Kroger's IT department is not very sharp. They changed the self-checkout systems over a year ago, and that still has bugs. The one that hits me most is that the "Use Own Bag" option is useless.
CD
Tell me about it. I don't know if I ever recounted this, and it gets long and involved, but here goes:
We were one of the early stores set up for Scan-Bag-Go. With SBG, you either use a store-provided scanning device, or you load the SBG app on your phone and use your phone as a scanner. I prefer my phone.
Another feature of the app is that you can set up a credit card in the app and pay directly through the app. If you don't do that, you have to go to the self-checkout area, scan a kiosk, your order magically pops up, and then you pay there, by swiping your card or using cash. I liked using the app to pay, it was the fastest option, because there would frequently be a line at the self-checkout as well.
When you pay through the app, it pops up a number, like 834992, and tells you to show it to the employee working the self-checkout area. At that point, the employee is supposed to use their handheld device, go through a little menu system, find that transaction number, and clear it. It's a way of saying they acknowledged my order.
Well, the employees didn't know that, I certainly didn't know that, and after about five trips of holding up that number and having the employee just shrug their shoulders and wave me through, the system locked me out.
By that point, I was a dedicated SBG'er, so I was really irritated that it wouldn't work for me, and would give me this cryptic error message about being unable to process my loyalty card number.
Showed it to the in-store manager, who referred me to their single in-store SBG "expert," who just shook her head and told me to call the 1-800 number, and when I called them, they told me to go back to the store and have the store call, which I did, and when the store called, they opened a case number and said to check back every couple of days, which we did, but never any update, so I finally did some research online, got a secondary 1-800 number, called in, explained everything, they referred me to someone else, who referred me to someone else, who finally got me in touch with a low-level IT guy, probably in the bowels of the building down on Court St., and he fixed it for me over the phone, then told me how the self-checkout people could clear that. That's right, for the next month, I had to tell whomever was working, "Ok, press 2, now press 4, go into Payments, then you'll see this number from my phone, and click OK." I basically trained them, and to this day, it's a running joke in the store that I'm "the SBG guy," because I know more about it than the employees who work there.
I had to go to Kroger to get some sweet corn and eggs this evening. I got another really good carton of, red all the way through, strawberries again.
CD
Same here! The local place is doing pick-your-own only right now, no pre-picked sales yet, so I got some from Kroger, and they're red all the way through.
