Costco shoppers at warehouses across the country are discovering that the self-checkout kiosks they relied on for quick trips are disappearing, replaced by a new system in which employees scan items while customers wait in line. The shift, confirmed by CEO Ron Vachris during a late-2025 earnings call, marks a deliberate retreat from the do-it-yourself checkout model that retailers spent years promoting.
The warehouse giant is not just tweaking its lanes. It is rolling out what Vachris called "enhanced checkout technology" to all U.S. warehouses, a system designed so that by the time a member reaches the cashier, nothing needs to come out of the cart. Only payment is required.
For a company that built its brand on efficiency and no-frills value, the move raises a pointed question: if self-checkout was supposed to save time and cut costs, why is Costco walking away from it? The answer, as The U.S. Sun reported, appears to involve both theft and a recognition that the "efficient" feature wasn't delivering the experience members expected.
Reports from Costco members suggest the changes are already well underway at multiple locations. A shopper in Sheridan, Colorado posted to the r/CostcoWholesale subreddit in March describing a jarring experience:
"We walked up to the self checkout scanners that weren't in use and were told to stop and an employee would have to check us out because they were doing away with self checkout. The whole interaction was bizarre."
A commenter from South Carolina echoed the account, saying a self-checkout employee had told them the feature would be removed at their warehouse as well. Another Reddit user described what appeared to be a replacement system already in motion:
"In its place we will be able to scan as we shop, but will still have to go to a register when done for an item check and to get receipt."
Hand-held scanners have reportedly been pulled from kiosks at several stores, and employees are now stationed to scan membership cards and items while customers stand in line. The result is a hybrid model, part traditional checkout, part assisted scan, that looks nothing like the self-service lanes shoppers had grown accustomed to.
Vachris laid out the rationale during Costco's fourth-quarter earnings call in late 2025. His language was corporate, but the substance was clear. The company wants employees handling the scanning, not customers.
As Vachris told investors on the call, transcribed by Seeking Alpha:
"Another way we are improving the member experience is through the rollout of enhanced checkout technology in all US warehouses. This is speeding up the checkout process by allowing our employees to scan small- and medium-sized transactions while the member is still in line. So upon reaching the cashier, nothing has to be removed from the cart only payment is needed."
Read that carefully. The CEO did not frame this as a cost-cutting measure. He framed it as a member-experience improvement. That framing matters, because it tells you Costco knows the self-checkout experiment wasn't delivering the speed or satisfaction it promised.
The company has also been testing new scanning technology at select locations, including a pilot program resembling Sam's Club's "Scan and Go" system, where members scan items as they shop and then proceed to a register for a final item check and receipt.
Costco's relationship with self-checkout has never been smooth. The chain first tested self-service kiosks around 2013, but that initial rollout was unsuccessful and never gained wide adoption. It took until 2019 for Costco to reintroduce the machines in select locations, slowly expanding them to more warehouses over the following years.
Now, barely half a decade after the second attempt, the company is pulling back again. The pattern suggests that self-checkout, at least in a high-volume, bulk-purchase environment like Costco, may simply not work the way it does at a grocery store where someone is buying a dozen items or fewer.
Costco is not alone in rethinking the model. Walmart and Target have both made similar moves to scale back self-checkout in some of their stores. Legislators have taken notice too, New York City has proposed a 15-item cap at self-checkout registers, reflecting growing frustration with the technology's real-world shortcomings.
The U.S. Sun's reporting ties the changes in part to theft concerns. Retailers across the U.S. and Canada have rolled out a range of anti-theft measures in recent years, and self-checkout has been a persistent vulnerability. When customers scan their own items, the opportunity for missed scans, intentional or not, rises sharply.
Costco hasn't issued a direct public statement beyond Vachris's earnings-call remarks specifically addressing theft as a reason for the change. But the removal of hand-held scanners from kiosks and the decision to station employees at the scanning stage both point toward tighter control over what goes through the register.
The company has also been tightening transaction practices at checkout more broadly, including enforcing voucher limits and denying certain cash redemptions, a pattern consistent with a front-end operation that is getting stricter, not looser.
Even as it overhauls checkout operations, Costco is growing. The company is in the middle of opening about 28 new locations in 2026, with at least six expected to be operational by April. Whether those new warehouses will feature self-checkout at all, or launch with the employee-assisted model from day one, remains unclear.
Several questions remain unanswered. How many existing stores have already removed self-checkout entirely, versus merely restricting it? Which locations are piloting the "Scan and Go" alternative? And will the new system actually speed things up, or will it just shift the bottleneck from the register to the line?
For years, retailers sold self-checkout as a win for everyone: faster for customers, cheaper for companies. The reality turned out to be messier. Theft went up. Customer satisfaction didn't always follow. And the labor savings were partly offset by the cost of managing the machines, policing misuse, and dealing with frustrated shoppers who never wanted to do the store's job in the first place.
Costco's retreat is an admission, wrapped in corporate language about "enhanced checkout technology", that the experiment didn't pan out. The company is putting employees back at the center of the transaction. That's not a step backward. It's a correction.
When a company famous for moving pallets of paper towels at industrial speed decides that having a human being scan your items is actually faster than letting you do it yourself, the self-checkout era has earned its obituary.