In this post on X, a frustrated Walmart customer has claimed that huge theft levels have caused his local branch to close all of their self-check-out kiosks unless they are urgently required to be used. Thievery has forced many stores to initiate policies where they lock up certain items in store.
His social media post contained two pictures of self-check-out aisles, which were deserted because of the amount of stealing forcing Walmart’s hand. The pictures showed 17 registers, all of which were shut down, as denoted by the red lights above them.
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Rutberg said he only learned of the reason behind the kiosk closures when he made a joke to a Walmart employee. “I joked to the person ringing up my groceries that it was ironic; they’d just trained us to do the job,” he wrote on X.
“She said they decided to only open them when lines at full-service checkouts get long. Too much theft.”
Self-checkouts can save retail companies money, but their introduction seems to have coincided with increased amounts of theft. A study commissioned by Grabango recently revealed that the loss rates at self-checkout kiosks are 16 times higher than at conventional checkouts.