Please place the item on the belt

[cdd]

I imagine you've seen this horrid things. I use them more often than I want to because they tend to have nobody there and it seems like a good idea at the time sort of thing. Of course, it is *never* faster than queueing, due to endless bloody:

"Please place the item on the belt"
I have placed the damned thing on the belt

And in approximately equal measure (I presume it balances somehow)
"Incorrect item in the bagging area"

The ones with bags are no better. The machine operators haven't quite got the hang of the fact that at some point you need to remove one of the bags in order to fit more items. At which point you get a torrent of guilt-inducing:

"ITEM REMOVED FROM THE BAGGING AREA" etc etc etc. Interestingly it changes to a man's voice for this. Perhaps people are meant to find this more intimidiating, a bit like the hectoring man at Kings Cross station who goes on about scateboarders and crowd control measures and such rubbish.

And of course when it invariably goes wrong, there is NOBODY around to help you. "Help, is on the way" says the patronising voice with appropriate comma (or the variant, "Please wait for assitance!") - yeah fucking right. Eventually, said help arrives with very little sympathy and a mildly accusatory tone: "If you scan the items too quickly..." or some such hopeless "advice" that only serves to deflect DUE blame from the hopeless machine.

And then comes the worst bit of the whole thing, PAYING. Not bad because you have to pay, although if that part could be avoided then I wouldn't complain - but because it involves a complex process of feeding notes into the note reader, and endless note rejection.

Thank you for letting me get that off my chest.

I feel better now

[Sput]

You're wrong, cdd.

[cdd]

You're wrong, cdd.

Net fury rating: +5%!

[Ebeneezer Scrooge]

The most annoying thing about these checkouts is my local ASDA used them to replace the far superior self scan service where you take a handset around the store and just put your fruit and veg through the checkout.
It all worked fine and was far better than the self service tills.

Having said that, it does mildly amuse me that (thanks to Rolf Harris for demonstrating many moons before the tills existed) I can make the strange beep/water drop noise that the ASDA tills make when you press a button. It always pleases a geek when he can talk back to a machine.

[peterrocket]

The machine gets confused if you buy multiple items i.e. greater than three.

More often than not, it complains you haven't put it on the belt and then when you put the one you've just scanned down, it seems to correct itself.

The staff just don't seem that bothered, and just throw the things down the belt too!

[cdd]

I can make the strange beep/water drop noise that the ASDA tills make when you press a button. It always pleases a geek when he can talk back to a machine.

Didn't that noise originate from Mac OS9?

As far as I can tell, all the supermarkets (including Asda) use a system called Fast Lane which in turn runs on Windows. The only exception I have seen is the Co-Op who use a differnet system it seems (theirs are marginally better as they don't cause quite such a fuss if you remove a bag), but I think theirs run on Windows as well.

I keep intending to try the supermarket scanner business, but the only place I know that has it is Waitrose and you need a Fruit Plus Card or whatever they have there to use it.

[Jamez]

Isn't it very easy to "skip" a couple of items such as batteries (which are ridiculously expensive) and chewing gum?

I've yet to use one of these self-service machines properly, but surely it would be easy to cheat the shop out of a couple of quid?

[cdd]

Yes. You could also put packets of chewing gum in your pockets and walk out of the store. What's your point?

[Pete]

NCR FastLane to be precise, a very flakey piece of software it would seem.

To be honest I've got the hang of both thumping the belt to reactivate the buttons when they grey out on me and being swift enough to get freebies due to the sheer ignorance of the software. My main annoyance with them is that the ASDA tills have their volume so loud and set to announce everything. Whilst I can happily swap cards if I realise I've put the wrong one in the reader is Tesco my attempt to do this in ASDA resulted in the till bellowing CARD REFUSED at me in front of a large number of people. tsk

I keep intending to try the supermarket scanner business, but the only place I know that has it is Waitrose and you need a Fruit Plus Card or whatever they have there to use it.

Are the Waitrose ones not simply an updated version of Safeway's Scan & Go?

[Chris]

I find that ones at Tesco tend to be the worst, with their constant bellowings of "unexpected item in bagging area" when you try and place your other shopping on there momentarily whilst you fiddle to get your cards out of your wallet. At least 3 times in different branches and occasions, the self scan machine has crashed on me with a grey screen when I have placed my card into the device.

M&S seems to have an ingenious solution (they use the same Fastlane software) on their self scan things called the "skip bagging" button (thus eliminating all the "please place the item in the bagging area" crap), which is fairly self-explanatory to even the most stupidest of people. Why on earth is it beyond Tesco to introduce the option?

[cdd]

M&S seems to have an ingenious solution (they use the same Fastlane software) on their self scan things called the "skip bagging" button

They don't have that at my M&S!

There are certain things you can do at those machines to which I don't feel terrible guilt. One is buying fancy premium finest ripoff fruit and veg, and then passing it through as "More items, Fruit/Veg, Specific Fruit, Fruit X, Quantity Y". It's amazing how lucrative that little misunderstanding can be.