Tesco Self Service Tills

If you try to, you'll have an 'unexpected item in bagging area' woman screaming at you. At my local Tesco, you only have to breathe near the till to set it off.


There's always a member of staff floating around the self-service checkouts too, I'm sure they'd notice if you tried to drop something into your bag without scanning it.

kfallon wrote: »

Was using them this morning and was wondering what was stopping me not scanning thru half my items and just popping them in my bag. Now being the upstanding honest pillar of the community that I am, I scanned all my items and paid for them accordingly.

But is it really that easy to steal items using these tills or does scanning them thru also entail removing a security alert from the item which won't set off any alarms.

Anyone on AH try this before?

Worked in Tesco for bleeding donkeys' years and there is an alert that flashes up when there's an unexplained weight in the bagging area. Hence the annoying "unexpected item in the bagging area"! That's what stops people being a bit liberal with what they scan and what they don't.

Well you could just leave without using the scan either I guess?

Richard Hillman wrote: »

The thing you put your items on weighs your your shopping. Im sure they have a margin of error so you might get away with a packet of chewing gums

Nope, no margin of error. That's why they even freak out about bags you put down. Or elbows. Or keys. Or children. God, I hate the self scan checkouts.

The way they work is strange, in that the computer knows the weight of everything as well as its price. After you scan something, that weight needs to appear on the scale, and if something appears on the scale that wasn't scanned, it sets off the alarm. That includes any shopping bag you may have: seems to me as if the machines are designed for the UK, where there are no restrictions on plastic bags.

But to answer your question - sure, you could probably send something straight from your basket in to your bag. It would have to be something cheap, since expensive items are tagged. There are staff around, and cameras, but if you get away with it, they just call it "shrinkage" and write it off. Just how desperate do you have to be to steal from Tesco? :rolleyes:

Scan light/expensive fruit and veg as heavy/cheap ones instead. Choose potato for your bag of mushrooms.

questionmark? wrote: »

Or you could just rob it like a normal thief by sticking an expensive item up ones rectum.

kfallon wrote: »

Who said they were hard to use

:rolleyes:

I answered the OP first and just added that in. Have you never had the torture of being stuck behind a self service retard

The way the shop looks at it there's a certain percentage that will be robbed through this system but it's still more efficient than employing cashiers. A bank of 12 machines will replace atleast 8 staff as they work many shifts, so if you take an average wage of 25k a year that would be €200,000 worth of theft of nearly €4,000 a week that can be stolen without it impacting on the savings they are making. The machines work 24 hours a day with little downtime, don't need breaks, don't get sick leave, don't get maternity leave, it's starting to look all a bit Terminatoresque .

Its no wonder we have so many people on the dole. we are being replaced by robots now. Seems like tesco just took this thing in and nobody gave out about it. Gotta love the Irish, we just let people away with murder.

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

The way the shop looks at it there's a certain percentage that will be robbed through this system but it's still more efficient than employing cashiers. A bank of 12 machines will replace atleast 8 staff as they work many shifts, so if you take an average wage of 25k a year that would be €200,000 worth of theft of nearly €4,000 a week that can be stolen without it impacting on the savings they are making. The machines work 24 hours a day with little downtime, don't need breaks, don't get sick leave, don't get maternity leave, it's starting to look all a bit Terminatoresque .

25k working for tesco? Whatever they do spend on wages is largely regurgitated in store in weekly shopping, so the true cost is much less.

I avoid shopping in tesco due to these machines replacing staff. However sometimes I get caught having to do a late night shop and insist on using the normal till. One night recently a staff member insisted on putting my items through the self service till for me, I let her, then I refused to produce my credit card saying I thought she was going to pay too.