For as long as we can remember, paying with a credit card required you to sign your name on the dotted line. While this system has changed over the years — mandating your John Hancock only for purchases over a certain amount — MasterCard is perhaps planning the biggest change of them all: The payment company will eliminate signature payments altogether. [More]
checkout
Panasonic’s New Checkout Machines Scan And Bag Items All By Themselves
By 12.12.16
Can it still be considered self-checkout if the shopper doesn’t have to do a thing during the process? Yet another retail innovation aimed at expediting the checkout process scans and bags items so humans don’t have to. [More]
What’s In A Name? Express Checkout Lanes Are Actually (Gasp!) A Waste Of Time
By 1.3.13
Express! That means fast, right? If you make a beeline for the express checkout lane at the grocery store any time you only have a few items, you might want to reconsider. Apparently there are other issues with the express line that can make the whole experience take almost as long as a regular lane, or in some cases, your wait could be even greater. [More]
Math Proves It: Grocery Store Express Lane Not So Express
By 9.10.09
Here’s a different sort of grocery store math than you’re probably used to. A high school math teacher in Santa Cruz, California drew up a lesson plan for teaching students to answer the question: “which checkout line is the fastest?” Clearly, this is education after our own hearts. You may have your own anecdata on this subject, and even try to make predictions as you choose your line and thus your destiny, but that is no match for science.
Dear Kroger, Please Make Self Check-Out Suck Less
By 7.6.09
Self check-out is great if, say, you’ve got one of those supermarkets where the teenaged clerks hate you for choosing their lane and spend more time talking to each other than scanning your items. It’s not so great if you force all of your customers to use the system because you’ve decided to close down every other human-powered lane but one.
Massachusetts CVS Stores Regularly Overcharge Customers
By 5.7.09
The number of overcharging violations – defined as charging more at the register than the price in an advertisement, on a shelf sign, or on the item itself – soared to 711, from 425.
Why Is Nokia Charging Customers More Than The Invoice Amount?
By 3.31.09
Nokia has already had a few problems rolling out its new touchscreen 5800 XpressMusic phone, including earpieces that go bad in humid weather and firmmware that wouldn’t work on certain big-city 3G networks on the US model, but now they’re screwing around with something serious: customers’ money.
Massachusetts Supermarkets Want To Remove Price Tags From Items
By 6.25.08
A bill is advancing through the Massachusetts legislature that will allow supermarkets to leave off item price tags and instead force customers to rely on electronic scanners spaced throughout the store. Although prices will still need to be displayed on store shelves for most items, you’ll have to rely on your memory and your faith in the store’s scanner system at checkout. John Hurst, the president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, “said consumers will benefit in the form of lower prices and shortened lines once stores no longer need to devote resources to item-by-item pricing.” But kjd aa- [thump]
Signing Card Slip At Home Depot Consents To Mysterious, Hidden Agreement
By 2.26.07
When Mark signed his receipt at Home Depot, doing so declared he, “HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO READ AND ACCEPTS THE TERMS…” of customer agreement #156326.
