More stores are ditching self-checkout amid theft and customer complaints

In 2020, Walmart started testing cashierless, all-self-checkout big box stores, first in the United States and then in Canada.

But the pilot project didn't quite catch on. Walmart tells CBC News that, currently, just one big box location across Canada and the U.S. has an all-self-checkout, cashier-free format — in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, a small town in Quebec.

Meanwhile, over the past eight months, the retail giant has removed all its self-checkout machines at six U.S. locations, joining several other big box chains that have ditched the machines in certain stores, including, recently, a Giant Tiger in Stratford, Ont. 

It's a surprising shift in the predicted trajectory — instead of the all-self-checkout store becoming the norm, some retail outlets are returning to the traditional, all-cashier format. 

"Stores anticipated that this technology would allow them to significantly reduce labour costs," said Christopher Andrews, a sociologist and author of The Overworked Consumer: Self-Checkouts, Supermarkets, and the Do-It-Yourself Economy. 

But instead of cutting costs, some stores discovered that self-checkout actually hurt their bottom line, largely due to theft, says Andrews. 

"I think they're just losing so much [money] that it just becomes an economic liability."

Two weeks ago, franchise owner Scott Savage removed the four self-checkout machines at his Giant Tiger discount store in Stratford, some 90 kilometres west of Hamilton. 

He says, rather than theft, he made the change because many of his customers are seniors who dislike using the machines.

"The biggest complaint you have from everybody is, 'You don't pay me to work here,'" said Savage. "They would line up at my regular registers, and they would just prefer that service."

At least six Canadian Tire locations in Ontario have also scrapped self-checkout. Two of the stores' franchise owners, one in North Bay and one in Toronto, told CBC News they made the move because they felt it improved customer service.

But Andrews says, along with theft, staffing requirements are often the main reasons why retailers abandon self-checkout. The machines require attendants to help customers — while also watching for thieves. 

"What they found was that actually they couldn't eliminate a lot of the cashiers, because they needed the cashiers there, in part, to deter shoplifting," said Andrews, an associate professor at Drew University in Madison, N.J.

Several studies have suggested that self-checkout theft is a problem, but there's no hard data as retailers don't make such information public.