I know it's late news but I'm surprised that there's not already a topic on it on OzBargain
https://au.news.yahoo.com/qld/a/34379949/coles-to-trial-12-i…
Just sharing and wondering what OzBargainers' thoughts are, which might be a different from other sites given the high amount of thieves on this site who have openingly admitted to stealing from Self Checkout with all kinds of lame excuses for their own lack of moral aptitude.
I'd be surprised if the 12 item limit was rigorously enforced, unless you had a full trolley.
Next thing you know Coles will want to Breathalyse people using their trolleys…
few bad
applescarrots
I just substituted apples with carrots because it shows up cheaper on the scanner. /s
Never seem lamb cutlets so cheap…. dont knnow why the checkout chicks scan them so high.
30% of apples apparently, so not just a few.
itunes cards excluded.
I like it, it means they will employ some of the people they lied about not sacking when the self service tills came along \o/.
Also I find the self service checkouts are only faster with a few items anyway. Like a lot less than 12 usually. But if you just prefer not having to deal with people OK.
@John Spencer 147: Coles have done this in the logical order as the self-scan checkout was put in to allow people to scan their goods and pay money; they probably underestimated just how dishonest some people can be. BTW - The checkout chick isn't there to stop people stealing stuff from the store either. I live not far from the Coles so we mostly walk and get a few things at a time, as we need them. The Self-Scanners are great because we don't stand in big queues and we leave the checkout chicks for the people who are doing a substantial shop. (They are probably happy we aren't creating a big queue either). It is a shame that thieves are making it difficult for the rest of us.
I see what you are saying but your perception of fighting the good fight is simply delusional. Theft is ultimately paid for by the customers. A neg from me.
I loath self checkouts for being a thinly disgused staff stripping exercise but simply not using them is the only proper way to fight against the trend even if innefectual.
I fully agree.
@John Spencer 147: You declared you are not a law abiding customer. You are in a position to prevent your own theft.
@John Spencer 147: So it's OK for thieves (or any shopper) to underpay law abiding shops for their groceries rather than contribute to cost reductions by preventing their own theft?
Yes but you'll still see they also have the 'express' checkout always staffed as well for those who still want to be served quickly but would rather not use self serve.
Tbh it's hard to say that it's costing jobs when if Coles as a business loses on market share and profitability due to having less or no self serves then they'll have to cut far more jobs(maybe even whole stores) and potentially increase prices to keep up.
@snipeymcsnipesnipe: What are you smoking?
If they lose business they can increase service, cut prices and build the business. This BTW is what they have been doing and its been paying dividends.
This is a trial to see what actually happens. From that give them the intelligence to make decisions that should assist their business to grow.
Cutting etc wouldn't make any sense at all…
why do they need to put any money into preventing theft…don't steal and its win win for consumers and Coles.
I love OzBargainers. They literally have zero idea what self-serve checkouts are installed for.
I work in the corporate office of another retailer that has installed the same type of technology, and everyone said the exact same thing as you. There was literally zero staff reductions at every single location in Australia when self-serve units were installed. didn't stop the tinfoil hats like yourselves, though. It wasn't even a question on any wage budget controllers tongues.
But hey, keep spouting* your uninformed views.
Edited to correct sprouting to spouting. My mistake.
Sprouting? Yes, my garden is doing nicely, thank you very much for asking.
Seriously, seeing as you are the expert, can you please inform us why Coles have self serve checkouts?
@John Spencer 147: Simply put, the amount of registers available. Even before these registers are installed, supermarkets never would have had every isle open. Maybe on a very busy weekend, sure. If you've seen instances where majority of the manned isles were open, your experience differs vastly from mine.
There's what, maybe eight or 10 self-serve registers available at any one time? They remove two or three isles (or three registers), and install eight to 10 self-serve registers. That means 10 customers can be served at once in the self-serve checkouts, not even taking into account the registers that are manned.
Can customers operate a self-serve register quicker than an operator? Majority of the time, absolutely not. It's the perception from the customer that it's quicker, though. They'd rather take two minutes completing their sale, than wait in line for one minute and the operator take thirty seconds to complete their sale.
You may think that that isn't the case at all, but trust me - a lot of research is put into spending tens of thousands to install these machines. Each of the self-serve registers at Coles cost an ungodly amount - I'll put it this way; each register is well over $10k to install, as well as on-going costs to handle the cash paid into the machine. I don't think they have Coles staff members taking the cash out due to how much is put into the machines (any Coles staff reading, feel free to correct me).
Hope that clears it up for you. I haven't elaborated on my employers use of these machines too much because of our social media policy.
supermarkets never would have had every isle open. Maybe on a very busy weekend, sure. If you've seen instances where majority of the manned isles were open, your experience differs vastly from mine.
There's what, maybe eight or 10 self-serve registers available at any one time? They remove two or three isles
You work in the industry and you still can't spell aisle correctly?
Thanks for your reply and I understand your point about not speaking about your employer directly.
While it may be the case for your employer that their plan may not have involved staff reduction, I would be very surprised if Coles and Woolworths didn't see eventual staff reduction as part of their plans for pushing customers to scan their own items. I don't see why that is tinfoil hat stuff.
@ronnknee: lol. How atrocious of me! But in answer to your question: we don't call them aisles in my place of employment.
@John Spencer 147: Sorry if I came across quite strongly RE: my first response. I just hear it often and it's regularly not the case that self-serves are installed for staff cutbacks.
@ThithLord: if no-one used self service… they would need to employ more staff. by self scanning your groceries… you are increasing profit for the merchant. you are also taking work away from a checkout person who needs that money to live and pay bills. you sir/madam are part of the problem… and even work for the people who are doing this, thinking the rest of us stupid. corporate leech.
@ThithLord:
Yep, the wait time perception is important. I mean why else do lifts have mirrors outside them - which was a major breakthrough in the industry?
@Well Wasted: most of the staff work out at the back, not on the shop floor. it's always been that way. coles/woolies workers don't like manning the check outs anyway. have people forgotten how in the past it sometimes took a while for them to even have a cash register open to serve customers.
@Well Wasted: 10/10 - I chuckled aloud reading your comment.
You have absolutely zero idea about what you are talking about.
Nicking from your car is wrong and is stealing even if your door was wide open. Deliberately scanning $12 cherries as $1 carrots is stealing. Each of the two perpetrators is a thief. Difficult stealing and easy stealing are both wrong. Self-justification and quotation marks do not alter the fact that stealing is done by a thief. If the cap fits, wear it.
Going by Coles logic I should be able to open an unmanned store where people come in, select what they want and put the money in a tin. I won't need to employ a person to man the store or even waste money on any security measures at all because the police, funded by the taxpayer will prevent theft by going after anyone who steals anything.
No, 4 months later you will need to start a trial in a few stores of a staff member being present at some stage.
Actually that is exactly how society should work. People should be honest and pay what they owe; by your logic if my garage door gets accidently left open then you have the right to come in and take whatever you want and you will get stroppy if I waste your taxes calling the police to arrest you. However, I do wish that society was more geared towards stopping the guys who steal millions rather than someone who steals tens of dollars.
You are correct. If you were too careless to lock up your valuables, don't be surprised to lose them.
@John Spencer 147: Are you freakin' kidding me, where do you stop - stealing a kids bicycle from a front yard - or do you think the kid is fair game as well.
Never said anything was fair game. The analogy I am trying to make is that the person in possession of something should take reasonable care to make sure that it is safe. In the case of Coles, that is by employing more checkout and security staff to prevent theft, not getting the police to front a press conference and threaten to prosecute someone for avocado theft.
I specifically said i didn't want to discuss the morality of self serve theft as that topic has been done before and we are all set firmly in our camps.
"i didn't want to discuss the morality", "where I can get away with it", no, probably a difficult topic.
That topic has been discussed to death here and we will not change our minds, but here is a short summary.
Stealing is wrong, paying the wrong price for something is stealing. Yes I have done that at times and no I don't feel bad about it. I don't care what you think about that.
What I am saying is that to save money, Coles have deliberately chosen to replace staff with machines that make theft more easy. They have then used several methods other than reemploying staff to deal with this. Police, which is shifting the cost of theft prevention from a private company to the taxpayer. And as someone pointed out above, theft from law abiding customers in the form of higher prices to factor in shoplifting cost.
This article is the first positive step Coles have actually taken to spend some of their own money to try and fix this problem. That is a good thing. If they rip out all these machines tomorrow and replace them with staffed checkouts, that will be even better.
What we're trying to tell you with all the downvotes, is that your opinion is rendered worthless by your lack of morality. People should be embarrassed that we as a people can't be trusted to go through a supermarket checkout without adult supervision. You're not fighting the good fight, you're just a thief and a lowlife.
@Praeto: He's just taking advantage of Coles ignorance. Doubt he will stop until coles get serious about theft.
Sadly the cost of theft is below the cost of employment, or there'd be more staff already.
I knew it was too late when I saw self checkouts for trolleys at southland, turning customers into defacto cashiers.
Isn't that what they do in the country farms? I've seen a lot of fruit and veg in a shed with a tin next to it. I put money in the tin then take the avocados (in this case) and go, would you say it's OK to take the stuff and not pay because no-one is watching??
And I have told you several times I do not care what you think. Downvote me as much as you like if it makes you feel good. I can assure you it doesn't bother me.
You have completely missed my point. In your scenario, the analogy would be the person with the stall was losing so much to theft that they were forced to employ someone to man the stall. 4 months after calling in the police because they were too stingy to pay for staff until they were absolutely forced to.
Only the police wouldn't bother fronting a press conference with the farmer to threaten prosecution for thieves, as the farmer isn't a corporation that makes large political donations.
P.s. please don't steal from farm stalls.
@John Spencer 147: But if you didn't steal in the first place then the police would not need to be involved, and therefore no tax payer money wasted?!?
Also, if you were not shoplifting, the rest of us wouldn't be getting charged more for shoplifting costs?!?
I read recently that Amazon is working on a new store where you can do that, except that they probably plan to have some kind of ID process to enter the store and monitor everything you take with you.
Coles have invited theft by making it so easy
That's rubbish. All across the countryside farmers have 'honesty boxes' at the front gate where they leave eggs/fresh produce and you are supposed to leave the correct money in them when you take goods. So according to you it's all OK to steal from farmers?
I am one of those 'thieves' who is happy to scan something cheaper where I can get away with it.
Then you are a criminal and a low-life. One day you will be caught and I hope the book is thrown at you.
You've come a bit late to the sanctimony party, but welcome anyway.
If you had read all of my posts, you will see I have already said that stealing from Coles or farmers or theoretical kids who leave their bikes on the lawn is all NOT OK. I am not condoning stealing from anyone. It's just that in the case of scanning items cheaper at self serve checkouts, I don't feel bad about doing it, even though I would feel bad about all the other thefts sanctimonious (profanity) such as yourself would ascribe to me.
You may disagree, you may think I'm a hypocrite trying to justify my theft, that is your opinion and you are entitled to it just as I am to mine.
Feel free to neg this one too, if it makes you feel better. Note I have not negged the opinions of anyone I disagree with.
@John Spencer 147
Are you related to her?
http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/qld-mum-admit…
@boomramada
No, but you've got to admire the effort, don't you?
Moral of the story, don't look nervous and you won't get caught.
It probably won't lead to anything of the sort.
I worked in a store when self service came along and no one lost their job.
Nothing worse than getting stuck behind someone with a trolley full of shopping who takes 10 seconds to scan each item.
How do you get stuck behind someone when there are a dozen self checkouts?
It happens a lot, mostly on weekends.
Try rush hour right after work. You'll find a dozen trolleys at self checkouts.
So what, they are only there because there is a huge wait for normal checkout. Why should people with trolleys have to wait longer that people buying a single item to buy their shopping?
@dave999: That might be specific to some stores but not all. Mine still have a good number of checkouts open.
@Clear: That makes no sense, if there is no queue at the checkout people with trolleys would use the normal checkout or why don't you just use the normal checkout if there is no queue in the normal checkout but a queue in the self checkout?
@dave999: Sure there are queues of 1-3 trolleys at the 5-10 checkouts. Most other stores have a 1-3 checkouts open.
Your partner must do the shopping….or you work insane hours so are free to shop at insane hours!
I don't know how you would at Coles. Woolworths, however, often only has three or four for a huge store, so you can wait ages just to start.
Nah, the worst are the parents who patiently let their young children scan each item while all of us in the queue are there waiting.
These checkouts aren't part of some amusement park. Perhaps they're trying to keep the children from going feral in the supermarket but maybe they need to work on their parenting skills and teach their kids self control, rather than hold up other people while they allow their kid to take forever to pick up an item, play with/inspect it, look for the barcode, scan it, stare a the screen for a while to see what happens, then put it in the bag, and repeat and repeat.
I use the self checkouts because I'm faster than the drones working on the regular/served checkouts. I also buy mostly fresh produce and hate anyone else packing my bags and squashing delicate things like lettuce, soft fruits, berries etc. I'm a control freak and enjoy packing the bags how I want them packed. Best part about self checkouts.
The 12 item limit bugs me too.
Seems like a lot of things bug you. Slow down and enjoy life. Not everyone can and should live up to your unreasonably high expectations.
Slow people and children, mostly.
@blue-dinosaur:
Children are the (profanity) worst.
Why can't they just leave their hellspawn in the car, like in the old days?
I'd hate to be stuck waiting for you to scan and pack your bags if you're that pedantic.
I have kids, I sometimes use self service with them when I have 5 items. I let them scan stuff because it's a nice learning exercise. It doesn't take long.
I'd still be faster than your kids.
I do this too. There are always at least 5 free self checkout terminals available where I shop, who cares if I take 10 seconds longer. Funnily enough the only queue is for the ones that accept cash.
I find kids are better at self serve checkouts than most older adults…
@apptrack:
agreed…my kids are much faster than most older people. and i scan stuff while they do as well so i get items in between them taking a while. i doubt it slows us up at all to let them learn and have fun.
"drones"?????? Really….
Are we not all drones?
I was one of those kids in my local supermarket well before self checkouts. Not sure if there were ever people behind us (I was a kid, my memory isn't the best from then), but most times I went into the supermarket, I was allowed to come behind the till and scan 1-5 items. It probably took time.
I ended up working at Coles for eight years, so consider it an early start and my way of paying back to the community for the whole 2 minutes of hassle I may have caused.
What I hate more is when I have just enough to prefer a full service checkout but of course my local Coles only opens two of those and I'm forced into the self service area to do it all myself because they won't open enough full service checkouts
One of my local stores does both. One person on a register and no self checkouts open past like 830pm. The other has 1-2 on a register and self service open til 10-11. Go figure.
Good, not only do people thieve from the self checkout, but the ones that have trolleys full of stuff hog the area and congest everything
yes I think that should be first starting point. Stop the trolleys from using the checkout. Baskets only.
Not a bad idea, but you would probably have to allow the pull around baskets as well, as a hand basket can get heavy very quickly for an older gen shopper.
This absolutely sucks. Last time I went to Coles there was one checkout serving people, with a huge queue. I had about 20 items and they refused to let me use the empty self checkouts - and this was at Bondi Junction which is a big Coles.
Their decision makes zero sense because if thieving is the issue they just need to employ one more person to patrol the self checkout - often there is no-one there at all.
They are going to lose heaps of customers over this, as well as have people restrict their purchases to 12 items instead of purchasing more.
Should have dumped your basket on the floor and gone to Woolies. That'll learn 'em! :)
i was thinking the same. in the past they've encouraged people to use the self-serve checkouts and reduced the number of checkout operators. now they are wanting to restrict people from using the self-serve checkouts.
it smells fishy to me. i don't think it will curb the issue of people stealing but it will certainly inconvenience all customers. people who want to steal will still steal using the self-serve checkouts regardless, just with 12 or less items at a time …
very disappointing and mind bogglingly stupid from a customer's perspective. a compelling reason to shop elsewhere.
Can't say they have enforced this on me.
"Me no english…"
They will only lose heaps of customers if they don't put more "checkout chicks" back on the registers. This is only going to cause me grief if I'm buying a stack of catfood on special and I doubt they will enforce it for something like that. The self checkouts are too small for a lot of goods anyway. It is touching how they thought this wouldn't lead to wholesale thievery; especially for the fruit and vegetables. They might be able to fix this by having a camera trained on the checkouts and doing a shape recognition between what is being scanned and what is going in the basket. I want to go on record saying I haven't scammed Coles using these devices, but I will be glad to see an increase in entry level jobs.
Were you shopping at a late time? During late night trading they close the self checkouts until the next day. Timings depend on the store.
TBH I find self checkout gets silly if you have more than one bag anyway.
Well that's stupid. What's the point if the checkouts aren't all occupied.
As for theft, whenever I go to the self checkout the assistant watches me for the duration.
Glad it's not being trialed in my state, Victoria.
Trialled in QLD. That says it all.
Every other state people consider themselves Aussies first.
Qld - Its "Queenslanders" then Aussies…
😀
They should outlaw dating cousins up there too
they tried that in NSW and it didn't work
Got thrashed in State of Origin did you?
sucks , also sucks that few bad apples ruin it for everyone , i like self check out :( , surprised it took them this long