Checkout chaos needs Euro cash

How would you like to spend 2% of your annual turnover on revampingyour pricing systems? Not to win yourself any great new efficiencies, orcapture a bigger share of the market.

Oh no. I'm proposing that you do this simply so that you don't break the law; future European law, that is, on monetary union. There is no escape, it seems, from the great Euro debate. Politicians, bankers, megalomaniacal millionaires and zookeepers have all put in their two penn'orth. Now it is the turn of the retailers.

According to a report published recently by retailing trade body Eurocommerce, the imposition of a single currency is going to cost the entire retailing industry the equivalent of 2% of its annual turnover. This amounts to a staggering u22.03 billion - or put another way, the price of a couple of CD console games for every man, woman and child in Europe.

All that money spent, so that we can start charging customers in "euros" rather than pounds (or francs or marks or lire ...). It sounds a bit barmy, doesn't it? And barmier still, much of the u22bn expense, according to Eurocommerce, is actually going to be incurred during a short six-month transition period, currently scheduled for 2002, when prices will need to be displayed in both currencies, and customers will be allowed to pay for their goods with either.

Now, before you start to think that I am about to announce my appointment as the Referendum Party candidate for Vauxhall, it should be said that Eurocommerce's claims need to be taken with something more than a pinch of salt. (Or 4g of salt for European readers).

To get to a figure of u22bn, Eurocommerce claims that prior to European monetary integration huge sums will have to be spent on such things as changes to computer systems, retraining staff and a whole raft of marketing materials in order to explain to customers what the hell is going on.

But this idea presupposes a retail culture already exists where these areas of expenditure are deemed to be worthy of consideration. Maybe on the Continent retail managers are all gagging to upgrade their computer systems, hire more intelligent (aka more expensive) staff and fork out oodles of cash for glossy brochures, leaflets and posters - all in the name of making it easier for customers to pay for their goods. In Britain, though, I don't see it.

In fact, EMU or no EMU, I reckon that many British retailers should be seriously encouraged to spend a whole heap more than 2% of their turnover on improving purchasing systems, given the sorry state of affairs in many shops today in terms of the way pricing information is displayed and the tedious procedures people have to go through in order to pay for their goods.

As every good British supermarket shopper knows, finding the things you want to buy is pretty easy these days. It's at the checkout that the horrors begin. There's the lengthy wait in the queue, the faulty barcode reader, the untrained assistant too bored to know the price of anything, the "oh no we don't accept that card", the loyalty scheme, the school vouchers, the cashback offer ... and all you came in for was a pint of milk and a loaf of bread. God forbid you should try to buy anything complicated.

First prize for most badly designed pricing and paying systems within the computer retail trade has to go to Toys R Us. On a recent visit I experienced a catalogue of avoidable annoyances. First up, prices were not displayed for certain items on the shelf, and the products themselves were bar coded only.

The only way to find out the price of a pot of Play-Doh, for example, was either to go to the till or send a sales assistant scurrying off into a back office to look it up.

Once at the till, there was an almighty delay, because the day before some money-off vouchers had been published in one of the national newspapers.

Staff had clearly not been warned about this, and had not been trained with how to deal with a horde of bargain-hungry parents brandishing tiny scraps of newspaper which supposedly qualified them for 5p off a u20 piece of software (that's 60 euros to you, pal).

More annoying still, expensive electronic items took even longer to pay for since you weren't allowed to buy them off the shelf. First, you had to pay for them at the normal till, and then go to another "secure" area with your receipt. There you had to join another queue, wait for a sliding window to open, and hope your item was in stock.

All in all, I spent about 15 minutes selecting my goods, and 25 minutes paying for them. And this from a superstore retailer which has probably spent more on computer systems, staff training and marketing materials than just about anyone else in the UK.

What with big players like John Lewis and M&S still resolutely refusing to accept credit cards, and many leading brown goods vendors still relying on green screen-type applications as the primary source of instore information, it's unlikely that any independent retailer is going to rush to take a lead in this area.

At the moment the industry generally pays lip service to this idea of taking the pain out of paying. So roll on EMU in 2002, I say. It can't come soon enough.

Tim Wright is editorial director of NoHo Digital, an independent multimedia company.