Products · Broad category
Point of sale systems
Raised as a usability problem by 31 people on Hacker News over 16 years (2011–2026), in 30 threads.
This is a broad category rather than one product, so its issues aren't ranked on the home page.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Tip prompts appear at every checkout, pushing people into unintended tippingUnreviewed
20112026- Tip screens preselect a tip amount, pushing customers into paying more2026-07-10
- Tipping prompt appears on every sale and cashier can't easily disable it2025-03-30
- Tipping prompts stay on by default and managers must hunt to disable them2023-09-19
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 31 complaints
- New GUI is slower to use than the old keyboard shortcut terminal2026-08-28
- Tip screens preselect a tip amount, pushing customers into paying more2026-07-10
- New registers' touch screen UI is slower to use than the old keyboard-driven system2025-11-05
- Editing a text field needs many awkward keystrokes; no home key, so users retype and delete leftovers2025-04-13
- Tipping prompt appears on every sale and cashier can't easily disable it2025-03-30
- Touch screen responds about a second after each press2024-08-27
- Reader beeps and flashes before ready, card fails, user must retry; system lies about readiness2023-12-13
- Tipping prompts stay on by default and managers must hunt to disable them2023-09-19
- Unexpected tip and extra screens freeze customers, causing payment anxiety and delays2023-08-02
- Tip prompts appear so often that people mindlessly dismiss them2023-07-18
- Cashiers must get manager override for anything off the happy path, and the system is slow2023-07-05
- Checkout and receptionist computers take very long to complete simple tasks2023-06-28
- Redesign removed hot keys and dense at-a-glance info that experienced workers relied on2023-03-23
- Tip menu options are confusing; unclear who the tip goes to2022-12-18
- A mistake entering a custom tip forces restarting the whole transaction2022-11-10
- Tip prompts appear at every checkout, pushing people into tipping they didn't intend2022-11-10
- No obvious way to skip the tip; only preset percentages offered2021-02-04
- Retail staff must use POS software all day but it trades speed for easy learning2020-04-25
- Clicking an order on the status page only opens the accordion, with no way to mark it done2020-03-19
- POS software violates desktop UI conventions and forces awkward hold-order workflows2020-02-29
- Mouse-driven point of sale screens are painfully slow to operate2019-12-19
- Readers force swiping, then reject chip cards, and tap payment often fails at checkout2018-04-09
- Tip prompts pressure customers into choosing a percentage they didn't pick2018-01-18
- No tab sequence, so users must use the mouse for everything2017-11-07
- Prompts appear at the wrong time, and card insertion gets falsely reported as a chip read error2017-02-09
- Point-of-sale systems are a mess of bad hardware, software and UX2016-03-14
- POS cannot split a check more than six ways, so waiters can't fulfil requests2016-01-07
- Logging in takes longer than the old blind keystroke sequence to reach sales2015-09-28
- Early POS systems were awful for end users; ECRs had too many buttons and numbers-only displays2013-10-10
- Clients take 15-20 minutes to load because each one hits a distant central database2012-11-24
- Many point of sale systems are a steaming pile of bad user experience2011-05-23