TTwo more Walmart stores — one in St. Louis, Missouri, and one in Cleveland, Ohio, are getting rid of their self-checkout machines, according to a report. statement shared with Business Insider. Self-checkout machines will be removed after hours and the process will be completed within two weeks.
“We believe the change will improve the in-store shopping experience and give our associates the opportunity to provide more personalized and efficient service,” Walmart spokesperson Brian Little told Insider.
TIME has reached out to Walmart for comment and more information.
The news comes after Walmart made a similar change at three New Mexico stores last year, removing all self-checkout machines. Other stores including Target, Dollar General and FiveBelow also said they are reducing your dependence on self-checkout services in recent months. Dollar General announced it would remove the self-checkout option from 300 stores while FiveBelow is opting for a hybrid checkout whereby staff manually scan customers’ items at self-checkout machines. Target is implementing a new rule that only allows you to use self-checkout if you are purchasing 10 items or fewer.
Self-checkout, on average, appears to have a significantly higher theft rate, with a study by a shopping startup called Grabango suggesting that shoppers are 21 times more likely to sneak a stolen item through a machine than a human checkout.
It’s especially common for shoppers to purchase some items while stealing other items during automatic checkout, causing retailers to have large amounts of inventory that go unaccounted for, known as “shrinkage.” Some shrinkage may even be involuntary. About one in five shoppers say they accidentally took an item from the ATM without paying for it, according to a survey from LendingTree.
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