Systems and Control professor Maarten Steinbuch himself was given a 24-month store ban last week after it turned out he had not scanned eight out of twelve items in his basket. He shared his experience in a widely read post on LinkedIn.

After a long drive from southern France to the Netherlands and a hospital admission of his wife, he had slept very little. Fatigue and inattention caused him to fall into a self-checkout trap, not an attempt at theft, he claims.

The LinkedIn post resonated widely. “The post has been viewed more than 90,000 times,” Steinbuch says. “Many people appear to have experienced this themselves. There are distressing responses under the post.”

Traumatic

Steinbuch’s story has not gone unnoticed at Albert Heijn’s headquarters either. “I was called by customer service in Zaandam. They felt a 24-month store ban was excessive. They informed me it has been reduced to 12 months.”

But that is no longer Steinbuch’s main concern. “At first, I just wanted to get the experience off my chest,” says the TU/e professor. “After all the responses, some of which described traumatic experiences, I believe Albert Heijn needs to adjust the self-checkout software.”

According to Steinbuch, this does not have to be complicated: “Before you pay, the scanner could, for example, ask: you have scanned four items, is that correct?”

Good faith

Steinbuch has asked customer service whether this will be discussed at board level. “I think it should be, but I have not yet received an answer,” he says. Better software could protect vulnerable people from the downsides of digital technology. “The software should be so robust that this cannot happen to people acting in good faith.”

Steinbuch feels supported by a response on LinkedIn from Wim van de Donk, Rector Magnificus and President of Tilburg University, who calls it “a benefits scandal in scan form.” “You are raising an important issue based on this personal, impactful experience … to be continued in research that our two universities will carry out together,” Van de Donk wrote.

“He is right,” Steinbuch says. “When applying software, we should not only look at the technology. I fully support collaboration between the universities of Eindhoven and Tilburg to build more human-centered systems.”

This article was translated using AI-assisted tools and reviewed by an editor.