The Tesco & other non-Morrisons supermarket thread

[cdd]

Nope. The only thing stopping you from scanning a packet of chewing gum and putting 15 bottles of whisky in your bag is your own conscience. But as I say, I'd argue that's the case anyway since it doesn't take a genius to think about how one might circumvent the scales...

Definitely targeting the lunch crowd though. The only annoyance is if you're used to the old self-checkout terminals, you end up scanning things twice and the process to remove things is no less fiddly and annoying...

Here they are: http://www.thegrocer.co.uk/channels/sup ... 04.article

[Martin Phillp]

The layout of those tills look similar to easyeverything/easyinternetcafe circa 2000!

However, if you're not buying items to be weighed, It'll certainly save on time when buying a sandwich and a paper.

[Pete]

The sainsburys double belters were tried at tesco years ago but dumped due to being so flakey and their habit of throwing the food back at you.

Asda (and iirc Tesco at Earls Court) now have single belted self scans with just a bigger bagging area scale at the end.

[thegeek]

I don't know what it is about them but I just *don't* like window decals they use for Express' - it might be the new font but I just don't think they're that nice to look at. Did that Express have wood panelling behind the logo too, as I notice an Express near our town centre was refitted recently and they'd made the odd decision to put wood behind it, so assume it is being rolled out elsewhere.

Yep, it did have wood. I've noticed that elsewhere, though generally in newbuild blocks of flats.

[Martin Phillp]

The sainsburys double belters were tried at tesco years ago but dumped due to being so flakey and their habit of throwing the food back at you.

The double belters at my local Sainsburys have recently been replaced to expand the standard self checkouts.

The food rarely came back, but would throw a hissy fit and stop working. Self-Checkout assistants hated them with a passion.

[AJ]

The Asda near my dad's house in North Wales has green conveyor belt self service tills that seem to flip around to allow a member of staff to operate it as a normal checkout too.


That's the Blackpool one FYI.

Here's a bit of internal marketing guff about them.

[Critique]

What's the deal with these self-service checkouts that only take card payments? Is that they haven't been loaded with a cash cassette, that their cash reading machinery is broken so whilst they wait for a technician they only accept cards or just to make a faster fast lane? I've seen quite a few in recent days, a few in Tesco and a few in Sainsbury's, and they all had coin slots so clearly could accept cash. The ones I saw in Tesco Express and Sainbury's Local also had some paper stuck on explaining that they were card only, but on the payment screen they both had 'cash' as an option too. Meanwhile, when I went to a Tesco Extra the start button had 'Start - this machine does not accept cash payments' or something to that effect written on it.

Might try chucking cash in one that has a pay by cash option on and seeing what happens.

Also, not sure if it was mentioned in the previous 'inserting your card only to be prompted to press the 'pay by card' button' discussion, but Tesco's self-serves jump to the payment screen without needing to press the card button if you put one in.

[Philip Cobbold]

Most likely the coin acceptor has an error, so they're running it as Card Only so they can still keep the till open. The coin acceptor is the most sensitive part of the checkout, as it has loads of sensors on it, and just a tiny bit of paper on one of them stops the whole thing working. The newest version of NCR's self checkout with the coin recycler is very vulnerable to things other than coins being posted in due to the large coin hopper. Sainsbury's have started fitting slots over the top of these now so that only coins can be put in, and hopefully reduce the number of tills out of action.

I believe Tesco have an option on their software to set the checkout into Card Only mode, which brings up the warning message at the start. Sainsbury's have had this option turned off, so the menu button to activate this has been greyed out. Hence the pieces of paper stuck on the checkout in the hope that customers will see this and not put coins in anyway.

[bilky asko]

he newest version of NCR's self checkout with the coin recycler is very vulnerable to things other than coins being posted in due to the large coin hopper. Sainsbury's have started fitting slots over the top of these now so that only coins can be put in, and hopefully reduce the number of tills out of action.

I presumed it had been done to encourage people to use the Coinstar machine over bringing their change jar to the self-service till. Still, with the proper technique (lining up the coins in your hand and tipping it), you can get a fair few coins in at a time.

Sainsbury's was the first place round here that added the slot adaptor, and Tesco added one not long after.

EDIT: That reminds me, I went to ASDA in York a couple of weeks ago. I remembered that they had the first Rapid Scan till installed in the UK, so I decided to go and have a look at it.

I was surprised to find that the Wincor Nixdorf model in that article had been replaced by a spinning behemoth from NCR.


In any case, I had no opportunity to try it, because despite its name the man loading his items one-by-one onto the entry belt was holding things up significantly (it had seemingly crashed to a halt when he had loaded the belt incorrectly, so he took that as a cue to load the items as slowly as possible). I decamped to a conveyor self-checkout (which I presume was an unmanned hybrid), which was far more rapid for me.

[Cache]

Nope. The only thing stopping you from scanning a packet of chewing gum and putting 15 bottles of whisky in your bag is your own conscience. But as I say, I'd argue that's the case anyway since it doesn't take a genius to think about how one might circumvent the scales...

Definitely targeting the lunch crowd though. The only annoyance is if you're used to the old self-checkout terminals, you end up scanning things twice and the process to remove things is no less fiddly and annoying...

Here they are: http://www.thegrocer.co.uk/channels/sup ... 04.article

Lots of these in Canary Wharf now - really strange. The NCR animation on screen shows bag hooks underneath the till screen which I presume would weigh the items, but they're not physically on the till, only in the animation.

Terrifically speedy though - there's barely a queue in there at lunchtime now, as opposed to the old 'Three minutes to go" queue line. Receipt shoots out like lightning.

[all new Phil]

Very similar to the new Morrisons ones too. I wonder if they use the same software maybe?