Why several big-box stores have ditched their self-checkouts

After Dwayne Ouelette took over the Canadian Tire in North Bay, Ont., last year, he decided to buck the trend and ditch the store's four self-checkout machines — which had been there for a decade. 

"I'm not comfortable using them and I don't think some of my customers are comfortable [either]," said Ouelette, who removed the machines in July and replaced them with cashiers. 

"I'd rather my customers see my cashiers and if there's any questions or concerns, at least there's somebody they can talk to."

When self-checkouts began their rise to prominence about a decade ago, they were seen as a way for retailers to cut labour costs and speed up the checkout process. 

Soon, the machines outnumbered cashiers in many stores. But now, some big-box stores that previously embraced self-checkout have backtracked, and re-embraced an all-cashier, full-service format.

Along with North Bay, a Canadian Tire in Mississauga, Ont., recently ditched its machines.

In the United States, three Walmarts in Albuquerque, N.M., abandoned self-checkout over the past two months. And in England, Booths supermarket is phasing out the machines in 25 of its 27 stores. 

Retail adviser David Ian Gray predicts more stores will follow suit. "When self-checkout got introduced, it was heralded as a really great technology play to help improve the customer experience," he said. "But the truth is, there's a lot of friction."

That friction includes technical hurdles, like when the machine freezes due to an "unexpected item in the bagging area." There's also growing customer anger over feeling forced to use self-checkout and something the retail industry is not keen to talk about: theft. 

"Theft is a big, big issue,"  said Gray with Vancouver-based DIG360 Consulting. "At the self-checkout area ... you don't have the eyes on you like you would with the cashier."

It's difficult to gauge the theft problem due to a lack of statistics. The Retail Council of Canada has said shoplifting is on the rise, but that it doesn't track self-checkout theft. 

In July, CBC News asked several major retailers about this type of theft, but none directly answered the question. 

Retailers were more forthcoming in an industry-funded study published in 2022. In it, 93 retailers across the globe estimated that as much as 23 per cent of their store losses were due to a combination of theft and customer error at self-checkout.

And a new survey commissioned by U.S. personal finance website LendingTree found that out of 2,000 Americans polled online last month, 15 per cent admitted to stealing at self-checkout. Twenty-one per cent said they've accidentally taken an item without scanning it.