[Speed Gibson,
Tuesday October 10, 2006 at 12:26pm]
Home Depot Loses Customer
The Home Depot store in Brooklyn Park lost me as a customer on Sunday. They have converted to all self-service checkout except for the "pro" line, and maybe a very slow trainee.
I'm not openly opposed to the concept, but you're not going to win me over with a poorly designed station with poor equipment. The bags that are supposed to be weighed as you put things into them were not mounted properly unless you unhook the bag first. The screen response times were slow, several seconds at times. The credit card station is mounted awkwardly at the end, and aimed at a customer maybe 5 foot 2. With its small font and LCD screen I had to bend over to read it. It prompts for PIN, expecting you to then hit the CREDIT button; most confusing.
ATM's took a good ten years to reach acceptable reliability and it looks like this technology will need another five years, too. Right now, it's vending machine grade equipment, and that's not good enough to keep me from going to Menard's from now on.
I'm not openly opposed to the concept, but you're not going to win me over with a poorly designed station with poor equipment. The bags that are supposed to be weighed as you put things into them were not mounted properly unless you unhook the bag first. The screen response times were slow, several seconds at times. The credit card station is mounted awkwardly at the end, and aimed at a customer maybe 5 foot 2. With its small font and LCD screen I had to bend over to read it. It prompts for PIN, expecting you to then hit the CREDIT button; most confusing.
ATM's took a good ten years to reach acceptable reliability and it looks like this technology will need another five years, too. Right now, it's vending machine grade equipment, and that's not good enough to keep me from going to Menard's from now on.
Heck, if the systen can scan the product's code and get the price and description, why can't it have some clue about the product's weight?
Plus, why don't they offer some small discount for using the self-checkout? Checkout speed in my example wasn't a benefit.
Maybe I'll have to switch to Menards like R5 did; but would that also require that I switch from Tony Stewart to Paul Menard as my favorite NASCAR driver? :)