I love self checkouts. Home Depot has the best with the wireless scanners.

With few items, I can be in and out in a minute and never have to wait in line because there are so many self checkouts. If I have a lot of items, then I can wait in line for cashier because scanning all of them is more work than I care for.

I rarely have issues using them, at a variety of retailers.

Here in Japan Uniqlo’s self checkout is awesome, you dump the clothes into a bin and then it wirelessly/barcodelessly scans everything and just tells you the total. Idk if they’re doing that in the USA yet.

It’s also available in the UK.

Easily, the best self checkout I’ve ever used.

Decathlon does that in Romania.

Probably everywhere. It does mean that every single one of their items carries an RFID tag which is a privacy issue and an environment issue.

It can be an environmental issue, sure, but how would it be a privacy one? Items already have a unique number of some sort, I don't see how storing it on an RFID tag changes things.

I guess unless that tag is deactivated at checkout, you might now be wearing a unique collection of RFID tags?

The RFID is in the sales tag, so unless you're walking around with the tags still attached…

No, for clothing they are in the same label that tells you how to wash it and for other items they are in some easy to miss sticker.

One of the larger super market chains here have a phone app, which allows you to scan your items as you walk through the store. When you leave, you just scan a big QR code at checkout and that will charge the card stored in the app.

It's a really quick way of doing checkouts, i.e. you pretty much just walk out, unless you bought alcohol, in which case you'll need to wait for someone to check that you're 18.

My main issue with it is that it makes shopping terribly slow and mentally stressful. The whole process of scanning items as you pick them up is less convenient that you'd think. Some items, like vegetables don't have barcode... now what? I found myself constantly checking that I've scanned everything and focused more on the app than anything else. It's a great way to ensure that people only get what's on their shopping list.

Except for the fast checkout, which is really nice, I can't recommend it.

I am a huge fan as well. I usually feel like I am spending much less time during the checkout process than I used to.

Sometimes though, when all the checkout lanes are in use, I dream of a licensing scheme for use. So many people take _forever_ to checkout, you would think this technology was introduced in the last month.

When this happens I like to play a game where I race to check myself out before everyone else (that has already started since I am taking the latest emptied spot). I would say I win this game probably 80% of the time.

I think Home Depot might be more usable because many of their items are too big to be removed from the cart and put on a scale, so they don't have that slowdown-inducing option for under-scanning prevention