Why The Self-Checkout Hand Scanners At Aldi Almost Never Work, According To Reddit

Since arriving on the scene in the 1980s, self-checkouts have become a fixture of food shopping. About 40% of all grocery store registers in the United States are self-service, according to Capital One Shopping Research, and nearly all grocery retailers (96%) in the country provide a way to make purchases without cashier involvement. But there are some things you should know before you use the self-checkout at Aldi: One of those is that shoppers say the hand scanners rarely work.

Sharp-eyed Redditors have encountered hand scanners that are typically out of commission or simply gone. This could slow down the process of buying items because patrons can't leave everything in the cart with the bar codes facing up (one of our favorite Aldi checkout hacks).

Some people are pretty sure they know the explanation. "It's 100% because of theft/loss," wrote one commenter on r/Aldi. "People who just scan stuff in the cart are far more likely to miss things by mistake and those who are thieves will scan things that way to avoid being seen stealing by hiding things under and around other things." Reducing theft makes sense, but other Redditors think even the most well-meaning customers could be to blame. "Customers break everything," said one. "Even getting a repair technician out to fix them can be a pain, and customers also will break them again."

Despite the ubiquity of self-checkouts, retailers continue to tinker with exactly how to implement them. There's a good reason for that: A 2025 LendingTree survey of more than 2,000 people in the U.S. found that 27% of respondents who used self-checkouts knowingly stole items. Generally, shoppers may turn to theft because of rising grocery prices and annoyance with the machines. Multiple stores have used high-tech video analysis to monitor customers, though it's not clear if Aldi has.

To prevent shoppers from walking out of the store with a cart containing products they didn't buy, some retailers have added gates to the self-checkouts. This requires customers to scan their receipts before leaving. A number of consumers haven't particularly liked this solution. "It makes you feel like a thief," one person told CBC.

In a more drastic move, chains like Walmart, Target, Costco, and Aldi began removing self-checkouts entirely. (Shoppers aren't happy about that, either.) Not all Aldi locations had this payment option to begin with, and as of this writing, the chain hasn't issued a public statement on the decision. However, Safeway, which also removed self-checkouts, told NBC Bay Area that it's a way to "curtail escalating theft."