Buying things in bulk at wholesale retailers can be an all-day affair. Sam’s Club, the store chain owned by Walmart, is trying to make that time shorter: by using artificial intelligence to scan shoppers’ carts so they no longer have to show a receipt at the exit upon checking out.
“Eliminating even the few seconds it takes to scan a receipt at the exit door is well worth it,” Megan Crozier, an executive vice president at Walmart, announced onstage this week at the company’s presentation for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
It has long been common practice at stores where bulk items are sold — like Costco, Sam’s Club and BJ’s Wholesale Club — for store employees to check customer receipts at the exit. But this has also led to accusations of racial bias, with some customers saying they were subject to more thorough checks than other shoppers.
At some retailers, like Sam’s Club and Costco, showing a receipt has long been mandatory for everyone leaving the store.
But at other chains, where the practice is less consistently enforced, there have been accusations of racial bias. In 2018, the home improvement chain Lowe’s announced it was suspending its receipt-checking practice after a Black customer said that he had been asked to show a receipt at two separate locations and that a cashier at one of the locations had told him employees there didn’t typically check receipts because the neighborhood was predominantly white.
Costco, on its website, says the practice exists “to double-check that the items purchased have been correctly processed by our cashiers.” The explanation continues: “It’s our most effective method of maintaining accuracy in inventory control.”
