Re: B&Q self checkout machines

Kebabs are pretty healthy actually, especially if you have lots of salad (not chips) with them.

Owain

All right, Value Custard Creams then.

Owain

So the staff are less honest than the customers?

Owain

In message , tim.... wrote

Customers are educated to the Aldi way if they even try to bag up at the till. In Aldi everything goes back into the trolley and after you have paid you are free to use the bagging area/shelves to pack your goods.

Around my way each Aldi staff member serves ten customers in the time a Tesco member of staff takes to serve one.

Where did I imply that the fraud was by the staff? I pointed the finger neither at the staff nor the customers.

There is shoplifting and there is staff pilferage. The sum total of that is the fraud that the self-service tills help to reduce.

The trick is never to buy condoms.

They are supplied free by the NHS for everyone in the UK.

I use them so that I do not suffer from

And the result is that the stores need far fewer staff for similar turnover, which means lower prices for the customers.

When a customer in Aldi tries to "beat the system" and slow everyone else down, I (and a lot of other regular Aldi shoppers) get quite annoyed, and with good reason.

If people want to benefit from Aldi's prices, they should learn to speed up. If they want to shop slowly, they should shop elsewhere.

Or which is cheaper to operate. If you want customer service like you describe you would pay for it in increased prices.

Sadly my experience is that the phrase 'first drop of the day' refers to something other than delivery :-(

Yep!

tim

By saying that there was less fraud with the self serve machines than with the staff operated ones.

What opportunities for fraud by customers goes away with self serve machines? ISTM, none at all go away, but a new one is introduced, and yet the total overall fraud goes down. How can this possibly be unless the difference is down to the staff?

tim

Yes I know, for some reason I though you said ASDA (!).

But what does hold you up in Aldi with this system is, they can't start to scan things until you have finished putting the things on the belt (and thus they don't have an empty trolley to put them back into).

More than once I have been held up by someone being particularly slow at putting things on the belt.

tim

whilst I have no personal experience, isn't this cured with a generic antibiotic?

tim

That only ever happens with the first person at a checkout and AFAICS Aldi staff tell customers to start loading their trolley on the belt while the staff are doing something else and then only actually start opening the till once customers are waiting.

Owain

Er, why don't they do what CostCo does have an empty trolly at the checkout when they start? Shopper comes along, starts unloading, operator starts scanning and placing in pre-existing empty trolly. When transaction is complete shoppers trolly is now empty and ready for use by following shopper.

This doesn't work if they have those stupid trolleys that need a pound shaped disc to be inserted to enable use.

Gaffer tape

How can I bag it? The bagging area is 8' away at the other end of the conveyor. Read what I wrote.

which

scan/ID

Agreed but I was trying to make it simple as the scanners they currently have are pretty crap. It also enables the system to get a good look at the items and identify them that way as well.

RFID, I wonder. Have to be pretty short range and directional for it to be 100% sure that a given product response is from a product in a given trolly not in the next checkout or on the rack next to the checkout. And how about shopping from a another store that you have with you that is also stocked in this store?

three

Same difference.

Only beacuse the company would not be prepared to reduce their primary raison d'=EAtre, namely making maximum money for their shareholders.

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:00:05 -0700 (PDT), Mr Fuxit had this to say:

Gardening gloves.