My God, I cannot believe that Walmart, Target and Costco are wanting to charge us a Subscription Fee to use Self Checkout. How did we get here?
What is stopping these stores from charging a Subscription Fee to enter the store?
What is stopping a gas station from charging us a Subscription Fee to buy gas?
What is stopping Vons or Ralphs from charging a Subscription Fee to buy food?
What is stopping the electric company from charging a Subscription Fee?
You see where I am going with this? There aren't any city, county, state or federal laws on the books that disallow Subscription Fees for purchasing essential items.
Walmart, Target and Costco want long arduous lines so that they can sell their subscriptions. If Walmart and Target are allowed to charge subscriptions to access Self Checkout then Vons, Ralphs, Home Depot and other stores will charge the fee for Self Checkout.
Honestly, it started with banks charging us a fee to withdraw our money at the ATM (automatic teller machine) and the banking industry making campaign contributions so our lawmakers would remain quiet about it.
We cannot remain quiet. We need to be seen and heard that we WILL NOT pay freaking Subscription Fees to us their stupid SCO's and let them hire more people to deal with the long lines or we can go to independent or mom & pop stores to get what we need.
I've always thought we should get a discount (about 5%) for going through the self-checkout. After all....we're doing the work for them (and not getting paid for it). Now this new twist is utterly ridiculous....let's pay for the privilege of scanning our purchases??
ReplyDeleteTrish, I remember that I was at the Walmart in Carmichael and it was the first Walmart that I'd seen with SCO's and they were not in San Diego, yet. I love the convenience of being able to get in and out without much fuss. FAST FORWARD and Walmart was steering or forcing customers to use SCO or wait in long lines at the registers with cashiers. YES, we should have gotten a discount for using the SCO's because we were saving them money.
DeleteI don't have a problem with Costco verifying membership for self checkout. Members should get more perks than those working around the rules using Costco Cash Cards. Roping off self checkout only for + members at Walmart is a different thing since Wm isn't membership-based to begin with. It's always been about the haves and have nots.
ReplyDeleteCostco started out as a membership based business so I think that they have more leeway in changing their rules for SCO usage.
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