Does anybody else find this concept absolutely ingenius?

http://www.coop.ch/passabene/faq-de.htm (In German)

The funny thing is the number of people still queuing for ages at the standard checkout. Meanwhile the passabene lanes are so free that the checkout lady is pleased enough at something to do that she even smiles.

I would definitely recommend it. It's quite amazing how enthusiastic it makes men about grocery shopping too!

Puddy

We live near one of the first Coop stores(if not the first) to offer this service. It's great if you want your kids to go shopping with you..anything electronic does the trick. However, every once in a while, and the cashier has no control over this, the computer decides to do a spot check so you have to put all your shopping on the belt and it has to be scanned, just as if you never did so yourself. It's happened to us twice and it really is frustrating to have to unpack all your groceries. On both occasions our total on the Passabene and the cashier's total matched. I have heard that Coop has concerns about expensive items not being scanned (for example, meat products).

I have had to unload a couple of times for the spot checks. But realistically if the service were not there I would have had to do it anyway... and then some.

I guess theft would be a concern... though with the costs they save on staff and the extra through-put that the device allows, I would imagine it more than pays for itself. It must work if the SBB train service still works with the honesty system...

I love it. Saturday food shopping for the whole family in under 30 minutes. Leaves time for more "fun" stuff on Saturday. No queuing. what surprises me is how many people just don0t get it. I mean there are whacking great green "ONLY FOR PASSABENE" signs up at thes tills but non-passabene people just walk right past them, unload all their stuff (usually in fron of me and get really pissed off when the cashier tells them they'll have to use the other tills. Good idea and I don't mind the spot checks. It's a random thingy that the computer decides, not the cashier, so there's no point in getting all stroppy at her, like I've seen other people do. Theft is a reality, and I do understand coops concerns about people seeing this as an easy way to shoplift.

I use it all the time and have done so since the Pilot in Letzipark in Zurich.

Cheers, Danis

Yes it is great my kids love going shopping now so they can scan the items before putting them in the green bag (also great). I also don`t mind the spot checks it as only happened 3 times to us.

Happy shopping

the shops taking part in zürich are too much outside of the city.
hopefully there will attend some more central zürich.

The system is a good idea.

Coop's mistrust ruins it for me.

Had to unpack everything every other time I used the system.

No more Coop for me if I can help it.

The mistrust-spot-checks would discourage me from using it. Either they want to check everything or they don't. I would rather let them check it all and do the work than expect me to do it for them while they subsequently police my activity.

dave

i love the passebene
it was something i really missed from the uk as our local waitrose offered the same service (quickshop)
we've only been checked once out of over a dozen shops. not sure how it works here but when you were spotchecked in the uk if there were any discrepancies you were spotchecked more frequently.

We used to do this in Belgium. The spot checks happen in the begining then they stop happening as much. It's not a "trust" issue so much as it's to check that everything it working properly, then when it's up & running the checks will diminish.

Well, that's my experience with this system in Belgium.

As (sort-of) an aside... there I was last week, in the queue at Coop Wollishofen. There was an old guy in the queue in front of me, holding a bag with a couple of slices of ham from the deli. They ran it through the barcode scanner - chf 41!! He was understandably not too happy about this, and spat the dummy.

The tills stopped for a few minutes while they went off and tried to figure out why the computer was giving silly prices,,,

The customer should therefore at intervals run a random basket of food through the scanners and checkout, without purchasing them. In the interests of spot-checks of the retailer. It would of course be useful to have a reporter on hand to record their reaction.

dave

I use Passebene at the Coop in Crissier and have so far never been checked. The system is another reason why I prefer shopping at the Coop to Migros, the main ones being the wide range of organnic produce....and the wine!

From my observation Passabene is Coop's biggest flop idea ever. At our local Coop (large sized) the 2 Passabene lanes never have more than 1 person working them and many times that one person isn't even at their register because there's no customers using Passabene. I've even spent a little time going up and down the rows that have a clean view of the Passabene lanes and I almost never see anyone checking out there. What I do see most of the time is a poor worker sitting bored out of their mind trying not to doze off.
Would I use it..? No. Why..? Because if I didn't scan something properly or just spaced out and put the item into my bag without scanning it and I get stopped for a control I do not want to be accused of shoplifting. Imagine getting busted because of some stupid oversight and this goes on your record, thanks but no thanks..!! Besides, if I'm expecting to fly through the check-out stand and I have to stop to have everything pulled out of my bag to be re-scanned I would not be one happy Coop customer at that point. Unless of course they gave all Passabene customers a 10% discount on all items then I might think about using it.. but not before.

There is also a French version of the FAQ.

We've been using it pretty regularly for the past year or so and absolutely love it. I've gotten checked maybe three or four times in the past year, and it doesn't bother me in the least considering it's what I would have been doing anyhow if I wasn't using passabene. Even if I did have to unpack everything every single time I'd be saving a hell of a lot of time because there is NEVER a line. Plus, I always get a free parking ticket whenever they do a check. One time I forgot to scan something (easy to do if you're not shopping alone and you're both putting stuff in the basket) and got checked and there was nothing accusatory in the least from the checkout lady.

But by all means, keep avoiding it. The less people that use it, the better for those of us that do.

I never use it. It is not available at the Coop in the next village to mine, only at the larger Coop which is further away and I tend to go to the closer one to save time. I just find the Passabene too fiddly and actually slower than just sailing through the aisles and selecting the items I want and putting them in the cart. If I change my mind about an item and put it back, I don't have to worry about whether I scanned it or not. If two of us are shopping together, it is really awkward as there is only one scanner.

I often see the cashier sitting idle at the Passebene checkout and I think how boring it must be and why they are paying someone to do nothing. On the other hand, the little magnifying glass on the shopping cart is very cool. I can finally read the ingredients printed in mice type.

I couldn't stop laughing the first time I saw the magnifying glass, I thought all the customers in our area had sight problems then I saw them in other Coops as well. So what exactly are they for? Are the Passabene scanners so hard to read..??

Love the magnifying glass. When they are trying to squeeze three languages into an area that would have one in a mono-lingual country, and you are not really strong in any of them and you have to read the ingredients on everything for the vegan in the family, and all of this coinciding with my deteriorating eyesight, the magnifying glass is a godsend.

As for Passabene, I'd like to try it but again my language skills are holding me back.

the bulach coop has passabene and alot of people use it...i always use it as it saves from re-packing your shopping.
the only gripe i have is that they seem to do the checks frequently in bulach, so i have to unload and re-pack after every 4-5th visit? too often for my liking...but i like the scanner, it's really easy to use.