Last summer some CDA members and other people with impairments and conditions suddenly found themselves unable shop at the Sainsbury’s Camden Town branch after the store abruptly removed all its staffed tills.
A fair-sized proportion of Disabled people prefer staffed tills to automated ones because the self-service machines are not designed with our needs in mind. I myself have a learning disability and hearing impairment and I find the self-service tills are difficult to use. I understand that people with visual impairments and some other conditions are also unable to tackle self-service check outs.
It was not only CDA members and disabled and older shoppers who expressed disappointment at the move. Thirty one councillors wrote to Sainsbury’s Chief Executive Simon Roberts to complain about the discriminatory decision and demand that traditional, staffed tills be put back.
I was so angry that I filmed the new self-service-only check-out system (see below) so I could show others what was happening there and have evidence of the store’s discriminatory service.
Our Camden store has always had serviced check outs – Sainsburys’ Media Relations Manager, Becky Cimelli
But when CDA spoke to Sainsbury’s Camden Town about their decision to remove staff tills, they claimed they had never done it.
Sainsburys’ Media Relations Manager, Becky Cimelli, sent us an email saying: “As our statement explains in this article, our Camden store has always had serviced checkouts. We have had 5 serviced checkouts in place since we installed our self-service checkouts.”
Becky Cimelli added: “We are sorry to hear of the customers’ experiences you’ve highlighted. Our colleagues are on hand to help and we would encourage any of our customers to reach out for assistance when visiting our stores.”
I say this is an outright lie because in the summer there was nowhere to go for people wanting to use tills with staff. You had to use self service. It was chaos. It was unhelpful. Staff were rude and nobody would help. They kept telling you to wait.
There was a lady in a wheelchair who had difficulty using the self service and she just left, and there was a blind woman who also left her shopping. I was very angry and told myself I’d never shop there ever again.
