This morning I had a request for a few purchases. As WHSmith had everything I wanted I popped in and started gathering the items. The store was organised in some random manner meaning it took a few minutes to find everything, but after the exercise I headed for the tills.

Anyone who has been in recently will know that WHSmith have invested in self service tills rather than staff for the last few years, so I was directed to one of these machines. Despite regularly using them in Tesco (preferable to a 15 minute wait for a manned till) the first glitch took only 3 items to appear. The dreaded “unexpected item in bagging area” message required a visit from one of the “floating” staff, but as she was busy with another machine I stood and waited for around a minute.

The next item refused to scan. I wanted to buy 5 of these, but as they wouldn’t scan and not wanting to wait for a member of staff I elected to leave them.

It strikes me as amazing just how poor my experience was this morning. Not only did I leave feeling that I had received poor service but I had spent far less than I was intending, primarily due to the self service experience. I can sympathise with the desire to cut costs, but where is the line between saving money and customer service drawn?