Is Coles trying to kill newspapers?
I’m starting to wonder if Coles is engaged in a subtle plot to kill the newspaper industry.
The evidence is, I must admit, a little thin in that it’s based on my experiences in one Sydney store. But it doesn’t bode terribly well.
The store in question is the branch at the charmingly named Surry Hills Shopping Village (which may be a way of trying to distract customers from the fact that they’ve strayed into the dangerous territory of Redfern).
The daily newspapers have recently been relegated to a corner of the store only accessible to those who venture beyond the self service checkouts. So a committed newspaper buyer has to either a) use the self service checkouts or b) if they want one of those quaint human cashiers, they need to either enter the store through the self service exit or shove their way through the self service queue to grab them, making themselves appear to be a shoplifter dashing for freedom. The casual browser is certainly not going to stumble upon them.
I suspect that newspaper sales have plummetted as a result.
But if that’s not enough, there’s another hurdle.
If you haven’t yet tried the new, super-convenient checkouts, the idea is that you scan your own groceries, delivering a faster service for yourself and of course conveniently saving the hard-up duopolist supermarket a few salary dollars.
Of course, Coles believes you are probably a shoplifter, given half the chance. So there’s a special device. After you scan each item and put it in your bag, it weighs it, and decides if it’s suspiciously heavy. If so, the computer voice loudly announces “Unexpected item in the packing area”. Then a member of staff trots over and checks up on you.
The night before last, I made the very bad decision of attempting to buy a copy of the Daily Telegraph. It’s an ordeal I’m not going to go through again.
After scanning it, the voice announced “Unexpected item in the packing area”. A member of staff trotted across and swiped their card to make it stop. The process was then repeated for every fucking item. If I wasn’t buying my dinner, I’d have walked off at that point.
The downtrodden member of staff explained that although the machine knows the average weight of the papers, it doesn’t allow for them being stuffed with leaflets or other supplements. So any time you attempt to buy the paper on the self service tills, you’ll face that process because it thinks you’re stealing some cheese.
Last night, I decided to do without the paper – and indeed without the self service checkout.
So you can imagine my delight when the customer in front of me decided to spread their payment across four credit cards.
Tim Burrowes
Linkedin
I’m a regular customer at that particular Coles. And although it seems as if the scanners are faulty, its quite funny watching people put every single piece of fruit and veg through as bananas… at $2.99 per kilo
You can also just hold the thing and say “I dont want to bag this item”
But realistically, if you are buying your newspaper from Coles, and not the Newsagent mere moments from the entrance, you are likely to be buying some late night exceedingly old news.
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Aged news is my favourite: http://www.thedailyshow.com/wa...../end-times
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
I’m personally not a fan of these self service checkout. Staff spend more time trying to ‘help’ customers use the stupid things – Time that would be better spent (perhaps) putting through your groceries and selling them to you. Just saying.
But, to get to my point. Apologies in advance if this is blunt, but I’ve noticed a number of homeless people in the Town Hall area wearing the ‘Need help with self-service checkouts – Ask me!’ shirts on. Three seen on the walk from the office to the bus stop yesterday. Thrown away without consideration? From a cold marketeer POV, a dirty guy nursing a number of plastic bags, talking to himself and stumbling down a city street is hardly a good spot to place your brand?Maybe Coles would be interested in replacing these tees with plain clothes for these guys instead.
Just a thought. Anyone else seen any rouge Coles tees?
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coles isn’t the only one at it.
I have been to three different 7-11’s recently and all had placed their papers at the back of the shop.
watch that space at woollies.
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I love self service check outs – did everyone struggle with ATMs when they were introduced too?
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Your experience is sadly rather the norm. Self-checkouts are an idea that falls into the ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time’ category. They must have been designed by the same people who started those hidden camera TV shows.
Another thought: how do you think the staff manning the checkouts must feel ? If the self checkouts are a success, management will surely reduce the number of full service checkouts (now there’s an oxymoron !). I wouldn’t be surprised if the self-checkouts suffered some unfortunate industrial sabotage at a point……
I know the store well, and now avoid the self-checkout like the plague.
Thanks for a great column.
Stephen Saunders
The Shoppologist
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The answer is obvious really, sell newspapers by the kilo 😉
But seriously, surely their systems have the ability to handle products with unpredictable weight..? I realise the weight of the product is their key theft detection system, but _surely_ they must have built in the ability to make an exception for products of unpredictable weight.
I mean, how do they cope with fruit sold by the unit? Watermelons must surely weigh different amounts (though I suppose Coles might say to growers that it will only accept watermelons between 2.4 and 2.6KG). I’d love to see Coles try to tell Fairfax that it will only sell editions of newspapers that are between 500g and 1.5KG.
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Also… I recently used the self-service checkout at one of the supermarkets (can’t remember if it was Coles or Woolies) and the machine required a staff member to come over to check my credit card signature after I signed for it.
In a way that would be good, since enforced checking of signatures would mean the signature-based authentication of credit cards wouldn’t be such a complete joke.
However, the staff member came over and just swiped his card — he didn’t give two hoots about whether or not the signature matched; he didn’t even look. So all that was enforced was a delay while the staff member came over.
I can see the staff member’s point though. While some checkout clerks do check signatures, they will pretty much accept anything — have you EVER seen ANYONE being asked to sign their name again because the signature didn’t really match that well?
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I had a similar experience at the branch inside World Square. Needless to say it was the first and last time I used the self check out. The repetition of that “Do you want to bag this item” screen made it even more frustrating especially when I pressed “No” but the message refused to disappear on more than on occassion, slowing down the DIY check out process. On a more positive note, it wasn’t so bad until it came down to processing fruits and veges. I’d be interested to know how much testing Coles performed on these before rolling them out? It makes them even more unfriendly to use when the staff, who are supposed to help, lecture you instead on how you’re doing it wrong. Bottom line – not intuitive and a bad customer experience!
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Sorry to be the downer on this tirade, but I love the self-service checkout. I have been enthusiastically using them at my local Big W for over a year now, and more recently at a supermarket. Although I will conceed that the whole fruit and veg thing is a little slow and inconvenient, but it is more than off-set by the lack of queues and the fact that you don’t need to make idle conversation with some spotty teen checkout operator. So..technophobes…get with the times!!! 🙂
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I love the self check out! When I used one in Perth recently, I inadvertently placed my sausage roll in the same bag as my pie. When going through the check out, it only asked me for the price for the sausage roll so the pie was free! I’ve gone back a few times since. Gotta love technology!
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Count me as anti-self-checkout. I’m sure they are a nice idea but unless I’m going to get a discount for doing my own checkout (and bigger discount if i bring my own f*$*%n bags) I’ll stick with a checkout chick/dude even if she/he has the charisma equal to a bar code scanner.
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I’m definitely pro self checkout. I live in Spotswood in inner city Melbourne and my local Coles stores are at Yarraville and Altona. I would give anything to have self checkout at these stores. The customer service at both of them is appalling. The checkout operators are inept, rude and clearly don’t care about their customers. Its a clear case of “if you want something done properly, you might as well do it yourself”.
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I’ve been quite boggled at seeing five checkout staff twiddling their thumbs and looking sadly at the self-service checkouts while people *queued* to use the self-service at Broadway Shopping Centre.
Boggled, I tell you.
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One excellent point with the self-scanning things – it’s the PERFECT way to get rid of all those irritating 1p and 2p coins here in the UK. Though a month ago I had to spend 10 minutes of my lunch break waiting for two schoolgirls to buy two bottles of Coke for £1.12, using 112 coins.
I think the machines made it to the UK about 3 years ago – they don’t get any smarter with time.
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I HATE self service check out. Why should I have to do the work? If they really want people to use that “service” then they should give us a cut of the money they are saving by not putting staff on. I’ll grow ALL of my food before I use one of those things.
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Self service check outs are fantastic unless you actually just want to pay for your shopping. They seem to ping up a ridiculous amount of errors when you are being honest, however they never spot you putting in all your veggies as whatever is currently cheapest, or the free smoked salmon that somehow you got with your cream cheese.
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I must say I’m amazed at the number of comments here from people who disclose how they steal from the supermarket by misdeclaring their vegies. It never even occurred to me to do that!! Also surprising that people would take the risk, given that they’d probably never pocket something and walk out of a shop — somehow the fact that the technology ‘lets them’ seems to make it better.
Interesting technology problem for the supermarkets to solve, though… I wonder if they could implement colour-recognition cameras for vegetables or something. One thing’s for sure, they’re not going to have much luck selling button mushrooms for $10/KG, and the wide flat mushrooms for $13/KG any more… no amount of technology is ever going to detect the difference.
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Coles mercilessy screws local growers, so cutomers screwing Coles seems like natural justice to me.
On the other hand you’d have to hope that the automated ordering systems weren’t directly tied to sales. Otherwise you’d see all fruit & veges disappear except for umpteen rows of watermelons.
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