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MIA aspect of supermarkets, do you remember this ?

Posted: 31 Jan 2013 14:23
by Jon Jax 71
Besides giving out stamps, Blue Chip or S & H Green, who here remenbers wehn the checkers called out the price of he tiem as they rang it up? I fonsly remember that in So Calif in the 60's and 70s they it was stopped. Von's, Ralphs and The Pantry were especially known for that

Re: MIA aspect of supermarkets, do you remember this ?

Posted: 02 Feb 2013 13:00
by klkla
Our policy at Mayfair Markets was to call out prices. The reason as explained to me was that if there was a discrepancy the customer could identify it right away.

It changed because of scanners for obvious reasons.

Interestingly years later Safeway installed a device on our scanners that called out the prices electronically. Half the customers loved. Half the customers hated it. The problem was when the store got busy it couldn't keep up and would call out prices incorrectly LOL.

Re: MIA aspect of supermarkets, do you remember this ?

Posted: 15 Feb 2013 04:05
by storewanderer
I remember some NCR Systems installed in Albertsons in the early 90's with the talking scanners. They only worked on certain registers. I remember the little speaker below the customer display screen and the small freestanding scale display screen... I don't think they lasted long; the store was relocated in 1995 and the talking scanners were not part of the new store.

Re: MIA aspect of supermarkets, do you remember this ?

Posted: 15 Feb 2013 04:09
by storewanderer
Speaking of Safeway and calling out prices, how about the self checkouts that basically do this?

My favorite is when I put my club card in and it "calls out the savings." It is somewhat humorous at Safeway since they have so many different "discounts" coming from every direction. I bought a box of cereal there last weekend and it had card savings, a just4you "coupon center" coupon, and a just4u "personalized 10% off" discount so that one item had three discounts for the machine to call out. I had some other similar items and the silly machine was still mouthing off as I swiped my card and the receipt started to print.

I have also encountered some odd self checkout software at Giant-MD, Wegmans, Stop & Shop, and Haggen that is even more talkative. If you put a non barcode code item in, it will say something like "enter the quantity of your kiwis" or "place your bananas on the scale" or some random phrase announcing each item that is not scanned. Maybe it talks about your scanned items too? I always suspected this was either for loss prevention reasons or to alert customers of selecting the wrong item...

It is funny how the self checkouts, a supposed modern "thing" have integrated the old "calling out the prices" technology of the 80's and 90's, a throwback to the old checkouts that didn't even use scanners in the 60's and 70's where a person would verbally call out the prices... the more things change, the more things say the same.

Re: MIA aspect of supermarkets, do you remember this ?

Posted: 19 Sep 2016 03:22
by rvwalton
klkla wrote:Our policy at Mayfair Markets was to call out prices. The reason as explained to me was that if there was a discrepancy the customer could identify it right away.

It changed because of scanners for obvious reasons.

Interestingly years later Safeway installed a device on our scanners that called out the prices electronically. Half the customers loved. Half the customers hated it. The problem was when the store got busy it couldn't keep up and would call out prices incorrectly LOL.
The Jewel near my childhood home installed the talking scanners. There was a very nice and very fast checker named Lorraine who scanned so fast she broke the voice thing. When asked why her scanner wasn't talking she would say it had laryngitis.

Re: MIA aspect of supermarkets, do you remember this ?

Posted: 22 Sep 2016 12:20
by Super S
This actually extends beyond California....the old Albertsons at Vista & Overland in Boise (a former Safeway) had talking registers but had the Datachecker setup that I assumed was carryover from its days as Safeway. This was the first store I ever remember having the talking registers. One thing I always found interesting was that this version seemed to have a less annoying "voice" than the ones that were on the NCR registers used at virtually every other Albertsons in Boise.

I actually remember in the early days of scanners (mainly in stores where they were new installs) where checkers would call out the prices as they scanned items.