Self-service checkouts only add to waiting time, study claims

New research has shown that far from easing the supermarket shopping experience, the proliferation of self-service checkouts has increased queues and induced "till rage" by delaying customers with technical glitches and perplexing automated announcements.

Figures compiled by trade journal The Grocer show that in Sainsbury's and Tesco, the chains with most self-service tills, average waiting times for staffed tills have gone up in the past two years by five seconds at Sainsbury's, and nearly half a minute at Tesco.

But both supermarkets told The Sunday Telegraph that queuing times had dropped as self-service tills increased the number of points at which customers could pay.

Also, the shopworkers' union Usdaw claimed the tills posed a risk to staff who find themselves on the receiving end of frustrated customers' anger at announcements of "unexpected items in the baggage area", rejection of banknotes and the need for a shop worker to verify the age of anyone buying alcohol.

"In our latest survey, self-service checkouts were cited for the first time as a cause of abuse," said John Hannett, Usdaw's general secretary. "Shoppers much prefer to be served by real people," he told The Sunday Telegraph.

A Sainsbury's spokesman told the newspaper that it remains committed to offering both manned and self-service tills in their stores.