Tops Markets easyshop

The Tops Markets on Maple Road in the West Amherst section of Amherst, NY offers its customers easyshop, as well as easyscan, for shopping convenience. Where easyscan lets you scan and bag your items at the checkout, easyshop lets you scan and bag your items as you go through the store. You have two prongs in your cart which hold the bags (not unlike those on the sides of the register), and a scanner with a holder on the cart's handle. You can scan your items, minus-out your items, and keep track of how much you're spending. Also, checking out is designed to be quick—you scan your scanner on a barcode at the register, the machine loads your purchases, and, after scanning coupons, you just pay and go.

However, the system has flaws.

First, the prongs that hold the bags are the same size as the prongs by the register, and they are on the inside of the cart. That means that a good 20-25% of the cart's holding capacity is taken up by bagging. Certainly anyone doing a week's shopping for any more than two people is bound to find this an inconvenience. Who needs such long prongs? Do we need to hold so many bags? We only have one cart to fill.

Also, the registers are located just to the left of a pillar, presumably part of the building's support structure. But it's location makes it difficult to move to the first register if it becomes free and the other two are being used.

Sometimes you have to wait for people who are using the easyshop registers as easyscan; that is, they're scanning and bagging at the register. I imagine the easyshop registers are equipped with the scanners so you can add to your order, but I think it's rare that you have to do that (e.g. your scanner can't quite pick up the barcode, or your spouse runs and gets something after you've started the checkout process. I think if you need to add to your order, you could just ask the overseer employee to add the item to your order, and she could scan it or punch in the code.) Maybe the six registers dedicated to the easyshop process are taken up and the consumer using the wrong register has somewhere more important to go than I do, but I don't think it's right.

The coupon process is, most of the time, annoying. Only once every three months do we slide our coupons in the coupon slot, hear the reassuring ding, and are able to get out of the store quickly. More often than not we have to scan the coupon and wait for the overseer to clear us, or scan our coupon and fetch the overseer from the easyscan registers (for each coupon). This definitely places easyshop last in in-front-of-register time, after the regular checkout lines as well.

Another thing--the easyshop is only operable 7 am through9 pm, but the store is 24-hours.

It's best if you're only grabbing a few things and have no coupons. Until the bag prongs are shorter (and possibly moved inside); while the non-easyshop customers continue to hold us up; and until the coupon issue is resolved, Tops easyshop can't earn a good rating. Rating 5/10 groceries.