, so maybe the latter doesn't necessarily count as "self-check out didn't work" but more 'register broken'.

And where it would totally help - my local grocery store where more often than not I only have a couple things in my hand and no trolley and the 1 or 2 lines are very long.. of course they don't have one :(

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