Letter to Kmart, Coles, Woolworths and Bunnings staff: ‘Nonsense’

A shopper’s rant about the number of self-service checkouts replacing traditional cash registers in supermarkets and department stores across Australia has gone viral on social media.

The buyer wrote an open letter in a popular Facebook group to complain that she and several customers were forced to stop at the checkout of a supermarket to have their receipts inspected.

She said a worker stopped all customers who had used a self-checkout machine and had them line up to check their receipts.

“Dear Woolies, Coles, Bunnings, Kmart, etc. and all other stores that have self-checkout, and now Aldi,” he began.

‘You are almost exclusively self-pay now.

‘Last time I was in Bunnings the lady checking receipts at the exit was stopping everyone.

I didn’t choose to participate in that nonsense, so I skipped the exit line and left.

“I heard her say ‘umm, excuse me’ as she kept walking and raised the receipt above my head, walking out of the store.”

The buyer demanded that stores “trust me to self-checkout or put your cashiers back the way they used to be.”

‘I’m not interested in proving that I did the work for you,’ they said.

‘If you want me to be an untrained cashier, then it’s your problem, not mine.’

The woman commented on how registries actually provide job opportunities for young people before concluding her tirade.

“I DON’T GET PAID TO SCAN MY OWN PURCHASES,” he added.

‘I DON’T GIVE ME A PERSONNEL DISCOUNT FOR WORKING FOR YOU.’

The complaint was welcomed by other Australians on Facebook, with many taking issue with the increase in the number of self-checkouts replacing store check-ins.

“I never use self checkout, there are people who need the job,” wrote one.

A second commented: ‘I decline the self-checkout. Why am I paying the same amount, when I have to pay myself? I want to be attended, thank you.

‘They don’t give young people enough hours, their prices have gone up and the service is non-existent.’

‘I have a fundamental aggressiveness towards self-service checkouts. They are there for one reason only… to reduce labor to increase profits,’ added another.

One wrote: ‘I hate them and refused to wear them for a long time, but sometimes there’s no open box with staff having to wear them. Then there are the bugs and waiting for someone to fix it.

‘Bring back the boxes with staff. Or at least more open to those who can’t or don’t want to use them. Keep people on the job and help those who can’t physically use or maybe understand the use of stupid things.’

Another said: ‘Self-service stresses me out. Half the time I put the item in the bagging area and it doesn’t count.

‘The other annoyance is that there is no room to pack your cart. And I feel rushed because there is always a long line. I’ll just be served by a human, he thinks.

Checking receipts isn’t the only method supermarkets use to monitor self-checkout customers.

Woolworths introduced scales in self-service bagging areas to identify incorrectly scanned items by weight and installed security camera screens above checkouts to identify unscanned items.

Woolworths said the camera technology, which has been in the works for more than 18 months but is still being rolled out in supermarkets, helps “reduce scanning errors and improve speed for customers through checkout.”

However, honest customers are frustrated by the process as the technology misidentifies the unscanned item and prevents them from completing their purchase.

In a Reddit post earlier this year, a Sydney shopper asked if ‘Anyone else [was] Frustrated with Woolies self-service checkouts?

“The last few times I’ve been at Woolies, my self-checkout got blocked and required a staff member to come and approve something I entered because their AI algorithm decided it doesn’t look like it should,” he said. he wrote her.

“If this happened once in a while I’d understand, but it seems to be at least once every time I shop, and I have to compete with a quarter of the other self-service checkouts for the attention of the one busy staff member.”

The post received more than 250 comments in 18 hours, with many Australians sharing the frustrations of shoppers.

‘At Woolies, some of the self-service checkouts have the camera on top of you, so if you don’t scan every item in your cart, you’ll get blocked when you try to pay and ask a member of staff to check that you’ve scanned everything. ‘ one said.

“Really annoying when I’m shopping for different people and need separate transactions.”

Another user explained that they were blocked from self-checkout after the security camera identified an empty coffee cup and a previously purchased loaf of bread as unscanned items.

“I had to block myself and make staff wait because I had the nerve to leave empty bags hanging from the back of my car,” a second said.

Another quipped: “Had my four-year-old daughter in the cart and it triggered the scanners as an ‘unidentified personal item in cart.'”

A Woolworth cashier called the self-checkout system “terrible” and often misidentified items as stolen.

“He has reacted to seeing carts nearby that were not linked to the customer and sometimes thinks someone’s shoes are a stolen item,” they wrote.

“A man was wearing bright green gloves and the machine thought it had put the wrong item on the scale.”

The Woolworths shopper said his store is understaffed, making it difficult to deal with customers and increasing scanning errors.

“We do not have enough staff to meet the required requirement of one person for every five positions,” they wrote.

“So I often have to deal with more customers than I should, and of course the area is too crowded to walk.”

One user said he understood the need for the technology, but the least Woolworths could do was “make sure everything works.”

Woolworths told Daily Mail Australia that the technology, known as ‘Scan Assist’, does not block customers, but asks if an item has been scanned.

“If a failed scan occurs, a short video highlights the affected product and customers have the opportunity to re-scan it,” Woolworths said.

“While most customers do the right thing at our self-service checkouts, we’re all busy and it’s easy for mistakes to happen.”

The retail giant’s new camera technology detects when something has missed its scanner by filming the area the customer is in, then halts the checkout process and flashes a red light above.

It then plays a video of the problem on the checkout screen in front of you.

As soon as a shopper accidentally or deliberately pushes their cart past the scanner or checkout operator, if it contains any product, the red light above will turn off and show the operator a video of the problem.

That means cameras can catch customers who “forget” to pay for heavy or bulk items in their carts, like 24 packs of drinks or a tray of dog food cans.