Buying Zara "Myself"

What's so interesting about shopping in Zara? Besides the sales which happen every other month why on earth do I need to write a post about this?

I'm not sure if any of you are interested in what I am going to write next, but to myself, it's certainly something that caught my attention.

I believe that it was just recently that they have installed two of these machines on the ground floor of the Zara near Central MTR station.

You get to skip the queue and do the checkout all by yourself. It's nothing really super fancy but there wasn't a clear instruction on how you should operate the system yourself.

There were some written ones but I'm not sure if anyone will be able to guess how the steps really are. That's why I wish to share on how the system works.

Firstly, you have all the magnetic pin (the thing that set off the alarm when you exit the store) for each of the item. You place that at the "place here" area, it should take about 2 sec to scan the item and appear on the screen. If it fails, you scan the tag with the bar code at the red light on the machine just like your regular price checker.


Then once you have scanned all your items, check the details and price. If everything works perfectly fine select "complete transaction", insert your credit card and press OK. It will then print a receipt and you can remove your credit card.


Now you can remove those little pins using the "Sensormatic" thingy next to it. You need to push the magnetic pin into the holder and upwards so the pin locked in the placement. Then you will hear a "click" sound, now in that split second, you need to remove the other side of the pin (which looks like a thumbnail) from the inside of the garment. Fail to do so, you need to reposition the pin again, listen to the click sound and remove.


One thing I'm guessing here is that you can only remove the pins from the garment that they have recorded in your purchase. Otherwise, it's really easy for someone to get free clothes.

Luckily there was someone who is being stationed there to assist so I learned to do it rather quickly and smoothly.


If anyone wishes to give it a try, I hope this piece of writing can help. Now shopping in Zara will not be the same for me again.