I walked into Stop & Shop (S&S) today, and a nice lady stopped and asked me if I wanted to use the handheld scanner. I was so excited, as I had heard about these, but have never seen them in action.  Overall, I was not impressed, but obviously have a lot of thoughts on the topic.

Stop & Shop

Here’s how it works… You scan your S&S card, and grab a scanner at the entrance the store.  You put paper or plastic bags in your cart, and go do your shopping.  As you take an item from the shelf, you scan it and put it in the bag.  At the end of your shopping trip, you go to the self-check-out, scan your S&S card again, and pay with your credit card.

Handheld Scanner

Pros:

• Instead of remembering to bring the long strip of coupons from your prior shopping trip, the scanner gives you savings right on the spot based on what you bought last time!  So, I buy Wyman’s frozen blueberries all the time, and as soon as I started up the scanner, it told me that I can save 50 cents on them today.
• Very cool to see the prices of items as you’re putting them in your basket.  You can verify that the price on the shelf is what you’re actually paying for it.
• You don’t have to take your groceries out of the cart, only to put them back in bags at the end
• Not sure if this is a pro or a con… I’m quite sure that in error, I probably bagged an item out of habit without paying for it (sorry S&S!).  They have a random audit process, but that would just catch that particular trip’s items, and it could really have been an honest mistake, not shoplifting.  I’m wondering how they determine which it is.

Cons:

• The scanner is a pain, and doesn’t read the bar codes very well
• Overall, I think it took me more time to shop
• Fruit and everything else that needs weighing is difficult, as you have to find a scale, enter the PLU number, and wait for a sticker to print, and then scan it
• It breaks your normal shopping flow of “grab an item and put it in your cart”… you have to “grab an item, pick up the scanner, scan it, and put it in your cart”.  Each individual item takes longer
• You still have to go through the check out process to pay at the end
• It makes annoying noises as you go around the store (I think it’s reminding you of the coupons)
• You have to bag the items yourself, which is even more difficult when you’re doing it as you get each item, not all at the end.  Normally when you shop, the bagger can look at your items and put hard items on the bottom and soft items on the top.  But, with the scanner, you’re bagging as you go along, so you just put things in when you get them.

Stop & Shop card

My ideas for the future:

• Allow customers to have their credit card on file so you don’t have to go through the payment process at the end
• Allow you to upload your shopping list online, so the scanner will remind you what you still need to purchase
• Enable GPS on the scanner so coupons can be offered as you are near the items (I’ve heard of this technology being available, but it’s not available at S&S)

So, as I said, overall, I would not use this scanner again.  It was just more work than it was worth.

Have you used a handheld scanner before?  What did you think?