‘I canceled my card,’ Lowe’s shopper of 25 years after self-checkout experience & vows not to shop at retailer again

A LOWE'S shopper is fed up after facing long lines and high prices at the home improvement store — and now she says she will never return.

Retailers across the country have been experimenting with new ways of streamlining the customer experience through self-checkout and other new technology for years.

The changes are intended to speed up the checkout process for shoppers and cut back on the bottom-line costs for retailers.

But not all of the updates have been welcomed.

Many shoppers have complained specifically about the problems caused by the proliferation of self-checkout kiosks — from issues with receipt checks to mis-scanned items that lead to false arrests.

For one Lowe's shopper, the long lines were the last straw.

"Too late," Kat (@Katt_Fondu) started a recent post on the social media platform X.

Like several retailers across the country, Lowe's began installing self-checkout kiosks in hundreds of their stores over the last few years.

"I canceled my card and won’t ever shop there again," she said.

Kat also said she was tired of the higher price tags.

"The service is so bad there now, prices so high, along with self-checkout. I am done," she said.

Her boycott of Lowe's would extend to her family too, she said.

"This includes my family. Together we spent about 4-5k a year there over the last 25 years," she claimed.

SELF-CHECKOUT WOES

Shoppers at other retailers have also taken issue with problems caused by new shopping policies like self-checkout and receipt checking.

A Tennessee woman recently raged against Walmart after visiting her local store only to find checkout lines snaking throughout the store.

"Walmart line[s] are ridiculous!!!!" Ashley Nicole wrote on X.

"They literally only have two cashiers! Self-checkout lines be lines asf. It’s so annoying," the mother-of-one added.

A Walmart representative commented on her angry post, requesting that she "send us a DM, we wanna hear more about this."

Latest self-checkout changes

Retailers are evolving their self-checkout strategy in an effort to speed up checkout times and reduce theft.

Walmart shoppers were shocked when self-checkout lanes at various locations were made available only for Walmart+ members.

Other customers reported that self-checkout was closed during specific hours, and more cashiers were offered instead.

While shoppers feared that shoplifting fueled the updates, a Walmart spokesperson revealed that store managers are simply experimenting with ways to improve checkout performance.

One bizarre experiment included an RFID-powered self-checkout kiosk that would stop the fiercely contested receipt checks.

However, that test run has been phased out.

At Target, items are being limited at self-checkout.

Last fall, the brand surveyed new express self-checkout lanes across 200 stores with 10 items or less for more convenience.

As of March 2024, this policy has been expanded across 2,000 stores in the US.

Shoppers have also spotted their local Walmart stores restricting customers to 15 items or less to use self-checkout machines.

Another shopper slammed Target for its new policy limiting self-checkout to customers purchasing ten or fewer items.

"Went to Target today and I always use self-checkout because there is usually only one person working the other registers and a long line…" Kimberly Drydale Billings wrote in a recent Facebook post.

She went into detail about how the new checkout limit disrupted her routine.

"I can self-check myself faster than waiting for someone else to do it, well now they are limiting ALL the self-checkouts to 10 items or less … WHAT?" she asked.

"I like to bag my own items and I'm also quicker than most of the people that work there but if I get over 10 items now I'm forced to wait in a long line?" she said.

The frustration over the situation has turned her away from the national retailer permanently, she said.

"Bye bye Target," she wrote.