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December 17, 2007

Review: Stop & Shop "Easy Shop" = meh bordering on bleh

This weekend, I went out on a crazy suburban limb and decided to give Stop & Shop's new "Easy Shop" scanning wand thing a try.

The device (which I can't find any pictures of...but admittedly, i'm not looking too hard) looks like one of those hand-held scanner things you use to put thing into a gift registry...a small device, about the size and heft of one of those packing-tape applicators.  The gist is you scan your items as you go through the store...and save time on checkout.

In practice, the thing is pretty lame.  I find that scanning items (and bagging them as you shop) slows the whole shopping process down to a frustrating, messy, crawl.  Whereas before, sans magic technological advanced device creates to save corporation money, one could walk through the grocery store placing things deftly in one's cart...now you have to stop, locate an item's barcode, scan it (multiple times if you are foolish enough to buy irregularly shaped items or items in plastic bags), bag the item....repeat.  The bagging part really slowed the whole trip down...since you know have to bag items as you...which results in a lot of reorganization (in-aisle) as you happen to get heavier items last, bread on the bottom, etc etc etc.

The scanner also helpfully beeps at you to display pointless ads (oh hey, spicy nacho cheese Cheez-Its are $0.05 off!  Ding!  Ding ding ding!).  Oh, and also the scanner doesn't scan in the proper price on some sale items.

The most stupid part is that you still have to wait in a checkout line...you have to complete the checkout process (which involves scanning a stand-alone bar code and your Stop & Shop card a second time) and pay...but hey, you don't have to wait for bagging!

So, bleh.  An unnecessary device that really slows down grocery shopping.  I sense it is cheaper to "buy a semi-crappy device" than "pay an employee," and it's probably good to get people to "loiter in aisles" to potentially make "awesome impulse purchases of brown-sugar and kangaroo-pouch flavored goo-blast gusher 6000s," but I won't use it again.

Update:  Thanks to Paul, who found pictures (and a nicer review) here.

Clampants | December 17, 2007 12:31 PM