Sainsbury’s try out in one store.

Riggie you were lucky ^ and once they had to select 3 random items to rescan. If they had to do the whole shop I would point to the nearby seats and tell them I would be there when they finished!!!^

My daughter was requested in one supermarket (can't remember which one) to empty her entire trolley of carefully packed bags. As this was a months worth of shopping for a family of five, she politely asked them if they could just randomly select a few items from each bag. No, came the reply. There was no offer to help her, so she emptied the lot into the trolley and walked out!

Yet more information of how the monopolies will try to get rid of staff. Customer service? You are joking. The larger the business the more they will attempt to reduce staff and get us to use AI or whatever their fancy system becomes.
Reject this at every instance or you will regret it.

I will only use this self scanning malarkey if they give me a discount, which they don’t. Missing a trick there. Also. What is stop people scanning expensive fruits and co as something far cheaper? Just go oops pressed wrong button. Must cost them a fortune. Hate the blooming things. Give me a person I can have a nice chat and help with things any day.

I only shop where they have self scan. I hate to queue, I have better things to do. Waitrose have had them for years and I’m happy that the other stores are catching up.

I’ve never used my phone to pay and wouldn’t know how but I’ve seen others who do.

Shizam, the self-service tills have already led to a lot of fraud. Apparently, shops are 'selling' a vast quantity of carrots - as people 'accidentally' put through expensive fruit and veg as them! Who ends up paying? The rest of us.

When asked at the checkout area if I would care to use the self service till, I always say no thank you, as I don't want to put staff out of a job. Plus I find these darned things so stressful, that they would need to provide me somewhere for a nice lie down to recuperate!

I saw that episode too, reading your post made me think that the checkout lady (40+ years service) got it right when she pointed to the cans of food on the shelves and said:

"There used to be someone who plonked the prices on with a label but we've got our own plonkers now"

???

I keep thinking I will have to boycott Sainsburys as they keep sneaking on price increases. 5p here, 10p there. I know they are small, but they all add up over time and a lot of the products I buy have had these increases. It would be the end of my shopping with them if they insisted I pay by phone. I am another person that hasn't download their app.

I do shop in Sainsburys but I won't be paying with my phone. I don't trust mobile banking and won't be doing it. My husband will not use the Sainsburys garage where we are as it is all Pay at Pump machines. He goes to other supermarket garages that employ staff, like others on here we are worried about folk's jobs. I knew someone who worked in a supermarket, they told me when self-scan arrived, they lost hundreds of hours of work for staff. How are people going to earn a living?

DD1 worked in a large city centre Sainsbury’s when she was a student. She learned how to talk and chat to people she would never otherwise have met. Down and outs buying cider to posh ladies buying Taste the Difference - and vice versa. She also had her ‘regulars’. People who never went to any other till and gave her Christmas cards. To them she was their friend. She knew their distant families names and the health worries about their cat/dog. When she left she bought them chocolate. It did her and them the world of good.

Long may people vote with their feet and stick to serviced tills.

by introducing self service checkouts there is no thought given to elderly people who may not have a mobile and may need help from checkout operator, supermarkets need to put people first not profit which seems to the case these days

"supermarkets need to put people first not profit which seems to the case these days"

In an ideal world maybe. But I think we are in danger of losing sight of the fact that supermarkets are not charities providing a public service - they are businesses, legally bound by the Companies Act to obtain the best return on investment they can for their shareholders.

And if you have a private pension, you may well BE one of those shareholders, even if you are not aware of it.

Want2help

Being picky, the checkout lady who met the Queen had actually done 50 years service. I don’t think there will be many 50 year workers when or IF Sainsbury’s reaches its 200th anniversary, so no one will be presented to an elderly King William, or even a youthful King George!
Was there another supermarket over the road at the till free branch, as people seemed to be leaving and going ‘over the road’?

lefthanded

Re your comment about supermarkets being a business and needing to turn a profit. It’s the same with banks. There’s been threads about bank closures, but they too are not charities. If they don’t make money, the branches close. Popping in to cash a cheque or pay your credit card bill just doesn’t help keep your branch open sadly.

@Calendargirl

My thoughts exactly.

I understood that Sainsbury's had trialled that and it was a resounding failure, customers deserted that store in droves.

It also assumes that people are just shopping in basket loads, not trolley loads. I hate those self service tills if I have more than about 4 items. They cannot cope with customers having light cloth bags where for the first 5 or 6 items you tend to pick it up by the handle and shake it open to put items in. It ends up coming off the weighing worktop, the bell goes and you have to wait for staff, explain the problem and get them to hold the bag open while the first few items go in - and do that as many times as youhave cloth bags.

Then what happens when, like me, you do a monthly shop and approach the till with a trolley load of stuff. Now a days I unload it all on to the belt, put all my trolley bags in the trolley and load directly into the trolley. A this wouldcause two problems at a self service till 1) No space to unload, the goods will not go on the weigh out surface.

When it comes to self scanning prices, I simply wouldn't want to risk it. I am dyspraxic, which affects the mind as well as body and no matter how I tried, I would always end up with unscanned goods in my load. My mind, would so to speak, keep skipping beats, the slightest distraction and goods would not be checked. I am not a shop lifter never have been and avoid anything that might lead me to be one - even inadvertently -

My mobile phone doesn't have the internet. It is used for phone calls and texts! So if that happens I won't be able to go there. Having said that round here (in the sticks) it wouldn't go down well, we have really abysmal and sporadic phone coverage anyway so it wouldn't happen.

I'm all in favour of paying with phone. It's brilliant for me. I struggle with manipulation with my right hand after an injury earlier this year. TouchID on my iphone is so quick for me

However, I think it is a bad move from Sainsbury's to propose this. Good thing that there are usually a few choices of supermarkets for most of us.

My husband was one of the random people they say they stop, today. It was a bit of a nuisance because he had to get everything out of his bags and have it all scanned again. This is to deter theft I suppose, because you don't know if it's going to be you next

I can see the advantages for people doing shopping in a hurry, but the thought of trying it with a couple of kids in tow or shopping for yourself and an aged parent ....

Oh it's no good at all if you are in a hurry. Scanning by phone takes longer than scanning at the till - each scan takes far longer to line up and go through, and to keep it steady enough I find I have to put the item down and rest my phone hand on the shelf above. No, DH and I have both tried it a few times but find the self-serve tills our favorite way still.

thery would lose my custom too. i prefer to pay by cash .tescos here i come...

I see what you mean Readymeals. I’ve just spent ages lining up my store cards to scan into Stocard on my phone. I’d assumed it was a different system somehow.

I have found using s/service can be no quicker.
If buying wine etc or reduced items that don`t go through reduced you have to wait for someone to come and sort it.
Not for me tbh.