Those Self-service tills

It’s a real pet hate of mine but these Self-service tills have gone too far. I had a very bad shopping experience at Sainsbury’s Bagshot Road Bracknell. It took me so long to do my shopping that I almost left it there (I know my brother did recently).

Anyway the English way of informing a company of your displeasure is to write them a letter, which I sent to the Bracknell Store and Holborn, see below.

Dear Customer Services Manager;

I would like to complain about the growing use of self-service tills especially when the tills are designed to cater for a weeks family shopping (Till with a conveyer belt).

I shopped at your Bracknell, Bagshot road store on Saturday 20th June in the evening. This store has recently had many till spaces converted to self-service. During this visit I had some problems with the self-service till;

Cash is not always accepted in them (the customer in front of me could not use their money in the till and had to wait for at least 8 minutes for some assistance with feeding the money into the till.

The till did not accept a few of my items and I required help twice with these.

There appeared to be only two conveyer belt tills that were staffed and they were too busy. This is why I opted for the self-service till, however I feel like I was forced to use the self-service till due to the lack of checkout staff.

The till kept on asking me to not take items off the conveyor belt and even asked for me to put the items back on the belt.

Luckily I had some one to give me a hand but if I had done my shopping on my own then I would of had to pack afterwards rather then when the checkout staff handed me the items.

I also have had a number of other concerns with these self-services tills;

How would I use these tills if I were disabled?

Do your stores now require less staff?

I feel as if the personal touch of the staff has been lost with all this self-service as I also chat to the checkout staff.

Not everyone can use a machine or at least others may find it very hard to use. I know my Grandmother for one would find the new tills very hard to use or understand especially when they give instructions

I do understand the convenience of the one-basket tills if I am only buying a few items but I found this experience so frustrating that I have now changed the supermarket I shop at and will not visit this store again.

In the past Sainsbury’s have come up with some innovative ideas like the self-scan hand held devices that are convenient. But I do feel as if your customers are now being forced to go self-service at a loss of personal customer service for which I had held your store in high regard.

I would like to add that I am very happy with the quality, stock levels and price of the food provided by the Bagshot Road Store it is purely the self-service tills that have caused my unhappiness.

I am a tech savvy person and have no problems operating complicated technical systems and computers. I actually suspect that the self-service tills do not save time but only save on staffing costs.

Please do not send me any vouchers in reply to this letter. What I would like is for there to always be adequate staff and less self-service tills and an explanation as to what is being done to improve the situation at Bracknell Bagshot Road so that I can visit this store again in the future.


Many Thanks

A Previously Customer

I realise that Sainsbury’s are not the only company doing this but this is the store that I had my bad experience at. I would also say that I can operate a machine fine in most cases but it’s not just about me what about other shoppers, this is not so easy for all of us. I am of course ok with some self-service tills but I hate being forced to do something when I suspect a cost saving is really dressed but as a convenience.

Update – visited the store today (8th July 09 8.15pm) turns out there are only 4 staff on although the store was not busy however the staffed tills were busy