“I hate them” – self -service checkouts are becoming more common in Spain, the Finnish woman living in the country has a stupid view of them

Spanish podcast presenter Alma Ulvelin There is a strong opinion on self -service racing in Spain.

“I hate them,” Ulvelin shakes.

The answer is not surprising, as Ulvelin, who has lived in Spain for more than 18 years, praises Spanish service culture in his everyday life and sun. Some of the stores such as Ikea, Zara and Decathlon have already moved entirely to self -service cashier to assisted self -service checkoutsas they are called in Spain.

The assisted self -service fund refers to the fact that the people who are at the checkout are always assisted by a full -time person.

“So I usually get them to scan the products for me,” Ulvelin admits.

Ikea, a well -known Finns living on the Sunshine Coast, went completely to self -service cashier than a year ago. The cash registers are sorted into groups of six. With the four cashier open, there is one assistant, the six cashier are open two. In addition to the credit card, cash is cash.

“Like most retail stores, our goal is to shorten the waiting time in the cashier queue,” says Spain’s Ikea Customer Relations Director María Bajamonde.

Self-service checkouts rose to the headlines at the end of last year when a merchant of K-supermarket Kontumarket Tomi Utti Remove the self -service checkouts in a great extent and blamed their customers as retail thieves.

Both Utti and Kesko’s leadership could look in the mirror and learn from Spain. Kesko’s communications are directly awarded that they have not instructed independent entrepreneurs, for example, to hire staff for self -service bags.

“The merchant chooses the concept that suits his own shop,” Kesko says.

In Spain Self -service checkouts have not been placed in stores just to make a profit for the company or merchant. According to Ikea Bajamonde, this is a customer service.

“In our experience, customers consider self -service cashier than a pair of cashier cashier to pay for purchases. In order to ensure service, self -service bags must always have assistant staff,” Bajamonde emphasizes.

Being the staff also raises the threshold for shoplifting.

Lidl in the city center of Málaga has six quick cash, assisted by one person. There is always a queue for checkouts, which tells a lot about their popularity among customers.

Store theft is also technically prevented. In addition to surveillance cameras, the cash register has two horizons. The cashier’s own horizontal weighs, for example, the fruits and the barcode indicates the price of the packed product and its weight. The horizontal on the left checks that all goods passed through the cashier weigh as much as they have been paid.

The transaction cannot be started until the last item is on the left scale. The customer must then open the gate by scanning the receipt in the reader.

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For Finns loving front cards, both countries Lidl’s instant treasures accept the phone number as a front card, which streamlines the cashier experience when you do not have to dig out a physical card from your wallet or look for smartphones in dozens of different applications.

S Group communications report that in larger stores, instant bags always have staff, but smaller instant cash controls are left to the traditional cashier. Store thefts in the S Group are prevented by following the receipt data in parallel with a scanning camera that describes scanning events. In some stores in both the S Group and Kesko, there are gates that open against the receipt after self-service checkouts.

Ulvelin sees that the staff of the quick cash also prevents the customer from being in vain suspected of shoplifting.

“I was buying a bicycle for my son from Decathlon. When I left the shop, the alarm started ringing. The person who helped me in the scan also wondered why. He had to investigate the bike more closely before finding a drinking rack attached to it,” Ulvelin says.

How The development shows in Finland? Do self -service checkouts replace ordinary cash registers somewhere?

Traditional cash registers are not about to leave, the S Group is responsible for the communications of the S Group. It is the market leader in the Finnish grocery trade. In 2023 the market share of the S Group’s grocery store was over 48 per cent.

Also, Kesko does not intend to replace traditional checkouts with instant bags. According to another major player in Finnish retail, they are part of “normal customer service change”.

Lidl is the same. It says that instant cashiers can be found in all its stores, but there is no plan for traditional cashier removal. According to Lidl, instant cashiers are an option for those who want a particularly fast shopping.

Correction 19.3.2025 at 1:14 pm: The incorrect claim that Lidl in Finland always had instant funds in Finland. In addition, the name of the everyday and Sun podcast has been corrected in the correct shape.