Live from Albertsons: Using the Scan 'n' Save

Lots of people responded to our post yesterday about Albertsons' new pilot program where they're giving handheld scanners to customers and letting them ring themselves up as they walk around the supermarket. Most people just wanted to mention that supermarkets in Britain and New Zealand have been using these for a few years now, but Steve Wootton responded to our plea for first-hand reports with the following:  

I tried the Albertson's Shop 'n' Scan here in Dallas this past weekend. It's basically a labor-saving device for the store, not for the shopper (like a CueCat for groceries). You walk in, scan your Preferred card (you have to have a Preferred card for the system to work), and pick up one of the hand-held laser scanners from the kiosk near the front door. Don't forget to grab a supply of shopping bags!

While shopping, you pick up an item, scan it, and then put it in one of your shopping bags. The display on the scanner shows the name of the item you've scanned, plus the purchase price. Every once in a while, a graphic will appear noting a Shop 'n' Scan-only sale item in the store ($0.50 for a dozen eggs is the only one I can recall). If an item won't scan, the barcode scanner chirps loudly, and you're asked to set the item aside in your shopping cart as an
"exception." Exception items have to be manually scanned when you're ready to leave the store.

For produce, or other items that don't normally have a barcode, there are electronic scales around the store. Place the item on the scale, and when prompted you look up and key in a 4-digit code number found in a booklet next to the scale. The scale then prints out a barcode sticker that you can attach to the item and scan with the barcode reader.
The benefit of all this work only appears at the end of the shopping trip. When you reach the checkout lanes, there's a
"done shopping" barcode you have to scan. The display on the barcode reader will either show "EXPRESS" or "ACCU-CHECK",
and you can drop the scanner into a rack near the cash registers.

If the display said "EXPRESS," you can go to any cash register (including the self-check lanes), swipe your Preferred card over the scanner, and immediately pay for your purchases and leave. If you had any "exception" items,
those will need to be individually scanned before you can pay. If the display said "ACCU-CHECK," then you've lost any benefit to scanning and bagging everything yourself. You're required to find a cashier, who will remove several items from your shopping bags and scan them individually. Presumably, this is to discourage shoplifting (in the EXPRESS case,
there's no way to tell if you're walking out with an unscanned item). Like the self-check lanes, it's another step toward the unattended grocery store. Walk in, find your groceries, scan and bag them yourself, pay the machine, and walk out without ever interacting with another human. I'll probably use the system again, but I'm a geek, so I'm like that. I'm not sure why anybody else would want to use it, though.

[Photograph courtesy of Begging to Differ]