[HN Gopher] "Just walk out" technology by Amazon
___________________________________________________________________
"Just walk out" technology by Amazon
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 357 points
Date : 2020-03-09 16:17 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (justwalkout.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (justwalkout.com)
| allovernow wrote:
| >We only collect the data needed to provide shoppers with an
| accurate receipt. Shoppers can think of this as similar to
| typical security camera footage.
|
| Well somehow I suspect that's a little misleading.
| choward wrote:
| > A receipt will be emailed to them for this trip.
|
| Is there any other information on what format this receipt is? Is
| it just an image or something that's actually useful if I want to
| parse it and track my own purchases?
|
| I want some sort of machine readable receipt format to exist so I
| can analyze my own spending. Unfortunately there is zero
| incentive to provide this. Instead the stores we visit get to
| know more about our spending habits than we do. And now you want
| to me to deliberately give all of this data not just to the
| individual stores but also to Amazon?
|
| Yeah right. I'm not giving Amazon access to all of this data. Are
| you serious?
| dunham wrote:
| At least half of the stuff I buy at the store is sold by weight,
| how is this going to work?
| skizhak wrote:
| and near in future one day amazon will say to the business owner
| - "just walk out"
| 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote:
| When I shopped with my wife for the first time, I was a little
| surprised that before leaving any store, she pulls her cart to
| the side and carefully goes over the receipt. The reason?
| Mistakes are made in pricing _all of the time_. I can't count how
| many times things ran up for us at the wrong price. She would
| always go to the customer service desk and get an adjustment.
|
| I probably missed out on hundreds of dollars just blindly
| trusting the receipt my whole life. It's nothing nefarious.
| Systems have bugs.
|
| Takeaway for me is that I can't use a technology that doesn't let
| me verify the price.
| ramon wrote:
| I would love to test this in Brazil because people here are
| creative with stealing so it would be very interesting to see how
| this would rollout with people trying to say they didn't pick
| things up or things in that manter, WhatsApp had e o change a lot
| because here in Brazil people abuse the security aspects to the
| maximum.
| danielovichdk wrote:
| Tell me how the fuck Jeff Bezos can charge me for 2 liters of
| milk in my corner shop, without installing some freaky app or
| device that keeps track of whatever.
|
| Fuck that. And fuck Jeff too. I don't want him to know what I
| shop. I don't want anyone to know, perhaps except Visa because
| that's like inevitable.
|
| In Europe at least we have checkout counters where we can check
| out shit ourselves, from store, without some big corporation in
| between. Because we don't want that.
|
| These fuckery companies don't pay tax here, they don't add to the
| community. All they fucking do is take and take.
|
| Get the fuck outta here
| ndelage wrote:
| The last few times I've gone to my local pharmacy (Rite Aid) I've
| watched a single cashier operate more than one checkout registers
| at a time. She did this because it took so long to process
| payment and print a receipt -- e.g. while she waited for my
| payment to go through (via credit card) she'd ring up the next
| customer on another register.
|
| She's trying to ring up the most customers per minute possible
| and using a second register helps her increase her checkout rate.
|
| It's not unusual that I spend more time waiting to check out than
| I do actually shopping. I'd love solutions like "just walk out"
| since my experience lately seems to be something along the lines
| of "grab what I need and stand in line unnecessarily".
| thu2111 wrote:
| Whilst Amazon Go is cool, that's not an argument in its favour.
| That's purely a US specific screwup. In the rest of the world
| you can clear contactless transactions in a few hundred
| milliseconds with competent retailers; that's why it's possible
| to tap your way through the gates at busy London Underground
| stations. And retailers love contactless exactly because it's
| so fast and it lets them reduce staffing/handle more customers.
|
| I don't know about your part of the US but it's now pretty
| common everywhere in Europe to have nearly unmanned retail
| stores. All the checkouts are self service. You can grab a
| portable scanner at the front, scan items as you walk around
| grabbing them and then tap your card at a checkout kiosk.
|
| Amazon's implementation sounds even easier (no scanning
| required), but in terms of raw throughput it's probably only a
| bit better.
| filoleg wrote:
| That still doesn't solve the problem of waiting while people
| get all their items scanned, and I doubt that countries
| outside of the US have managed to solve that one.
|
| Imo there is nothing in terms of convenience and speed that
| can beat "just walking out".
| randomsearch wrote:
| Serious question - how widespread is self checkout in the
| US? I rarely queue at local supermarkets in the UK, I can
| checkout in <30s with a few items.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| The biggest advantage of this technology is not reducing labor
| cost. The Amazon Go stores have lots of employees inside the
| stores doing different things. It's about increasing traffic. How
| many times you went inside a store and left after seeing a long
| line?
|
| It can have other benefits like stealing alerts or whatever, but
| those I think minor. One problem I see is that Amazon is a
| retailer so many of the potential customers for this would be
| reluctant to do business with a major competitor. I'm still
| waiting for this to be implemented in WF.
| mrkeen wrote:
| > How many times you went inside a store and left after seeing
| a long line?
|
| For food or coffee, constantly. For general retail I'm not sure
| I've ever done this.
| jedberg wrote:
| I find it interesting that they are making this available to the
| public before doing a major rollout at Whole Foods. Or maybe
| they're doing both?
| ErikAugust wrote:
| It's a website with an email address on it. My guess is that it
| is intended to gauge demand as a standalone service.
| JohnFen wrote:
| There's a contact email address in the FAQ at the bottom of
| the page specifically for retailers who are interested in
| this.
| bobloblaw45 wrote:
| Good or bad, this just tickles me because it reminds me of that
| ibm rfid commercial from the 90's (I think?) where it looks like
| a shoplifter is blatantly robbing a supermarket and the security
| guard stops them and says they forgot their receipt. They also
| had a bunch of other commercials that got super close like kids
| watching on demand streaming movies.
| bluGill wrote:
| As I recall WalMart spent millions on it, and only gave up
| because if you buy a cart of razor blades the rfid would miss
| one. (razor blades because of the metal at weird angles is
| apparently the worse case)
| ken wrote:
| Actually 2006: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzFhBGKU6HA
| Dahoon wrote:
| Quick, invest in video surveillance.
| mherdeg wrote:
| This is just an observation that doesn't contribute meaningfully
| to discussion, but ...
|
| Twenty years ago this web site would 100% have looked like an
| April Fool's joke.
|
| Don't know what to make of that. Maybe it's that although retail
| feels almost exactly the same as it always has, under the hood
| lots of parts have really been moving, and I just haven't
| noticed?
|
| The parallel observation is that when Gmail was announced it
| totally did seem like a prank. You're offering how much storage
| for free? for everyone? How?.
| awb wrote:
| And why is this a standalone site and not inside the Amazon.com
| portfolio?
|
| EDIT:
|
| JustWalkout.com was registered anonymously at GoDaddy 7 years
| ago: https://www.whois.com/whois/justwalkout.com
|
| Amazon.com has public DNS contact info:
| https://www.whois.com/whois/amazon.com
|
| There's no TM or R marks around the term "Just Walk Out" on the
| page and no Favicon.
|
| Are we sure this is real?
| pacala wrote:
| GMail solved a thorny problem: convince users to browse the web
| while logged in, preferably with their real life identity. To
| then collect and aggregate an extensive personalized dossier of
| their online activity without any fear of legal repercussions.
| This is priceless.
|
| Then just play the trends: how much space the median user
| actually uses, user adoption trends, planned storage capacity,
| storage cost. Possibly the whole GMail never used more than 1%
| of of Google's total storage capacity.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| That may have been an upside, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't
| the plan at the time. I don't think Google had the notion of
| "user accounts" before GMail was launched. I think the plan
| was more likely "serve ads via search engine results, but for
| email."
| Crazyontap wrote:
| Yeah with all the innovation it indeed seems like we are living
| in a fairy tale. 20 years ago it would be impossible to think
| that you can order stuff from an unknown location/seller using
| a piece of glass. And soon we'll have drones coming to our
| house with packages.
| goatlover wrote:
| People were thinking of that in the late 90s. During the dot
| com bubble people were predicting the end of physical retail
| stores and people leaving their house to shop. A few years
| later people were predicting the end of printed materials.
| notJim wrote:
| 20 years ago was the year 2000. Amazon and eBay were founded
| in 1995.
|
| Also: imagine you could write what you want on a ground up
| dead tree, drop it in a special box and a few weeks later,
| the item shows up. That's a catalog, and Sears was making
| them in the late 1800s. I bet there are older examples.
| hk__2 wrote:
| > 20 years ago it would be impossible to think that you can
| order stuff from an unknown location/seller using a piece of
| glass.
|
| FYI 20 years ago the total yearly e-commerce trade sales
| accounted for $27B in the US alone [1].
|
| [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/185283/total-and-e-
| comme...
| rio517 wrote:
| LOL. At first, I thought you were trashing their website. ...
| "cause these days, tech giants put way more energy into their
| April's fools day jokes than Amazon put into this website."
|
| Also, that name, OMG, there are going to be so many protest
| signs that use this.
| pergadad wrote:
| Well and try to Google "Amazon walkout" and all you find will
| be this site. Smart move!
|
| See also this
|
| https://www.wired.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-model-
| google-n...
| vinceroni wrote:
| From the FAQ:
|
| _What data does Just Walk Out technology collect from my
| shoppers?_
|
| _We only collect the data needed to provide shoppers with an
| accurate receipt. Shoppers can think of this as similar to
| typical security camera footage._
|
| A rather (wide) open door for Amazon to collect valuable data on
| customers. And is this really comparable to "a typical security
| camera footage"?
|
| edit: formatting
| kaiabwpdjqn wrote:
| anyone know if this tech can handle adversarial images? Is it
| even computer vision based?
| nck4222 wrote:
| My biggest problem with this is that from what I can tell, the
| only way to know how much you're going to be automatically
| charged (as well as what items the tech thinks you're
| purchasing), is to go to a kiosk in the store and get a receipt.
| Which seems to completely defeat the convenience of just walking
| out in the first place.
|
| I wouldn't feel comfortable just walking out without knowing how
| much I'm going to be charged, so this tech is essentially useless
| to me.
| deanCommie wrote:
| This is the "lame - no wireless, less space than a nomad" take.
|
| Are the prices not listed on the individual items?
|
| Purchasers make decisions on a product by product basis, not
| based on the total.
|
| How often are you at the checkout and say "Wait, HOW MUCH is my
| bill? never mind then, going to go put some things back."
|
| Sure, it happens, but it's a 0.0001% use case.
|
| edit: OK, fair play to everyone who responded and said this is
| a common use case if you're poor. Not sure how relevant the
| food stamps argument is here, since this is an automatic pay
| and checkout system.
|
| But, remember - this requires a credit card and an app. As you
| put things in your basket, your app shopping cart is also
| updated, and you can track your running tally.
| pjmorris wrote:
| I'm more concerned about whether the store system gets my
| order right than whether I do. What if it, e.g., mistakes a
| can of soda for a 12-pack? Three hundred times on the order?
| mentat wrote:
| That would be very unlikely and easily reversed based on
| video data.
| thfuran wrote:
| >That would be very unlikely
|
| Would it?
|
| >easily reversed based on video data
|
| That suggests a level of effort from multiple parties
| well in excess of the typical "look at item; look at
| receipt"
| noahtallen wrote:
| I wonder if Amazon can offer some kind of good-will
| insurance here. Like "if our system mistakenly looses a
| customer money, we'll cover it for you."
| ayberk wrote:
| FWIW, I've been using Amazon Go stores regularly for a
| while and have never had any issues.
|
| There's a link to dispute the receipt should something
| happen, right on the receipt itself. Now this is
| specifically Amazon Go app, but I would expect it to be
| same for other retailers.
|
| Edit: I see that this is a little bit different than Go
| stores. It's far less convenient, but you can still get the
| receipt in your email by visiting a kiosk it seems.
| sixothree wrote:
| Agreed. I feel like the point of this is to separate the
| buyer from the notion of total price. They may as well
| change the unit from dollars to "credits".
| [deleted]
| noja wrote:
| > How often are you at the checkout and say "Wait, HOW MUCH
| is my bill? never mind then, going to go put some things
| back."
|
| Not often, because I can look at the prices of things as I
| buy them. Unlike here.
| noahtallen wrote:
| In the Amazon Go stores, there are still price labels on
| the shelves, if I recall correctly. Nothing stopping a
| retailer from doing that.
| ben174 wrote:
| And how often do you stop your checkout clerk and tell them
| to stop scanning because you've exceeded N number of
| dollars? Once you've pulled your cart up to the checkout
| line, I'm betting you've most likely settled on what you
| want to buy.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I've seen people do just that often enough. They'll
| sometimes sort their items in order of descending
| importance, and ask to stop when the total exceeds some
| amount.
| [deleted]
| sykick wrote:
| I was a cashier in college for several years. Your scenario
| happens far more than 0.0001% of the case. It's fairly common
| amongst poor people. Then there are items that aren't
| acceptable for use by food stamps and must be paid for
| separately. Then there is WIK and trying return WIK items for
| cash refunds. You also have people who misread the labels.
| Then there are items that aren't in the right place and the
| label says a price different than what the register says. For
| instance, "Cambell's Tomato Soup" can is misplaced in the
| "Cambell's Healthy Alternative Tomato Soup" location. Most
| people don't carefully read labels of the items on the shelf.
| They just assume that the label under the item is correct.
| mc32 wrote:
| To add. When I was poor and in college I definitely had a
| few instances where I had to put something back because the
| total was more than I could afford.
| mason55 wrote:
| Then this solution sounds like a huge improvement. Instead
| of getting to the register and finding out you grabbed the
| wrong thing or overspent, which is a huge inconvenience to
| you and the other people in line, you can now track
| everything as you go.
|
| Put a can of soup in your basket. Oops! The alert I set up
| for items that aren't covered by Food Stamps just fired.
| Let me see what the issue is. Oh! I just got an alert
| because I went over my budget, let me review my items and
| figure it right away.
|
| And even if you don't have a smartphone/app, the process of
| going to a kiosk to review your order will be much faster
| than at a register. Walk up to the kiosk and it instantly
| shows what's in your basket, with a total and flags for
| non-Food Stamp items. Now you can go swap things out or put
| things back and the whole interaction only took a second
| and was must less of a commitment than going through a
| checkout lane.
| sykick wrote:
| What you say seems plausible and I agree with it. I was
| responding only to the belief that not having enough
| money at checkout is 0.0001% of the cases.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Hopefully the same tech used to measure when someone takes
| or replaces something on the shelf can be used to monitor
| when stuff is in the wrong spot, making stocking easier.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > It's fairly common amongst poor people.
|
| Are these people shopping at Amazon boutiques?
| rtkwe wrote:
| Amazon wants to spread this to more than just their
| stores. It's a mild problem now but most things are when
| new tech is introduced. Accessibility doesn't matter when
| only a few sites are on the web but becomes critical when
| the web is the default way to access information.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| The whole point of this post is that Amazon is opening up
| the tech to other grocery chains...
| uselesstech wrote:
| Amazon Go is a convenience store...if convenience stores
| pick this up then yes, they will shop there.
| bigiain wrote:
| But sadly, will no longer be able to get a job there...
| joezydeco wrote:
| The Amazon Go I used to visit was maybe 200 square feet
| in size but had 4-5 people stocking and moving things
| around. And apparently there are others in the back
| assisting the cameras and making sandwiches and whatnot.
| [deleted]
| njarboe wrote:
| Stores have problem with pricing all the time. If you don't
| look at your receipt when buying things at the grocery store,
| you are going to be overcharged sometimes. Especially at
| stores that don't have a "Over charged and you get it free"
| policy. Pricing problems are even more common when a new
| store opens. This tech is going to make mistakes all the time
| for quite awhile. I would definitely want to see a list of
| the items and prices the system charged me for before I left
| the store.
| [deleted]
| sincerely wrote:
| >How often are you at the checkout and say "Wait, HOW MUCH is
| my bill? never mind then, going to go put some things back."
|
| That's a pretty common occurence for poor people. If you only
| have $70 and your bill comes to $72 because you did the
| mental math wrong you're gonna have to put something back.
| callmeal wrote:
| >Are the prices not listed on the individual items?
|
| This is not aimed at deanCommie, but I just want to comment
| on the massive cognitive dissonance in effect when the issue
| of listing tax-included prices on individual items in America
| is raised.
|
| Do none of those arguments hold anymore? Why? Because it
| isn't European tourists asking the question?
| samatman wrote:
| European VATs are routinely much higher than any state
| sales tax in the US.
|
| I can't _prove_ it, but I suspect this is directly related
| to the fact that in the US system, we see the tax on every
| purchase.
|
| I admit it's annoying to not have a single number to work
| with, having to juggle sticker price and real price sucks
| (the same argument applies to tipping).
|
| But sales taxes are regressive and I don't want them to
| creep upwards indefinitely. A compromise would be to always
| display both prices, and make the price-at-register larger.
| Aeolun wrote:
| While I agree with listing tax inclusive prices. Is it
| really that much of a mental effort to add 7%?
| samatman wrote:
| Absolutely, large swaths of the population can't do
| simple mental arithmetic like this at all.
|
| The US system discriminates against those people, no
| denying it. That said, I'm sure our European friends are
| absolutely drooling at the thought of a 7% VAT...
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| It's just part of the price, you don't really notice.
|
| Like _I_ do sometimes, but then I consider VAT policy
| somewhat interesting, in that it specifies the
| "essentials" (VAT is not charged on these) of what a tax
| authority thinks one should have.
|
| But most Europeans tend not to think about it on a daily
| basis, because it's baked into the price.
| obmelvin wrote:
| > Not sure how relevant the food stamps argument is here,
| since this is an automatic pay and checkout system.
|
| Not sure why you feel the need to say that anyone who is
| conscious of their grocery budget is irrelevant to an
| automatic system? You don't say this, but that basically
| implies that anyone who does so is 'beneath' this
| tech/convenience.
| gmadsen wrote:
| just an observation, but it is pretty obvious you have never
| been poor or interact with poor people. That situation is a
| lot more common than you would think.
| bogomipz wrote:
| >"This is the "lame - no wireless, less space than a nomad"
| take."
|
| Can you elaborate? What does this mean exactly?
| deanCommie wrote:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=no+wireless+less+space+than
| +...
| thewebcount wrote:
| Are you in the US? Because in the US it happens more often
| than elsewhere because you can't actually know the full price
| until you check out due to taxes not being included in the
| price on the box/shelf. Plus, especially with groceries, some
| items are taxed and some aren't in some states.
| bradlys wrote:
| Yeah - actually, it does happen often enough... I'd say it's
| much higher.
|
| I know a lot of HN is full of people who don't pay attention
| to prices (for whatever reason - probably the inordinate
| amount of obscenely high incomes) - but it's really common
| outside of this crowd.
|
| When I was poor - I thoroughly examined prices and only
| bought things that were on sale. If it rang up and wasn't the
| price that it said it was - I put it back. An example in my
| mind would be something like a block of cheese being $12
| instead of $10. It's only $2 but it's also $2 that I was not
| willing to pay. Sometimes the staff at the store were not
| removing the old sale tags - thus it looked like it was on
| sale but it wasn't.
| daveFNbuck wrote:
| If it rings up for $12 when it's labeled as $10, you can
| usually get it for $10 if you tell someone it rang up
| wrong.
| totalZero wrote:
| You've gotta be kidding me. The vast majority of Americans
| are constantly managing a battle between their means and
| their desires. The total bill matters immensely.
| arkades wrote:
| > Sure, it happens, but it's a 0.0001% use case.
|
| Apparently I can guess an awful lot about how you grow up
| based on your estimate of how infrequently that happens.
|
| I'm betting you can guess something about how I grow up that
| I know you're off by quite a few orders of magnitude.
| bytematic wrote:
| No way does that completely defeat the convenience. To just
| walk up and put your email in, is even much easier than
| ordering at kiosks at something like mcdonalds
| machiaweliczny wrote:
| They could probably add app that displays your cart live.
| lstamour wrote:
| Having used Amazon Go once as a tourist, it was frictionless
| only because of the Amazon app. You can scan the app instead of
| a credit card (your card is already linked to Amazon for
| payment), and when you leave the app tells you what you bought.
| In my case it thought I bought a drink when all I did was
| browse the options, so when I saw this in the app, I deleted
| the drink from the receipt by saying I didn't get one, and it
| corrected the receipt without any human interaction that I
| could see. The app was essential for me to go back, otherwise
| I'd assume the system was inaccurate and not worth the trouble.
| danShumway wrote:
| But, and I know I'm apparently in a minority here...
|
| I don't _want_ an app for my grocery store.
|
| I do my shopping spread between 4 different grocery stores
| depending where in the area I'm closest to, what specifically
| I need, etc.. and I don't want an app for _any_ of them. I
| already get pestered about loyalty cards, now I 'm going to
| get pestered about installing my local Rite-Aid's mobile app?
| julienb_sea wrote:
| I mean, you do it a single time and your email is registered.
| Just like square. This is standard practice at this point and
| the inconvenience factor is eliminated pretty much immediately.
| mithr wrote:
| As long as the process for getting refunds is frictionless and
| well-implemented (perhaps similar to Prime Now), then if you
| can afford holding the charge on your credit card for a few
| days, this doesn't really seem like a problem. The process
| becomes: go to the store, pick up what you want, and then at
| some later point take a quick look at the "receipt" for
| verification, quickly flagging anything that seems off.
|
| With Prime Now, you get your groceries delivered and pay for
| them in advance. Once in a while, you don't get an item, get
| the wrong item, a rotten piece of fruit, or an expired bottle
| of milk. When this happens, you simply go to the app where
| every item is listed, and follow the quick prompts to get a
| refund. You can optionally give a reason for asking, but in my
| experience they don't actually seem to care; in fact, whenever
| I've left a comment that, for example, one of the ten oranges I
| ordered was bad, they've always refunded me for _all_ the
| oranges on my order. I assume this is because the number of
| refunds is low enough relative to the number of purchases that
| they can afford to just always refund, keeping the customer
| happy enough.
|
| If this is how it ends up working, then I'd gladly trade
| standing in long lines at the store for just walking out and
| reviewing my purchases later. The tracking part is still a bit
| creepy, though.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| > quickly flagging anything that seems off
|
| Do you memorize all the time whether you grabbed two or three
| bags of chips or exactly how many cans of beer etc?
|
| How do you prove you didn't buy something? Or will they just
| accept your word? If anyone can just say whatever, then
| people will just ask for refunds of stuff. Will they check
| the footage in each case? But maybe it can work in the US. It
| sure as hell won't work in many other countries, where people
| look for loopholes all the time.
| balaksakrionon wrote:
| They'll extend you a varying degree of trust based on your
| burgeoning Amazon social credit score (taking into account
| your actual credit score as well I'm sure)
| balls187 wrote:
| > How do you prove you didn't buy something? Or will they
| just accept your word? I
|
| I'd imagine it's similar to the heuristic Amazon uses today
| with their A-Z Customer Guarantee.
|
| If you request a lot of refunds for a single trip, or have
| a history of requesting refunds, your individual risk score
| goes up, and the hoops you jump through to get a refund
| increase.
|
| Also for retail grocery stores now, loss prevention is
| already an issue.
|
| Right now, a person can take an item off the shelve and
| hide it, leaving only security cameras and human personnel
| to watch for theft.
|
| Adding in amazon's technology would be additional layers of
| defense.
| thinkling wrote:
| When I've used to Amazon Go store, it has usually taken a while
| for the app to update with a receipt. Last time I went to the
| new, bigger store it was about an hour before they had the
| receipt available.
| throwaway3157 wrote:
| > When I've used to Amazon Go store,
|
| My receipt was in the app shortly after (I walked about two
| blocks and checked). I think it took longer for an email to
| show up, but can't recall exactly
| grandmczeb wrote:
| My experience had been that it can vary quite a bit. Most
| of the time it's pretty quick, but occasionally it can be
| over an hour.
| sgc wrote:
| Maybe that is a person verifying because the software
| flagged something as uncertain.
| grandmczeb wrote:
| Very possible.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| Maybe they use spot instances for all the compute.
| egdod wrote:
| Grabbing a receipt at a kiosk is a lot quicker than manually
| scanning your items.
|
| My main problem with this is how invasively creepy it all is.
| njarboe wrote:
| Yes. Amazon will know every item you buy, how much, and when.
| But not much different than grocery store discount cards
| already used by most everyone for decades. I'm sure that info
| is sold, traded around, and aggregated.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| They will have data on how people walk around the stores,
| in what order, what shelves they look at, what items they
| take off and put back. What they put back and rather take
| as an alternative instead. How long they ponder before
| picking an item. Etc. etc. so much data to mine for
| advertisers and marketers to manipulate people into
| spending more.
| tialaramex wrote:
| The closest I have to this today is the grocery store nearest
| me - I walk in, I pick up a scanner (you can use an app on your
| phone but I use their scanner because my phone locks
| immediately with a passphrase when unused so it's ghastly for
| this purpose) and I just wander about scanning items and
| putting them into bags. The scanner shows its estimate of the
| price paid, which in my experience is always 100% accurate but
| I guess "estimate" is needed because legally the shop is not
| promising to sell at this price yet. I walk to the exit and
| scan the exit and give back the scanner, it tells me the final
| price which is the same as that estimate and then I pay with my
| card and walk out.
|
| This is still extra steps compared to "Just walk out" but it's
| close. There is no interaction with store employees (which
| suits some friends who struggle to do human interaction on
| "bad" days) for example, this store would seem to work just
| fine without any employees although of course it's a huge
| grocery store so it has dozens doing various things and
| couldn't in fact function without some.
|
| The really nice optimisation of course is to get rid of the
| money. If you stop caring about trying to make the numbers add
| up and just rely on people going "Huh, I only need two
| cabbages, why would I take sixty cabbages? What am I going to
| do with sixty cabbages?" then this is all much simpler. But I
| think even Amazon doesn't expect to deploy this to a culture
| where that's realistic.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| When I last used one of those systems, I found it to be
| reliable, as you said. And to keep people honest, they'd
| randomly pick shoppers to go through a regular checkout,
| which is both understandable and annoying.
|
| It also made it super easy to bag groceries.
| zaidf wrote:
| I'd expect amazon to email you a receipt with an easy way to
| dispute payments. I realize this is not the same as seeing the
| aggregate cost at the time of purchase but I'm skeptical this
| alone will create lots of friction in ppl adopting this.
|
| To me, the biggest thing that has kept me from trying it is
| that I need to open my app and scan a QR code. Looks like
| they're addressing this by left you swipe your card.
| nimblegorilla wrote:
| > I wouldn't feel comfortable just walking out without knowing
| how much I'm going to be charged, so this tech is essentially
| useless to me.
|
| I'm sure they can make an app for that.
| maest wrote:
| I am not sure they can make an app for that.
|
| For one, there's usually a delay before you get your receipt.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think that is only problematic the first 5 times or so? After
| that you'll likely trust the tech.
|
| I'm sure they have a 'you charged me incorrectly' resolution
| service as well.
| takeda wrote:
| That's the point of this technology - to increase impulse
| buying.
|
| Credit cards purpose is that it hides from you how much money
| you have left. If you were paying in cash and see how much
| money you have left in your wallet, you're more likely end up
| not purchasing a given item.
|
| This is one step further, since you now don't know how much
| you're paying (unless you calculating the cost in your head,
| which most people don't do) and typically you'll know once you
| get a CC statement.
|
| Note that the kiosk doesn't print the receipt, it e-mails it,
| which makes it even harder to instantly see what you've paid.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Well, that's one of the points. Another point is to not pay
| for cashiers or have checkout lines.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| Not to mention all the data to be mined.
| grandmczeb wrote:
| Unfortunately the current system doesn't exactly work in real
| time (sometimes it can take a while for a receipt to appear in
| the app) but I don't think that's a fundamental limitation. I
| also don't think this is a major concern though; so long as
| there's still price tags (which there are) and it's easy to
| dispute mistakes in the app I don't think most people will
| really have a problem with it.
| withinboredom wrote:
| I think the price tag only makes sense when tax is included
| on them. Things are taxed differently in different places,
| and sometimes people are tax exempt (in the US). But without
| the tax on the price tag, it's literally impossible to know
| how much you're going to pay (this is why I love living in
| the EU).
| grandmczeb wrote:
| 1) "literally impossible" is obviously untrue. 2) Sales tax
| is <10% basically everywhere. Unless you're paying in cash,
| this isn't a real problem.
| jschwartzi wrote:
| If my experience with Amazon hubs is anything to go by, the
| store employees will not be empowered to make any decisions
| or help you with anything and will direct you to call the
| customer-service number, and the customer-service people will
| not be empowered to fix any pricing errors on the spot.
| grandmczeb wrote:
| That hasn't been my experience actually going to one of
| these stores.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I'm sure the items have posted prices, so it would really be
| simple math that could be done in one's head.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| In the United States taxes are not included on the sticker
| price. As a result adding up the total price of a purchase
| can be tricky.
|
| However, I don't think this technology will be used
| extensively by people who purchase a large quantity of
| products at a time. Instead, this will be catered to the
| times when someone needs to pick up 5 or less things at a
| store. In this instance, these customers are not typically
| price-sensitive about what they need.
| donarb wrote:
| In certain places, tax is not added for certain goods. For
| example, in Seattle food is not taxed, unless it is
| prepared, like fast food or deli counters.
| tialaramex wrote:
| This is also routine in Europe where tax is included in
| the advertised price. Here for example the price shown
| for your hilarious Xmas sweater is inclusive of tax, the
| price shown for your toddler's equally hilarious sweater
| is not, because it's tax exempt (clothing for kids isn't
| taxed) and so in both cases the displayed price is the
| price you'll pay.
|
| We added a sugar tax, so the sticker price for beverages
| like original Coke went up, but similar zero sugar
| products (Coke Zero, Pepsi Max) did not. Of course some
| stores just raised the before-tax price to capture the
| difference as profit, and others just eliminated sugary
| drinks. So... a mixed result.
|
| The EU's focus is that consumers always pay what the
| sticker price says. So, no "plus tax", no "shipping fees
| not included" on items that unavoidably have to be
| shipped to you, no "service fees" no "card fees" nothing
| like that. I think even if you don't actively like this,
| you can see the point of this approach.
|
| Would it be easier to get consumers angry about taxes if
| the tax wasn't "baked in" ? Maybe. But it's not as though
| it has proved impossible to campaign against, for
| example, tax on tampons or even toilet paper.
| bluGill wrote:
| $2.99 at 6.5% tax is $3.18 (after rounding). Buy two and
| your total cost is $3.37. The government don't not want
| to be cheated out of that penny. (it adds up over all the
| people buying stuff)
| bloodorange wrote:
| I genuinely can't tell if you are being serious. If you
| are being serious, then how do you account for the
| behaviour of the customer possibly changing based on how
| the price is displayed (i.e including or excluding taxes
| etc.)
| njarboe wrote:
| The cash registers at a normal store has to calculate the
| tax on items, so I don't see why this would be very hard
| for other computer systems to do. It will know where you
| are.
| nck4222 wrote:
| I don't think it's a lot to ask that I'm informed how much
| I'm going to be charged before I pay for something, which is
| the process for every sale I make currently works.
|
| What if the item is marked as on sale but the database hasn't
| been updated so I don't get the sale price?
|
| What if the price on the item is correct but someone fat
| fingered the price in the database?
|
| What if a different customer moved an item from one shelf to
| another so the price on the shelf is for a different product?
|
| What if I want to know the total with tax?
|
| What if a camera sees me pick up a $500 item to look at but
| doesn't see me put it back on the shelf?
|
| I don't want to go home, wait an hour+, see I've been
| mischarged, and then have to spend a week waiting for a
| refund to process.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| I have to imagine that all of those will be rare enough
| situations that you don't really need to worry about it.
|
| Many of them happen when you're checking out in person too.
| You can simply go to the receipt kiosk every time if you're
| worried about being charged incorrectly.
| spunker540 wrote:
| I bet people said the same thing about credit cards -- "how
| do I know there won't be an error that causes my credit
| card bill to be wrong at the end of the month? I'll stick
| with cash thank you very much"
| nck4222 wrote:
| I mean, until the technology had been proven, I think
| that's a valid question to ask.
|
| Plus, when credit cards were introduced, you were still
| given the opportunity to agree upon the total on which
| you'd be charged, before you were charged. That's all I'm
| asking for with this.
| emiliobumachar wrote:
| If there are enough kiosks to avoid a line, always getting the
| receipt is still a huge improvement over scanning, even if it
| falsifies the "just walk out" bit.
|
| Another potential alternative for the anxious (and I definitely
| include myself) is an app showing up-to-the-second billing
| state on the smartphone screen. At a glance, usability issues
| seem hard but doable.
| saber6 wrote:
| > Another potential alternative for the anxious (and I
| definitely include myself) is an app showing up-to-the-second
| billing state on the smartphone screen.
|
| That sounds like an awesome idea!
|
| You just load up your cart, peek at your (account-linked)
| smartphone, and see what your total will before heading to
| your car.
| [deleted]
| Dunedan wrote:
| > My biggest problem with this is that from what I can tell,
| the only way to know how much you're going to be automatically
| charged (as well as what items the tech thinks you're
| purchasing), is to go to a kiosk in the store and get a
| receipt.
|
| You only need to use the kiosk once per credit card (to enter
| your e-mail address). From the page:
|
| > If shoppers need a receipt, they can visit a kiosk in the
| store and enter their email address. A receipt will be emailed
| to them for this trip. If they use the same credit card to
| enter this or any other Just Walk Out-enabled store in the
| future, a receipt will be emailed to them automatically.
| ramon wrote:
| If I was the owner of the Store I would put a security guy to
| validate that it was paid, if not then don't let them put of
| the Store. I'm a tech guy but if it was my store I would like
| to double check somehow. From a security perspective it's great
| to only let people in with credit and also I would be able to
| somehow track who was trying to do something wrong.
| wombat-man wrote:
| I'd love to see this at airports or something. Kind of hard to
| imagine in a real supermarket but maybe someday.
| dantheman wrote:
| They have one in Seattle, there's also a few go stores, similar
| to 7/11 around NYC, Seattle, and a few other cities.
| barrkel wrote:
| City centre shops (downscaled versions of the big chains like
| Sainsburys, Tesco) in London are almost like this today; you
| walk in, gather what you want and pay using self-service check-
| out. There's no more than one or two cashiers but perhaps a
| dozen self-service checkouts. There's no interaction with
| anyone.
| r00fus wrote:
| I was hoping Apple would implement something like this given they
| had scan+pay-on-iPhone back in 2010 for Apple Stores.
|
| I have to imagine there are considerable roadblocks for theft
| prevention and training your shoppers.
|
| Ambiguity turns off paying shoppers and provides an opportunity
| for thieves.
| unholiness wrote:
| I'm curious, how does this technology deal with items that aren't
| individually packaged? Is there a place for vegetables, meats,
| bulk foods, etc, or is the technology limited to acting like a
| giant vending machine?
|
| I hope that stores like these will one day be hubs where we can
| refill all our bulk products and actually save on shipping and
| packaging. I fear that stores like these will just sell me
| individually wrapped apples because it's not worth the effort.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Fantastic. Right now I can pull up my Walmart app and see every
| receipt from a Walmart big box or grocery store from the last
| several years. There's even a picture of the thing I bought. I
| can't get this with Google play. I assume I'll get this with
| Amazon pay and then maybe the other payment networks will up
| their game.
| zethraeus wrote:
| Ah, the great assertion of disruption: their
| roles have simply shifted to focus on more valuable activities
| sequoia wrote:
| I won't do it. Because 1. I value what's left of my privacy more
| than saving a minute of human interaction here and there (are you
| really that busy? I'm not and I have 4 kids) 2. I won't
| contribute to twisting the arms of my local retailers and forcing
| them into amazon's yolk.
|
| In short: to hell with this.
| monkpit wrote:
| > yolk
|
| Yoke _
| johnmarcus wrote:
| THANK YOU! Thiss, and exactly this. I will boycott any store
| that implements this.
| filoleg wrote:
| Famous last words, as I predict this going just as well as
| people in 2020 who use cash-only everywhere or, more extreme
| example, people not using any kind of cell phone just to avoid
| tracking by carriers.
|
| When you decide to make it really difficult for the world to
| engage with you, the world will make sure to make it just as
| difficult for you to engage with the world as well.
| bogomipz wrote:
| What is the target market for this tech then? I feel like grocery
| stores and pharmacies have already invested somewhat heavily in
| self checkout kiossk and may also be leery of having Amazon tech
| in their stores. Is the target market retail 2.0 then, where you
| design a store from the ground up with this tech?
| uoaei wrote:
| One more step to worldwide Social Credit Score.
| korijn wrote:
| It also eliminates more human contact.
| boublepop wrote:
| Aaaand there's the play. Amazon wasn't trying to compete with
| other retails stores by leveraging their tech edge, they were
| positioning themselves to becoming the single provider of retail
| checkout solutions for the future. You either opt-in to giving
| Amazon all your retail data, or you become the only old fashioned
| "wait in line to get served" store on the street.
|
| And where is the competition? Is there anyone at all who can
| provide something like this?
| kortilla wrote:
| > And where is the competition? Is there anyone at all who can
| provide something like this?
|
| Um, Walmart and most major grocery stores already have self
| checkout areas. So "wait in line to get served" isn't quite the
| comparison. Most companies will give zero fucks about adopting
| this unless it becomes the expected norm.
| jshevek wrote:
| I may be misunderstanding your argument, but I think the
| parent argument still applies whether you are getting served
| by a human or being served by a machine which has the same
| "one checkout at a time per person" kind of bottleneck that a
| human has.
|
| Edit: The "scan your own cart" model is a more compelling
| counter-argument than the self checkout machines currently at
| Wal-Mart, as this can accommodate a much higher throughput.
| mdturnerphys wrote:
| Skip [0] lets you scan and pay for items with your phone, so it
| doesn't require any infrastructure be installed but isn't as
| simple for the customer.
|
| [0] https://getskip.com/
| inkaudio wrote:
| There are number of tech companies directly competing in this
| space:
|
| https://standard.ai/
|
| https://grabango.com/
|
| https://www.getzippin.com/
|
| https://www.v7labs.com/retail
|
| https://www.getzippin.com/
|
| There are competitive options, if you're in retail you do not
| have to give Amazon all your "retail data" or use their tech.
| milofeynman wrote:
| It's interesting that they rolled this out as a thing, but
| didn't start retrofitting all of their Whole Foods with it.
| Does it have problems with grocery stores? How does it handle
| fruits by weight, etc.
| CreepGin wrote:
| I'm wondering the same thing. Seems like the typical problem
| with AI in general: dealing with all edge cases in real world
| scenarios.
| filoleg wrote:
| Amazon probably doesn't want to radically rock the boat when
| it comes to Whole Foods at the moment. It is an established
| well-working business, and they don't want another wave of
| "WF went to shit after Amazon bought it out, just look at all
| those changes they've implemented!", given that Amazon's
| reputation has already been kinda questionable in the public
| eye recently.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Last Thanksgiving, I visited my parents in the town where I
| lived before college, and we went to the Whole Foods where
| we used to shop at all the time.
|
| It looked basically the same, except that there were these
| huge, bright blue Amazon Prime ads _everywhere_. It felt
| vaguely dystopian--a store of my youth invaded by the giant
| tech monolith.
|
| If Amazon is trying to not noticeably change Whole Foods,
| they're doing a pretty lousy job.
| goatlover wrote:
| Just need giant holograms from Blade Runner to complete
| the look.
| filoleg wrote:
| Well, i didn't say they weren't changing anything at all.
| Given how perturbed you are by those Prime ads that don't
| functionally affect anything, imagine the magnitude of
| the public outcry if Amazon implemented something as
| radical as "just walk out" tech at Whole Foods.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| See, I was thinking of it the other way around. If you're
| going to change things, you might as well go all the way.
| Because it's not like they're fooling anyone right now.
| filoleg wrote:
| If the end goal was to transform all WF stores in the
| near future, I agree. However, I don't think that is
| what's happening here. For that transformation to work
| well, the whole "cashier-less shopping experience" needs
| to be normalized with the general public, and that's
| where the brilliance of Amazon's strategy with this tech
| can be observed.
|
| WF has already served Amazon well by being a test bed for
| grocery delivery optimization, no need to screw up a
| profitable existing business with any additional radical
| changes. That's what Amazon Go stores are for, and now
| they can sell that tech to other stores. Once the tech is
| mass-adopted, they can smoothly switch all WF stores to
| "just walk out" tech with very little complaints, as
| that's the experience people would be already used to at
| all the other stores
| leetcrew wrote:
| maybe it's just a coincidence, but I've noticed all kinds
| of everyday things being out of stock (eg, brussels sprouts
| and lettuce) at whole foods since the purchase. I'm
| wondering if amazon is getting more aggressive with the JIT
| inventory strategy.
| phantarch wrote:
| They have started testing this with a larger format grocery
| store: https://www.msn.com/en-us/finance/companies/amazon-
| opens-lar...
|
| I'm guessing they're slowly scaling up.
| gajus wrote:
| Part of Whole Foods experience is the customer experience.
| The cashiers pack your bags and overall try to engage you in
| a conversation. The "just walk out" thing would make it less
| personable.
| prgmatic wrote:
| Are you sure about this? They almost always seem slightly
| annoyed when I haven't started bagging my own goods in the
| middle of them scanning items.
| iNate2000 wrote:
| It knows who you are and where you are, so it knows when
| you're using a scale - so it would just tag the weight to the
| fruit in your basket.
|
| Or, just over charge by a large enough margin to make up for
| it.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _And where is the competition? Is there anyone at all who can
| provide something like this?_
|
| One of the big tech companies in the 80's demonstrated this. I
| think it was either IBM or AT&T/Bellcore. Essentially, it was
| just a scanner at the door that read RFID tags in each item,
| and your credit card.
|
| This was back when RFID was still oh-holy-shit technology.
|
| The reason I think AT&T might have been involved is that the
| video demonstration was very similar to AT&T "You will" series
| of commercials that aired around the same time.
| thu2111 wrote:
| That's not the same thing at all. Doing it with RFID is
| trivial. The hard part here is the backwards compatibility
| with a retail ecosystem that uses UPC barcodes rather than
| (expensive) RFID tags.
| kortilla wrote:
| Well it goes to show you that this isn't really solving a
| burning issue at all. If it was, they would have thrown the
| cheap RFID tags on everything 30 years ago.
| dfox wrote:
| Doing it with RFID is surprisingly non-trivial even in the
| physical sense. That is the error rate of RFID bulk reads
| is small enough for opportunistic tracking of stuff, but
| mostly unacceptable for basing any kind of financial
| transaction on that.
| paulmd wrote:
| IBM was playing with this for sure.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-1F71Wa_zo
| MattDamonSpace wrote:
| Yep. I've been sitting here thinking Amazon was going to spool
| up tons of retail locations that leveraged their tech to create
| a massive moat that other Brick & Mortars couldn't possibly
| compete with.
|
| In hindsight it seems obvious that the play was to "AWS" the
| whole thing: make yourself the first/best customer, nail the
| implementation, then sell it to the world.
| sarah180 wrote:
| It's hard to imagine Amazon actually starting a bunch of
| retail locations. They'd probably buy Whole Foods or
| something...
| [deleted]
| hammock wrote:
| >In hindsight it seems obvious that the play was to "AWS" the
| whole thing: make yourself the first/best customer, nail the
| implementation, then sell it to the world.
|
| It's not just about "AWS"-ing the thing. It's about gaining
| access to all of the transaction data and marrying that to
| what Amazon already knows about you. A retailer like Walmart
| would NEVER use this tech, they know their data is one of the
| most valuable things they have (in fact they don't share
| their data with anyone, while all the other FDM retailers
| do), but boutique retailers like J Crew or whoever would
| happily.
| godelski wrote:
| And in this way Amazon gets a lot more data and avoids the
| "monopoly" issue. Better optics too. But this is the only
| way that Amazon can get tons of data from smaller companies
| that they can't (don't want to) compete with (niche
| products or physical spaces).
| WalterBright wrote:
| > and marrying that to what Amazon already knows about you.
|
| Amazon is always putting up ads for me based on my purchase
| history, but they're never what I wind up buying. I have no
| explanation for what is wrong with their algorithm.
| xapata wrote:
| Turns out that math is hard and people are difficult to
| predict.
| larzang wrote:
| But you just bought a toilet seat, surely you want five
| more toilet seats, you toilet seat enthusiast you.
| zhoujianfu wrote:
| Ha, for me it was hammocks.. for years!
|
| Just call me The Hammock Man!
| barbecue_sauce wrote:
| Matter of fact, they're all in the same complex; it's the
| hammock complex on third.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Frequently purchased together: toilet seat, and the exact
| same toilet seat from a duplicate listing at $20 higher
| price
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| I've always assumed that was an artifact of free returns;
| if you bought one thing, maybe you're actually still
| shopping and want to know other options. I've noticed
| when I get these they're frequently more expensive than
| the one I already bought.
| ckcheng wrote:
| Yeah, it's like their algorithm misses that once you've
| got X, you probably don't want X (at least not for a
| while).
|
| But I wonder why they don't just flip the prediction? If
| you bought X, then advertise anything but X.
|
| Like if you bought a toilet seat, they might advertise
| toilet paper instead (which would be good, because all
| the stores around here just ran out...)
| lazersharkman wrote:
| The worst was when I searched for gorilla glue once. Good
| ol' Jeffy B thought I'd also want a $100k watch, a
| racecar/nascar (themed) Bible, and an anatomical model of
| some gonads. Pretty sure I still have the screencap
| somewhere
| altec3 wrote:
| And they didn't just do that with AWS. They did it with
| ecommerce as well. Become the biggest online retailer, nail
| the implementation, then get everyone else to jump on your
| platform.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| They are only good because Ebay is pathetically bad.
| turc1656 wrote:
| They're only good because they were repeatedly given an
| infinite amount of money for 2 decades by investors while
| their retail operations lost money so that they could
| nail the implementation and the promise that they would
| figure out how to make it profitable.
| thu2111 wrote:
| You talk as if Amazon was like an Uber or WeWork. That's
| really far from the truth.
|
| Amazon were slightly profitable or break-even since 2003.
| There's a convenient chart of their profits since day one
| here:
|
| https://qz.com/1196256/it-took-amazon-amzn-14-years-to-
| make-...
|
| Starting in 1997 they bled money with mounting losses
| until about 1999, when they began to turn things around.
| The dotcom pop is clearly visible but they recovered
| almost immediately and their losses continued to shrink
| until about 2001-2002 when they became break even. From
| 2002-2011 they either made small profits or nothing, but
| that was obviously because they were growing at a rapid
| pace and putting all the money back into the business.
| Once AWS launches in 2006 (so about 10 years after day 1
| in retail) profits start growing but then are back into
| the red around the time of the GFC+recession, and again
| in the 2012-2013 European recession. After that it's
| stratospheric profits.
|
| How much investor money is "infinite money"? Somewhere
| between $8-$9 million before they floated on the stock
| market.
|
| https://www.quora.com/Who-were-the-original-investors-in-
| Ama...
|
| Obviously, investors who put money into their IPO have
| done extremely well and cannot claim they were shovelling
| money into a furnace, far from it.
|
| The inflation in investment round sizes over the past 20
| years has been staggering. I see nothing that suggests
| Amazon was unusual in raising so little money
| (comparatively speaking) before they went public.
| jacobwilliamroy wrote:
| Did they really nail the implementation? I still refuse
| to buy anything that would go on or inside my body from
| amazon because I'm worried about getting counterfeits.
| adenverd wrote:
| Amazon effectively leveraged investment capital to do
| exactly what they said they would do - innovate, learn
| into the market, and improve iteratively. From investors'
| perspectives (and probably consumers' perspectives as
| well), Amazon has succeeded brilliantly.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I.e. Amazon has long term thinking.
| athenot wrote:
| That was true 5 years ago but with the quality issues on
| Amazon, I've found myself buying more on eBay.
| paulmd wrote:
| Yeah, ebay has much better buyer protections unless the
| item is Fulfilled By Amazon (which carries a cost
| premium). eBay prices also tend to be better. If you're
| going to buy cheap chinese crap anyway, just cut out the
| middleman.
|
| Finally, Amazon's marketplace is just not navigable.
| Their search is pathetically bad, and this is nothing
| new, it's been a common complaint for years. Some fairly
| massive amount of their traffic is inbound from Google
| searches like "some product amazon" just because of how
| pathetically bad it is. The only other reasonable way to
| navigate their site is if their similar product
| suggestions or "commonly bought together" happens to nail
| the item you were looking for.
|
| I've had searches where adding an additional keyword that
| is in the product title will actually cause the product
| to disappear from the search. What in the actual fuck.
| popinman322 wrote:
| I personally find eBay to be much better for items that I
| can't buy from the manufacturer already. Individual
| sellers have reputations & reviews separate from product
| reviews, and those ratings are among the first things
| you're exposed to when interacting with a seller.
| aficiomaquinas wrote:
| > Yeah, ebay has much better buyer protections unless the
| item is Fulfilled By Amazon (which carries a cost
| premium). eBay prices also tend to be better. If you're
| going to buy cheap chinese crap anyway, just cut out the
| middleman.
|
| That's what I thought until I was scammed by a Chinese on
| eBay... after countless emails, calls, even police
| reports, eBay did not return the 800 dollars I lost...
| not sure if it's an isolated case but it was pretty
| frustrating.
| dosethree wrote:
| Where's the evidence anyone will actually use this thing? Maybe
| eventually. You can already do this at apple, but does anyone
| do it? Perhaps, they will get used to it in time, but i don't
| know.
| iNate2000 wrote:
| But at apple it's a much more standard checkout flow, right?
| Scan an item, press "buy" and done, right?
| hamandcheese wrote:
| I do it at Apple, but afaik Apples system is based mostly on
| trust? You just scan and pay with your device, then walk out.
| Granted, I haven't tried to steal so there could be more tech
| than I realize.
| reaperducer wrote:
| I do. I think in my last ten purchases from an Apple Store
| I've only not had a zero-interactivity experience once. And
| that was because a Genius had get a Thunderbolt 2 to USB-C
| cable from the back. Even then, once she handed it to me, I
| still checked out on my phone with the Apple Store app.
| obmelvin wrote:
| > Where's the evidence anyone will actually use this thing?
|
| Well, who knows how much interest will truly materialize,
| particularly given the data leaked to amazon, but the post
| claims/implies that retailers reached out to Amazon and were
| interested in licensing the technology.
| raydev wrote:
| Walmart. But they only care about what lowers costs. They've
| been researching RFIDs and stufff like this since at least the
| early 00s, and they rolled a lot of it out in their
| shipping/transit network, but I'm guessing they have too much
| shrinkage/theft to worry about in most of their stores. No cost
| savings, so it doesn't happen.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| No idea about the quality of their competition, but a startup
| called Standard Cognition has been in this market.
|
| https://standard.ai/
| TheEzEzz wrote:
| Jordan from Standard here. We absolutely believe that
| retailers will prefer to get this new technology from
| providers like us as opposed to Amazon, their biggest
| competitor.
|
| So far Amazon has also not shown their technology deployed in
| an existing store, rather than an Amazon Go. We're actively
| working on being the first to demonstrate this. Stay tuned
| over the next couple of months.
| kryogen1c wrote:
| Fear not! Yesterday I shopped at a big box grocery store where
| all I did was scan my cart with my phone, pay with the attached
| card, and walk out the door.
| aguyfromnb wrote:
| > _And where is the competition? Is there anyone at all who can
| provide something like this?_
|
| Isn't the better question, "where is the product"? Is it a
| gimmick?
|
| This looks awesome, but until I see it in action, working
| flawlessly, outside of the Seattle/Silicon Valley nexus, I'm
| not sure there will be (or needs to be) any competition.
| npo9 wrote:
| I moved from Seattle to the midwest.
|
| I've seen a lot of very intolerable lines in the suburbs.
| It's not unusual for me to wait 15 minutes to checkout at
| Target or Costco and last December I remember a 25 minute
| line.
|
| I think this is a product. There's about six different
| grocery store within a fifteen minute drive from my house.
| I'll switch to the first one to implement this system.
| sushikokk wrote:
| Not only your data, but the stores also. Now Amazon will know
| every item that sells, and at what price. Wonder what comes
| next?
| isthisreality wrote:
| Well, the most obvious is selling that data to competitors
| (store-level and product-level) and governments.
| csomar wrote:
| Or maybe the thing turned out not profitable/non-functional but
| they are trying to profit from it nonetheless.
| wheaties wrote:
| This will destroy more adtech companies than you can imagine.
| Amazon will have so much of your shopping habits. They'll have
| even more than just one credit card company will be able to
| have...
| Reason077 wrote:
| But officer! I thought this store had Amazon's "Just walk out"
| technology!
| dillondoyle wrote:
| I would bet that the money maker isn't the actual technology. The
| data they could collect on consumer shopping habits, tied
| automatically to a cross-store profile + an expanded Amazon
| SSP/DSP would create huge value to Amazon and brands. Added onto
| their already fast growing advertising business.
|
| If this is in fact their revenue play they could even sell this
| at a loss just to build up the ecosystem, get a unmovable
| majority monopoly on the tech -> and data.
|
| Maybe even add on top something like Good RX where retailers pay
| amazon on top to drive traffic to their stores. And even combine
| with Brands who want to offer discounts. Double dip.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| Yes, like Amazon has shortage of data about consumer
| behavior...
| kaiabwpdjqn wrote:
| I doubt it would be a game changer. Grocery stores already
| collect this when you use a card for discounts
|
| (They'll never say no if you ask to put on the store card
| though...)
| turc1656 wrote:
| Whatever happened to the RFID concept where they (not Amazon, but
| others) previously envisioned attaching small, cheap RFID badges
| to all items and then you would just do one big, quick scan at
| the end and it would read all the RFID tags in your cart at once
| and you could walk out?
|
| I like that idea better, honestly. It's more accurate and doesn't
| require video monitoring and all sorts of AI/ML/DL algorithms.
| Though, I don't know the practicality of attaching RFIDs to
| everything, nor the cost. And I assume some people would try to
| just rip them off, which I imagine would be the biggest concern,
| in addition to having the staff attach them to everything.
| aussieguy1234 wrote:
| With the cornavirus, retail business will be down. Retail workers
| will get less shifts and lose their jobs, etc. Then, just like
| what happened during the GFC, their jobs will be automated before
| the economy recovers.
| tompetry wrote:
| "Just walk out"? Figured this was going to be a site dedicated to
| some sort of protest about Amazon. I think a re-brand is in
| order.
|
| That aside, would retailers adopt this from Amazon, of all tech
| companies?
| tommoor wrote:
| So how long until this is implemented in WholeFoods? :)
| sktrdie wrote:
| What if I walk in without a credit card?
| MivLives wrote:
| They have a cash option apparently. I know some US places have
| a law against places that don't take cash.
| zepto wrote:
| "My client believed it was a 'just walk out' store, your honor"
|
| -Attorney defending future shoplifting case.
| erjjones wrote:
| It will be interesting to see what other types of new technology
| (good & bad) emerge from this.
|
| Such as: New rfid (or image) spoofing tech, etc.
|
| -or-
|
| Stories "Just walk out" store forgot to activate rfid tags on
| some product and customers walked out w/ (x) number of items for
| free.
|
| This will be interesting to see how it plays out.
| Zack-sgu wrote:
| Interested to see how this works with allowing people to pay with
| cash and other non-credit methods.
|
| A few regions have started passing laws banning cashless
| establishments for being exclusionary towards people without bank
| accounts, or who use alternative banking sources (In NYC it's
| something like 11% and 22% respectively). I would expect that
| trend to continue.
| sayhar wrote:
| Is it just me, or does anyone find the fact that this is
| technically possible (to this level of precision) just ...
| terrifying?
| vessenes wrote:
| Seeing a few negative comments here; I think these are short-
| sighted in the extreme.
|
| Labor is a major cost for retail; anything that massively reduces
| labor costs is going to be hugely game changing. Combined with
| amazon promises that it takes only a few weeks to integrate
| (seriously??) if this works at all, this is going to be a super
| fast growth group at Amazon.
|
| For reference think back to how many stories you've read about
| say managers short changing employees a few _minutes_ at the end
| of work shifts.
|
| This really could change retail permanently; the only question is
| if it works.
| xorcist wrote:
| > Labor is a major cost for retail
|
| At least it used to be true that self checkout systems are not
| primarily sold with the promise of reducing labor costs, but
| primarily that they take up so much less space. If I remember
| correctly, six self checkouts take up as much floor space as
| one manual given the longer queues of the latter. That's why
| they first were sold in the cities where space is at a premium.
|
| You still need some employees around the check out area anyway,
| and even if one employee can serve several you also suddently
| have many more of them. The manned check out was never the most
| labour intensive part of running a store anyway so it wasn't
| the best selling point anyway.
|
| This walk-out concept has to compete with the various self
| scanning schemes that already exist, not with the manned check
| outs of old. It will be interesting to see if they can offer a
| cheaper and more reliable experience to shoppers.
| mataug wrote:
| Having visited the Amazon Go stores in Seattle at-least 30
| times over the last couple of years, including the newly opened
| Amazon Go Grocery store, I can confidently say that the
| technology works quite well for the typical shopper.
|
| I agree, the question of, can this technology be integrated
| into existing retail spaces and still work well enough to be
| economically viable is important. But considering that there
| hasn't been any other retailer who's come up with a competing
| product over the last two years, tells me that Amazon could be
| way ahead of the competition on "Just Walk Out", and possibly
| dominate this space of retail automation for a while.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| if only most of the US labor force didn't rely on jobs in that
| sector...
| vessenes wrote:
| This reminds me of the Aberhart quote recommending airports
| be built with spoons and forks, not modern machines, if a
| jobs program is what's required. Perhaps we could add more
| jobs by having people hand total receipts and the computers
| could just check them for accuracy :)
|
| My own perspective is that it is basic reality that a large
| number of low-skill jobs will be automated over the next 10
| to 20 years. Rather than complain, I prefer to think about
| what society can and should do about it.
|
| In my case, I don't believe that we should create makework
| low skills jobs to 'solve' this 'problem' of humans no longer
| being needed to run cash registers though; I have a hard time
| imagining most people preferring to run a cash register as
| their ideal day job.
| ar_lan wrote:
| I don't understand the notion of moving backward in order
| to keep jobs for people. I get why people say they want
| that (fear of losing their jobs), but I don't really
| understand the logical progression to getting there and I
| believe its influenced by:
|
| a) Practically, this imposes a big problem to future
| society if low-skill jobs are gone. b) I'm definitely
| privileged to have a "high-skill" job so my fear factor
| here is irrelevant.
|
| That said - if this were really a concern people were
| serious about, I don't see why we don't just ban
| cars/trains/airplanes/etc. and have caravans to do all
| trading once again. It would create tons of jobs all in the
| name of _regress_.
| Frost1x wrote:
| A lot of business strategy these days tend to forget that
| their labor are often their customers in a somewhat symbiotic
| relationship. This was part of the realization Henry Ford had
| when developing Ford motors and during the heydays of labor
| rights.
|
| Cut your labor and you strangle your customer base. Now we're
| seeing a tendency of businesses focusing on more wealthy
| clients, luxury goods, etc. Some modern mall strategies are
| gearing at primarily targeting luxury stores vs appealing to
| the masses because the mass labor force purses are growing
| ever tighter (mainly because they're emptying).
|
| Seems like a natural progression as the "wealth trickle"
| progresses more and more to a drought and pools up at the top
| in guarded reservoirs away from the majority: the labor
| force.
|
| It's one thing to automate away tasks people don't want to do
| and replace those tasks with tasks people do want to do (and
| get paid for). It's an _entirely different_ story when you
| eliminate work and provide no alternatives, displacing large
| segments of the population, then simply accumulate the labor
| cost savings for your business and chief investors while
| stagnating growth.
|
| Most counter arguments to this trend point at historic
| technological shifts where new industry popped up to supply
| alternative means of living for the labor force. This makes
| an assumption that the change is the same and ignores the
| trends, hand waving it away in ambiguous complexity and
| proposing we play the experiment out. Most wanting to play
| the experiment out have little to lose and much to gain. The
| other side have a lot to lose and relatively little to gain.
|
| We're seeing a lot more of businesses pooling cash and asset
| reserves and not reinvesting them back into society and
| people are starting to get a bit cranky about it.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Yes but it's a tragedy of the commons / prisoner's dilemma
| issue. If your store employs 1% of the people in a given
| area, and therefore also 1% of your customers, you can't
| prevent the other 99% from laying off their own workforce
| and affecting you, unless you collude with them somehow. On
| the other hand, increasing your workers' pay will give you
| no meaningful sales benefit as it can at most affect that
| 1%.
| Frost1x wrote:
| I agree with your point and it seems (to me) to be a
| natural progression/emergent behavior of the current
| implementation of capitalism we subscribe to.
|
| It could potentially be even more axiomatic than that and
| an unavoidable result of core/firmly held beliefs with
| trade systems that there will always be those to exploit
| the weaker (in an economic system) to the point where the
| system becomes unsustainable.
|
| It often reminds me of agent based models of
| predator/prey systems where ultimately, the incorrect
| balance of predators, their efficiencies and successes
| result in a systematic collapse where the predators
| starve themselves to death by not allowing the prey to
| procreate and gather resources necessary that predators
| ultimately survive on.
|
| In this case, if the wealthy (predators) don't allow the
| labor force (prey) to collect resources, create value,
| etc. before snatching added value up ('eating' if you'll
| humor the idea), they ultimately end up with no future
| value added from labor force (prey) because the labor
| doesn't have resources anymore to add value.
|
| From your example following the same basic model, if some
| of the predators allow themselves to refrain from eating
| too much and allow the prey to better maintain stable set
| resources through self control, nothing stops their
| competitors (other prey) from focusing on their short
| term gains with no control (yum, more dinner).
| Ultimately, those predators looking at maintaining a long
| term stable system will starve if his/her competitors
| don't share the same views and are allowed to follow the
| more basic rules. It seems to me, you have to introduce
| artificial rules into the system to maintain the system
| (e.g., government regulation or new fundamental
| underlying rules to the dynamics).
|
| Obviously, the real relationship is far more complex than
| this view and this model has many shortcomings, but it
| seems to provide at least some potentially valuable
| insight to the situation, IMHO.
| tracker1 wrote:
| It could also drive up competition for good labor and
| increase turnover at other locations as more try to "move
| up" to a better paying location.
|
| When I was in my late teens, I worked tech support at a
| given location... A new call center for another company
| opened up paying about 25% more. This had a lot of people
| switching jobs and pay overall for the area for that type
| of work went up. Other companies relaxed or offered other
| benefits (subsidized vending machines and food trucks,
| for example).
|
| If 1% of the market for employees moves, that can have
| sweeping impacts overall. Take WinCo vs Walmart as
| another example. The shear impact of the appearance of a
| better workplace will often drive foot traffic,
| especially combined with competitive pricing. Brand image
| is a thing, and how a company treats it's labor is part
| of a brand's image.
| Ghjklov wrote:
| >Now we're seeing a tendency of businesses focusing on more
| wealthy clients, luxury goods, etc.
|
| I saw this at the bakery I worked at before. The manager I
| worked under talked about how he wanted to target wealthier
| clients or at least people willing to pay a lot more for
| their products, which means eventually pricing out the
| current customer base that makes up the low income
| community that this business serves that were a lot more
| tight with their money. It's so sad and shortsighted. They
| are more than happy to sell out the customers they
| currently have in pursuit of the customers who don't/won't
| come in the first place. I think businesses like that
| deserve to die. It's a tragedy when good food becomes gated
| and the poor are left with options like McDonalds or other
| fast food chains.
| hanniabu wrote:
| Cue the typical "it'll be fine, technology will create more
| jobs that we just can't predict yet" response that is no
| longer relevant.
| dekhn wrote:
| If only manual laborers in 1850s England didn't rely on jobs
| that were replaced by machines (England went on to be far
| wealthier and provide far more opportunities to its people
| after the industrial revolution).
| rjkennedy98 wrote:
| > England went on to be far wealthier and provide far more
| opportunities to its people after the industrial revolution
|
| To compare this to the Industrial Revolution is just wrong.
| Period. Just as comparing today to the Gilded Age is wrong.
| Those were period of massive productivity growth (and also
| wage growth) despite being periods of high inequality.
|
| On the contrary, we are in an age of tiny productivity
| growth and almost no wage growth. We have been through a
| decade with basically zero interest rates (or negative
| interest rates in parts of the world). To say, we've been
| through this before and we are all going to be better off
| for it, is just not true.
| oarsinsync wrote:
| The information revolution appears to be having the
| opposite effect, with massive productivity gains resulting
| in fewer employees needed.
|
| One of the outcomes of this is that parts of the country
| have been 'left behind' economically. This isn't only in
| England, but happening in other countries too (e.g. the
| USA). The surge in 'nostalgic'[0] voting (Brexit and MAGA
| spring to mind, respectively) is one of the outcomes of
| that occurring.
|
| I'm hoping I'm wrong, and I'm hoping there's something
| around the corner that changes the situation specific to
| the information revolution, rather than an outside force
| (like say, a virus causing a massive shift in
| demographics), but the way things look right now, that's
| not a given.
|
| [0] I'm deliberately ignoring the more controversial and/or
| negative aspects to those voting choices, as that would
| derail the conversation
| allemagne wrote:
| >One of the outcomes of this is that parts of the country
| have been 'left behind' economically.
|
| That's the whole point of the comment you're replying to.
| This isn't new or unique to recent technological
| advancements. This is always the case when new technology
| displaces existing structures.
| dekhn wrote:
| I think in the short term, the information revolution
| appears similar to the industrial revolution: a category
| of jobs become obsolete, but long term, the economy
| grows, and adds many more categories of jobs.
| jbay808 wrote:
| This doesn't seem to be guaranteed by any law of
| economics, though. Despite the massive economic growth
| since the 19th century, the absolute number of job
| openings for horses has decreased substantially.
| zepto wrote:
| The logic seems to be:
|
| B followed A once before, therefore B always follows A.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > but long term, the economy grows, and adds many more
| categories of jobs.
|
| Perhaps, but if history is any guide, that "long term"
| will span over multiple generations. That is of no help
| to those being hurt now.
| jfengel wrote:
| The possibility that it won't merits consideration. It's
| entirely possible that new industries will spring up, but
| it would be dangerous to rely on that and plan as if it
| were certain. Even the "long tail" that people predicted
| for artists to make a living in a widely-connected
| economy has thus far largely failed to materialize.
|
| The fact that I can't imagine it is no proof that it
| won't happen, of course. But I feel that we've gotten
| lucky in the past, and I hate depending on my luck.
| dekhn wrote:
| i guess if you take this idea to its logical conclusion,
| we will end up in a post-scarcity economy where nobody
| "needs" to work, yet all their needs are met. So far,
| it's unclear whether this outcome will occur, and I do
| agree it's unclear what the outcomes of the information
| revolution will be, in terms of overall economic comfort
| of individuals.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| The Industrial Revolution was a terrible period for workers
| up until the labor movement began fighting for putting
| basic protections in place. Lots of people got very wealthy
| though, that's for sure.
|
| This view of history as immutable, with the ends always
| meeting the means is the sort of thinking that I believe is
| holding us back as a society. Researchers are still
| studying the impact that the industrial revolution had on
| not just the environment, but also the mental health of the
| descendants of the working class in Europe:
| https://hbr.org/2018/03/research-the-industrial-
| revolution-l....
|
| We can and should do better.
| baryphonic wrote:
| Compared to what? Sure, it was awful compared to working
| at Google with unlimited snacks and all of that. Compared
| to being a peasant subsistence farmer, it wasn't so bad.
| nullorundefined wrote:
| it was literally misery on scales that hadn't been seen
| before. children were expected to work in horrible and
| abusive conditions. everyone was working very long and
| gruelling days for next to nothing and had no way to
| protect themselves from exploitation.
| archi42 wrote:
| Not sure if you're talking about industrial revolution or
| present day labor conditions...? Okay, we have child
| labor outsourced to poorer countries, but still
| confusing.
| bluGill wrote:
| How is that different from subsistence farming?
| buckminster wrote:
| It was just as bad only with industrial accidents and
| diseases on top.
| baryphonic wrote:
| Entire families working in the fields all day didn't have
| accidents or diseases in subsistence farming?
| buckminster wrote:
| In the UK industrial accidents were commonplace until the
| passing of The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. The
| very many maimings and deaths it has (belatedly)
| prevented are less common in subsidence farming.
|
| Of course farmers get sick, but they don't get the
| diseases created by industry. There are a great many
| respiratory conditions and cancers that don't occur
| naturally.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Compared to being a peasant subsistence farmer, it
| wasn't so bad.
|
| the life expectancy in Liverpool and some other parts of
| England during the peak of industrialisation fell to _25
| years_ , the average height fell by almost 10cm, so
| actually it was pretty bad and it took decades for the
| situation to improve. I would have very much preferred to
| be a self-sufficient farmer during that time. Yuval Noah
| Harari in Sapiens goes through a pretty big amount of
| data that shows that traditional communities and even
| hunter-gatherers lived much better and longer lifes than
| people that had to endure the human meatgrinder that was
| industrialisation.
|
| https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2013/09/13/did-
| livin...
| nullorundefined wrote:
| also, "it wasn't so bad?" were you there? suffering is
| suffering.
| baryphonic wrote:
| > were you there?
|
| Not being Nicolas Cage, I was not. However, there are
| many, many countries today who are similar to 19th
| century UK/US. Would you like to go to rural China and
| compare the peasant subsistence farming still happening
| there with urban China and its sweatshops?
|
| > suffering is suffering.
|
| Sure. People suffered. They suffered horribly as peasant
| farmers living on less than $2/day, or they suffered as
| laborers making possibly a bit more. Work was universally
| hard.
|
| It's possible (likely) that future people will see what
| we went through - disease, hunger, unemployment, bad
| management, personal suffering/alienation and a host of
| other problems - and say literally the same thing about
| us. But although I think all of us can think of a few
| tweaks at the margins, we'd all utterly fail fully to
| replace the status quo most people accept, many try to
| change, a few succeed at changing and a precious few
| improve.
|
| We should give the past the same courtesy we expect from
| future generations. And we should be willing to make some
| of the sacrifices today to ensure that future generations
| will endure. (And this includes things like ensuring the
| effects of climate change or nuclear weapons don't wipe
| us out.) The past is and forever shall be a foreign
| country.
| baddox wrote:
| > The Industrial Revolution was a terrible period for
| workers up until the labor movement began fighting for
| putting basic protections in place.
|
| Yes, and that's why the labor movement is important (I'd
| like it to be much stronger than it is still today). Is
| your view that neither the Industrial Revolution nor the
| labor movement should have happened?
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Those seemingly horrible jobs were better than what they
| had before. You can tell because people voted with their
| feet. They left their farms to take those jobs, and
| didn't go back.
|
| Something similar plays out with "sweatshop labor" these
| days. People talk about the abuses, but there's often the
| same flow of people from the countryside lining up for
| the openings.
|
| That's not to say that stopping stupid abuses and unsafe
| conditions isn't important, it's just important to keep
| in mind how bad things often were. Simply having a job
| with a salary that guaranteed you wouldn't starve was a
| huge improvement for some people.
| mcguire wrote:
| ...and a century or so of civil unrest, bomb-throwing
| anarchists, communism, and other entertaining side-effects.
| bnjms wrote:
| I see this all the time as the response to the argument
| that people rely on these jobs. The difference will be if,
| like England, the replacement jobs are more valuable by
| having greater leverage and impact. Or, as I suspect, the
| replacement jobs are fewer with similar or less value. I
| suspect we will see the latter pushing our lower classes
| into a tighter and lower band of incomes.
|
| As far as I can see many of the jobs we do these days don't
| provide any real value. In this case cashier doesn't
| provide real value so good riddance. But I'm not confident
| we'll find ourselves in a better place in the future.
|
| Also, somehow we undervalue manual labor with some skill
| and unions don't seem to work as well for non-
| factory/hospital/plant jobs.
| baryphonic wrote:
| On the whole, I agree with your sentiment.
|
| I think the one difference is that despite the 1850s UK
| having (some) protectionism and (loads of) imperialism,
| they didn't have massive bureaucracies forbidding everyone
| from doing everything without permission.
|
| This is not actually a problem of technology but of
| governance. And we should keep in mind that this kind of
| improvement would make retail workers much more productive
| as well as the industry more sustainable.
| dazc wrote:
| In the UK, many shop floor staff in supermarkets work part-
| time and it's been designed that way to exploit the benefit
| system. Very few traditional 40 hour week jobs are actually
| available but lots at 16 hours or so with lots of unfilled
| vacancies.
| partiallypro wrote:
| Creative destruction
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I thought most of the US labor force relied on trucking?
| nevir wrote:
| > Combined with amazon promises that it takes only a few weeks
| to integrate (seriously??)
|
| I believe it. Their new grocery was really quick to fill in (I
| walk by it every day, and was able to see progress while it was
| being built)
| smoyer wrote:
| Another major cost in retail is "loss" ... I can see this being
| pretty effective at loss prevention and coupon fraud (even my
| small town grocery store require an associate to visit the
| self-check kiosks if a customer has a coupon).
| judge2020 wrote:
| I bet. Places like Kroger already apply coupons just by
| having them on your account and scanning your member
| barcode/QR at checkout, so that's most likely how couponing
| will work with this (if the store decides to have the 'scan
| your ID when you walk in' system for regular customers).
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| Exactly, consider Apple Retail employees, who need to be
| searched [1] every time their shift ends due to suspected
| theft. Having automated cameras that can better track
| products could significantly alter this check.
|
| [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/14/21137580/apple-store-
| reta...
| deanCommie wrote:
| They get searched because Apple devices cost hundreds to
| thousands of dollars.
|
| If all the store sold was usb charging cables, there
| wouldn't be any searches.
|
| Unless the grocery store is selling tins of caviar, the
| problem is simply not at the same magnitude.
|
| Any other concerns about cheating the system for thefts are
| as ludicrous as people worrying about people shooting
| drones out of skies with shotguns or hijacking self-driving
| trucks.
| apacheCamel wrote:
| I was actually just thinking about coupons and how this would
| change that landscape. Physical coupons would be pretty
| useless I could imagine, everything would have to shift to
| digital, unless you could scan them on your way out, which
| would then just defeat the purpose of "just walking out". I
| think my mailman would appreciate it regardless, due to the
| large amount of unwanted coupons that get put in my mail
| almost daily.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| So you're saying the "upside" against people's negativity is
| mass layoffs?
| tines wrote:
| How does your rebuttal differ from the one made against all
| automation?
| Someone1234 wrote:
| It is a rebuttal against calling this the "upside." It is a
| downside of automation in general too, one that many people
| have spent a lot more time than either of us thinking
| about.
| JohnFen wrote:
| The economic arguments from the store perspective are obvious.
| My concern is the heavy cost this imposes on their customers.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Do these actually reduce labor costs though? I frequently use
| the Amazon Go store in Seattle right next to the Spheres, and
| there seem to be as many if not more employees there than at an
| ordinary convenience store: there's always one person by the
| liquor area to check IDs, one or two people walking around the
| store restocking the shelves and helping the clueless tourists
| download the app, and several people in the kitchen making
| sandwiches and whatnot. I don't see any labor savings over a
| regular 7-11.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| This sounds like the kind of thing that works better at
| scale. Against a regular 7-11, probably not. But what stops
| the model in question from being applied to a warehouse-style
| store with still only four employees needed?
| rhino369 wrote:
| Even for costco, most employees aren't cashiers--which is
| only job really affected by this tech.
| derefr wrote:
| Don't forget "loss prevention officers" (i.e. security.)
| In the bad parts of my city, and especially at night,
| convenience store staffing is 50% security (= one clerk
| at the counter; one guard at the door.) And that
| staffing, unlike the clerks, can't be done on minimum
| wage.
| [deleted]
| bookofjoe wrote:
| At my neighborhood 7-11, there are often 5-10 people waiting
| in line with one clerk at checkout. One person buying lottery
| tickets brings things to a complete halt.
| dazc wrote:
| There is always someone buying multiple lottery
| tickets/scratch cards in UK local stores and, yes, it does
| bring everything to a standstill.
|
| Other regular delays seem to come from staff being
| perplexed by the complexity of the checkout system.
|
| Also, mostly middle aged women being taken by complete
| surprise they are being asked to pay for stuff which leads
| to much fumbling around looking for purses and wallets and
| then they'll insist on counting out the exact change.
|
| Then the constant 'Do you need a bag?', 'Do you want a
| receipt?' 'Do you have a stupid loyalty card?' routine.
|
| Bring on automation please and make the world a much more
| happier place!
| londons_explore wrote:
| Id checking can probably be done through the app. Most online
| bank accounts simply require a 30 second video call with a
| person showing their face and their passport and the account
| becomes 'verified'. You only ever have to do that once, so
| very cheap.
|
| Restocking is already a cost stores have to do. Restocking is
| also something which isn't too time sensitive - you can do
| more restocking at night if needed. It's also possible to
| design the shop to require less restocking, by for example
| having deeper shelving units where products slide towards the
| front.
|
| Helping people use the app won't be needed as soon as it
| becomes universal.
|
| The only remaining cost becomes store security, but if
| everyone has an attached account which has been verified by a
| passport, even security might no longer be needed. Just bill
| people for the items they take, ban them if they don't pay
| the bill, and call the police _and_ ban anyone who is
| violent.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| If there are no savings to be had from using this, people
| won't use it.
| robszumski wrote:
| What a weird site and roll out of this announcement. The page
| doesn't even have a <title> or call to action other than a buried
| email.
|
| Is this someone's pet project to state that our landing page
| captured XX,000 hits in 24 hours?
| buffin wrote:
| Amazon has a history for being awful with making web pages. I
| had to peruse the Amazon HTML code once for a research project
| not long ago, and their code was littered with issues,
| including duplicate id. Their UX and even UI is rotten beyond
| belief.
| superkuh wrote:
| Really? I've been consistently amazed with Amazon's web UI.
| It works perfectly no matter if you have javascript on or
| off, no matter what browser. I bet I could order in lynx if I
| wanted to. Almost no other large site does it as well.
| apacheCamel wrote:
| Somewhat related: Initially, I thought this was about the walk
| out protests happening (over politics and environmental concerns)
| at some big tech companies. I had some pretty big questions on
| why Amazon wanted a piece of that market.
| vikramkr wrote:
| Is any retailer going to actually be willing to trust amazon
| though? And what if it doesn't work and the customer ends up not
| paying - is amazon also taking on the liability for that?
| derision wrote:
| judging by the fact that tens of thousands of companies sell
| their products through amazon, especially FBA, I think the
| answer is a resounding yes
| ckocagil wrote:
| What's even worse is that once Amazon collects enough data
| they'll be able to compete more effectively with these
| retailers and eventually kill them.
| jawns wrote:
| Yeah, this is essentially outsourcing the part that's hard
| for Amazon to do -- operating a retail store -- but allows
| Amazon to benefit from all that sweet, sweet data.
|
| And as you point out, any time Amazon strikes up a
| "partnership" with outside parties, its ultimate goal is to
| conquer or cannibalize them.
|
| Businesses should approach partnerships with Amazon with the
| same level of skepticism/trepidation as Native Americans
| signing a treaty with the U.S. government 150-200 years ago.
| dapuz wrote:
| It might be slow for larger retailers, but I could imagine
| small independent "hipster" type shops opening up using this
| (people with the same mentality as the "no cash"
| bars/restaurants)
| kube-system wrote:
| These are not new issues.
|
| Retailers already rely on the trust of dozens if not hundreds
| of vendors for operations. Trust is established through
| contractual obligations, pilot programs, etc.
|
| Shrinkage in the US is about 1.38% on average currently. Any
| competent retailer would run a pilot and evaluate its effect on
| shrinkage rates.
| vikramkr wrote:
| I'm also referring to trusting amazon specifically. They're a
| competitor, and not one known for playing nice. I've heard
| that retailers are hesitant to even use AWS (I don't have a
| source for that and would love to hear otherwise if that's
| the case?) - because of competitive concerns- so will people
| want to work with amazon for something so core to their
| business?
| judge2020 wrote:
| > I've heard that retailers are hesitant to even use AWS (I
| don't have a source for that and would love to hear
| otherwise if that's the case?) -
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/wal-mart-to-vendors-get-off-
| ama...
| vikramkr wrote:
| Oh wow so that's worse than I had heard - not just avoid
| AWS but also force suppliers off of AWS.
|
| Yeah, I wonder how retailers are going to feel about
| amazon having a direct pipeline of purchase data at all
| their competitors fed directly to a division of the
| company that I'm sure they'll claim is sealed off from
| the rest of operations. Even if amazon is playing totally
| fairly here, I don't see why it makes sense for people to
| trust them with so much at risk
| judge2020 wrote:
| But Amazon is a completely different beast - they've already
| shown they want to horizontally expand into the grocery
| market everywhere, so stores using their technology is just a
| stopgap on the journey to Amazon cutting into the profits of
| said stores via competition. When that happens, they better
| hope removing Amazon's system is as easy as it is to
| integrate it.
| vsskanth wrote:
| In terms of cost-convenience trade-off, can someone tell me how
| is this better for a store when compared to self-checkout
| counters or scan-as-you-go apps (as suggested below) ?
|
| I use these frequently at Walmart and Sams without any problems.
| Rarely have to deal with an actual checkout person unless I have
| to get a gift card.
|
| IMO you can get very far simply addressing annoying latency and
| UX issues with self checkout counters.
|
| Edit: There is also the advantage of seeing what you're exactly
| being billed for
| [deleted]
| reggieband wrote:
| I love self-checkout and use it when available and reasonable.
| However, I have seen lines. It feels the same as ATMs for me.
| Occasionally I am waiting behind someone who just takes
| forever. I always wonder what they are doing, how it can take
| what feels like 10 minutes to do what I attempt to get done in
| 1 minute.
|
| Self-checkout is a bottleneck since there are a limited number
| of available machines. I can see efficiency gains by removing
| that bottleneck.
| vsskanth wrote:
| I'm surprised many people here mention lines at the self-
| checkout. I shop in a fairly busy Walmart and I never had to
| stand in line, even on Saturdays and Sundays. They have like
| 15 of those counters on each side.
| reggieband wrote:
| It is literally a supply and demand thing. You happen to
| have experienced high-supply/low-demand. Why are you
| surprised people mention low-supply/high-demand scenarios?
|
| In fact, just follow the logic down that road. Consider
| highly-volatile demand purchase scenarios. A company might
| over-spend on self-checkout stations to cover high-demand
| scenarios that go unused on more typical days. A more
| efficient approach is to avoid requiring additional
| stations to cover changes in demand. Just create a single
| system (walk out purchasing) that handles all scenarios and
| be done with it.
| vsskanth wrote:
| I guess I'm just wondering if there's data on how often
| you these self-checkout bottlenecks. The way other
| commenters describe it makes it seem like it's fairly
| often. Hence the surprise.
|
| Although I agree just-walk-out scales well with demand.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > The way other commenters describe it makes it seem like
| it's fairly often.
|
| There's almost always a line at them when I walk by in
| the stores in my area. Usually, the line there is about
| as long as the lines at the manned checkouts.
| greenshackle2 wrote:
| In shops I frequent, there is usually a single line for all
| 3-8 self-checkout machines, but separate lines for each
| individual cashier.
|
| I've noticed that the line for self-checkout is usually
| roughly the same length as the lines for individual cash
| registers, regardless of how many machines there are.
|
| I'm not sure if people just don't like self-checkout or if
| they have failed to notice that the "go to the shortest
| line" heuristic doesn't work anymore when one of the lines
| moves much faster than the others.
| grandmczeb wrote:
| Just curious, where do you live? I stand in line for self
| check out very frequently in SF/Oakland/Palo Alto.
| JCharante wrote:
| As a student I frequently will end up putting items in my
| backpack. It is way more convinient to just stuff stuff into my
| backpack than it is to get a cart and go through the grueling
| check out line that takes forever because someone has to scan
| every item, and a lot of people still don't use contactless
| payment. I hate this process so much now that I only get my
| groceries delivered now, but if there were a local convinience
| store with this technology then I would totally go there.
| gok wrote:
| Self checkout works ok until:
|
| 1. A customer born before 1968 or so shows up
|
| 2. The scale's state machine gets corrupted ("UNEXPECTED ITEM
| IN BAGGING AREA")
|
| Both of which end up needing more retail labor than a
| traditional checkout line.
| vsskanth wrote:
| How would this person in case 1 feel about not knowing what
| they're being billed for when they walk out ?
| gok wrote:
| I think just having an employee explaining "just leave,
| we'll send you a bill" would be pretty fast, and wouldn't
| hold up the queue for people who know what's going on.
| tomerico wrote:
| Wouldn't it be easier to just walk out vs deal with the self
| checkout? Also, there might be benefits to the store in
| reducing shoplifting.
| hak8or wrote:
| It helps make the effort to buy a product much lower, therefore
| increases sales.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I've had too many issues with self scan, I absolutely avoid
| them, and if a company eliminates all their non-self checkout,
| I'll go elsewhere. If I literally have 5 or so items, I'll use
| self checkout, anything more, nope.
|
| The first time I brought a full cart through self checkout,
| that's when I understood road rage, so to speak. I was never so
| annoyed and angry and wanted to just walk out and leave it
| behind so much. "Please place item in the bag... please remove
| item from the bag... please place..." It may well be better, or
| getting better, but I'm out of the experiment.
|
| -- edit:
|
| Since then, there have been two times, I did walk out and leave
| my cart behind... one of those times about half a dozen others
| did the same. It was a Walmart, and the Friday before a holiday
| (Christmas was Sunday that year iirc). It was 6pm, and they had
| literally closed half their registers with an average of 11
| carts in each line left. I had a full cart including a lot of
| refrigerated and frozen items. The other time was similar but
| less extreme at another store (not walmart).
|
| In the end, some of us will pay a little more for actual people
| doing actual customer service and interaction. I tried the scan
| and go a couple times, and frankly it wasn't really any better.
| It seems that Millenials and Z are so averse to interaction, I
| just don't get it.
| dilap wrote:
| It's _way_ nicer than self-checkout in my opinion. A big one is
| there 's never any line -- you just get your stuff and walk-
| out. Here in SF, lots of store frequently have long lines.
|
| I can't wait until full supermarkets have this.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| We went in on Black Friday because we needed normal groceries.
| There was a 10+ minute wait to check out, even at the self-
| checkouts. This would mitigate that by allowing some customers
| to check themselves out.
| dapuz wrote:
| And then with scan-as-you-shop (some shops even have apps, I
| know Asda does) latency is reduced further, it's only the time
| to transfer you're already scanned basket and to pay
| vsskanth wrote:
| yeah exactly. I guess I don't understand the marginal
| improvement in adding so many cameras and advanced
| processing, all so that you can "just walk out", with the
| possibility of having to deal with billing related customer
| service issues.
| mpettitt wrote:
| I wonder if it would be possible to integrate payment into
| the mobile apps they've already got in place, thereby
| meaning that the only time you'd need to go to the checkout
| at all would be if you were buying restricted goods (e.g.
| age limited, or items with security tags) - the risks would
| seem then to be tracking whether someone had paid. Maybe
| have a QR code shown on screen which security staff can
| scan if they're suspicious, giving a list of what items
| were purchased?
| vsskanth wrote:
| I see a version of the QR code check already in Sams
| Club. A person at the exit scans your bill and it tells
| them what to check for. Otherwise they will randomly scan
| an item and it will cross-check with the bill.
| elil17 wrote:
| Genuine question, how will this work for people who cover their
| faces (eg religious or medical reason)? Will those people just
| not be able to shop?
| mayank wrote:
| Face recognition is not really used here. It's more object
| detection and tracking, along with a bunch of other tricks
| (based on visiting the Go store in SF).
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| What great timing. This is being introduced just as the entire
| global public becomes nervous about entering enclosed rooms
| populated with strangers.
| chipperyman573 wrote:
| This post looked kind of weird to me so I looked up the whois,
| it's registered to godaddy. Which is odd because it is not the
| same registrar as amazon.com or aws, and aws operates a domain
| registration service so I can't imagine a real amazon service
| would use godaddy. Combined with the fact that there's no
| concrete plans set in place, it seems really fake.
| [deleted]
| tzs wrote:
| If someone else had registered the name at GoDaddy before
| Amazon wanted it (it was registered in 2013), and then Amazon
| bought it from them, would Amazon transfer it to their normal
| registrar right away or let it stay where it is until it is
| time to renew?
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| That's weird. But it seems that there's some credible reporting
| that it's from Amazon: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-
| amazon-com-store-technolog.... They even name the VP involved,
| so if it's a fake it's an elaborate one.
| purec wrote:
| Seemed fake till I saw noticed this with Amazon Go
| https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=16008589011
| chrysoprace wrote:
| >Will people still be working in stores with Just Walk Out
| technology?
|
| >Yes. Retailers will still employ store associates to greet and
| answer shoppers' questions, stock the shelves, check IDs for the
| purchasing of certain goods, and more - their roles have simply
| shifted to focus on more valuable activities.
|
| I think this raises questions about ethics in technology. Not to
| mention the creepy cameras watching your every move, retail is a
| large source of employment for non-academics and we're slowly
| phasing out the need for people to operate stores. Here we've
| seen the self-serve checkouts which has one staff-member
| supervise 8~12 self-serve checkouts. The amount of manned
| checkouts has reduced so drastically that there's only one or two
| or in some cases no manned checkouts open.
| fastball wrote:
| > I think this raises questions about ethics in technology
|
| Does it? I have yet to see an instance where any amount of
| luddism makes any sense. Stifling progress "for the jobs" is
| always bad for humanity in the long run.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Yeah especially when the jobs are unpleasant ones. Are any
| young people disappointed that they can't work in the coal
| mines?
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| I think the real test for retail innovation is whether or not
| it manages to impact Aldi's, since they're already a skeleton
| crew. I don't doubt that JWO can eliminate some labor but can
| it eliminate enough to reduce employee count from 3 to 2 or 2
| to 1?
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Here's an off the wall idea. This technology could be used in
| airport bathrooms to enforce hand washing during a pandemic.
|
| It's well established that hand washing, or lack thereof, in an
| airport setting can supercharge the global spread of disease. The
| spread of coronavirus could be reduced by up to 60% by consistent
| handwashing[1] by air travelers.
|
| This tech could flag people who walk out of the bathroom without
| stopping to wash their hands. The easiest way to enforce
| compliance would maybe to be have a loud, embarrassing alarm go
| off when the perpetrator leaves the bathroom. Social conformity
| and peer pressure would drastically increase hand washing
| compliance.
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/12/study-washing-hands-in-
| airpo...
| filoleg wrote:
| While I agree with this specific premise in general, it is
| still disturbing as hell to have someone or something monitor
| what you do in a bathroom + it opens up a door for a lot of
| other things. Do you want bosses to know how much time you
| spend in bathroom on the phone vs. actually doing the deed?
| Because I can almost guarantee that's where this tech will
| head, if we continue down this route.
| julianj wrote:
| Gary Larson agrees. Sorry, I couldn't find a better image.
| https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/8KjQYFOjfafGpGLFpwnwxFq4_c...
| JohnFen wrote:
| > In Just Walk Out-enabled stores, shoppers enter the store using
| a credit card. They don't need to download an app or create an
| Amazon account.
|
| But you may as well. By giving them a CC# you're allowing Amazon
| to spy on you anyway -- and that's not even mentioning the
| copious surveillance in such stores in the form of cameras and
| behavior detection.
|
| > If shoppers need a receipt, they can visit a kiosk in the store
| and enter their email address.
|
| Oh, and if you want a receipt, you'll have to give Amazon your
| email address, too, which allows them to more easily tie your
| real-world identity and activity to the profile they already have
| on you.
|
| This sort of thing is a privacy disaster. I wouldn't set foot
| inside a store that does this.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Yes, if you don't trust the retailer with your privacy, you
| shouldn't use their store.
|
| That rule applies in general. Even 7-11 has security cameras
| capturing faces of people entering and leaving the store.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Yes, if you don't trust the retailer with your privacy, you
| shouldn't use their store
|
| Easy to say, hard to do. It's pretty hard to live without
| having to enter a retail establishment. Particularly one that
| sells you your food.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Agreed; it's hard to execute trade in a society without
| abiding by the norms of the society regarding information
| exchange. I could also try walking into the 7-11 with a
| full face mask on (in my state at least, that's not illegal
| in general), but the owner and register operator really
| wouldn't appreciate me being that anti-social.
|
| Privacy is a sliding scale and different people set the
| slider at different sensitivity levels.
|
| And even if one's sensitivity level is high enough to cause
| personal problems, they're solvable. People that deeply
| concerned about their privacy have had proxy shoppers buy
| things on their behalf.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| Security cameras are different from facial recognition
| systems.
| asdkhadsj wrote:
| > This sort of thing is a privacy disaster. I wouldn't set foot
| inside a store that does this.
|
| If they make it accessible enough, all stores may. Even if they
| don't, I imagine all stores will have something similar in some
| timeframe. So.. what will you do then?
| dennnis wrote:
| not go, contact legislators
| dapuz wrote:
| And even if they don't use the "Just walk out" bit, I can
| imagine shops using similar technology to detect shop lifters
| JohnFen wrote:
| > If they make it accessible enough, all stores may.
|
| I think that's unlikely. There is likely to be a large enough
| percentage of shoppers who avoid this sort of thing to
| support at least a couple of stores who make it a selling
| point that they don't do this.
|
| But, if there is no option then I'll have to figure out what
| my response will be. It would likely have to be a compromise
| position between buying as much as I can without involving a
| store at all (buy produce directly from farmers, do a lot
| more bartering with neighbors, etc.) and employing single-use
| credit cards when I can't avoid the store.
| skuthus wrote:
| I really don't think there is. I think this is going to be
| more like the loyalty cards - at first people oppose it on
| principle, but it becomes so commonplace that opposing it
| seems absurd
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I think this is going to be more like the loyalty cards
|
| That would be OK, actually -- there are still plenty of
| stores that don't use loyalty cards.
|
| The difference between the two things, though, are that
| you can shop at a store that has loyalty cards without
| having to use them yourself. You couldn't shop at a store
| that uses this program without using the program
| yourself.
| j_koreth wrote:
| What's stopping someone from using a temporary email or a
| dedicated email for each walkout shop?
| DailyHN wrote:
| Do privacy.com cards work at these stores?
| AJ_Newman wrote:
| Is it really spying if you are entering the store with full
| knowledge that your every move is being watched by a system in
| order to automatically track your selections?
|
| If anything it's full disclosure high level surveillance. I
| imagine big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart already have
| sophisticated surveillance systems that attach your card info
| to visual surveillance systems for Loss Prevention. I've heard
| of people who were repeat shoplifters at Wal-Mart that
| eventually got caught; and when they did, Wal-Mart had
| essentially a running tab of all the things they had ever
| shoplifted and slammed them with a grand theft charge despite
| the fact the time they got caught they were only attempting to
| shoplift a $5 bottle of shampoo or something.
|
| I'm not denying the privacy disaster you're worried about, but
| honestly I think we're already too far gone down this road to
| be able to do anything about it.
| thewebcount wrote:
| > Is it really spying if you are entering the store with full
| knowledge that your every move is being watched by a system
| in order to automatically track your selections?
|
| Very few people going into retail stores understand the
| extent of the tracking going on. So yes, to the average
| person, this seems like creepy stalking and/or spying.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Is it really spying if you are entering the store with full
| knowledge that your every move is being watched by a system
| in order to automatically track your selections?
|
| True, I was being a touch aggressive in calling it "spying".
| However, if this sort of thing becomes so ubiquitous that its
| impossible to avoid, then it is 100% spying even if fully
| disclosed.
|
| The difference between data collection being "spying" or not
| is one of voluntary, informed consent. If every store uses
| something like this, voluntary consent is no longer possible,
| and this would absolutely qualify as spying.
| kart23 wrote:
| can you use those prepaid debit cards or is a credit card
| required? Because you can buy those with cash at most
| drugstores, albeit for a $5 fee.
| derision wrote:
| > the copious surveillance in such stores in the form of
| cameras and behavior detection.
|
| this already exists in nearly every retail store already. full
| of cameras and for advertising purposes they have been building
| profiles on people for decades
| julienb_sea wrote:
| Privacy is thrown out the window, but for the most part it
| already is. I shop on Amazon regularly. What interesting new
| information are they gleaning about me that they don't already
| have?
| Spivak wrote:
| Does this really change anything compared to every other POS
| system that you swipe your credit card into and get your
| receipt sent to your email?
| JohnFen wrote:
| No, but it removes the choice of paying via cash as part of
| your privacy defense strategy. Some of us don't pay with
| credit cards and never have receipts emailed, because of the
| obvious privacy issues involved.
| buttersbrian wrote:
| But i have an option to get it printed right there and NOT
| give them my email, or phone number.
| txcwpalpha wrote:
| Not in most (all?) online shopping scenarios, and I don't
| really see any uproar about privacy concerns with those.
|
| AFAIK many retailers (Target, for example) use an
| identifier derived from your CC number and don't even need
| your email or phone number to build a profile on you.
|
| I totally agree with being concerned about your privacy,
| but I don't understand the increased harshness on this
| service specifically as opposed to the already-pervasive
| services that already collect your data on a daily basis.
| Is it just because this one is Amazon and it's fun to hate
| on them?
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Not in most (all?) online shopping scenarios
|
| But this is real-life shopping, not online. Online
| shopping is 100% optional. Real-life shopping is not.
|
| > Is it just because this one is Amazon and it's fun to
| hate on them?
|
| No, my criticisms and concerns about this would be no
| different regardless of what company was doing it.
| txcwpalpha wrote:
| >But this is real-life shopping, not online. Online
| shopping is 100% optional. Real-life shopping is not.
|
| What? Is someone holding a gun to your head and forcing
| you to go shopping? I don't understand this statement.
| "Real-life shopping" is just as optional as online
| shopping is. Hell, "real-life shopping" is _more
| optional_ in this regard because you can always pay with
| cash and escape the aforementioned privacy concerns. You
| can 't do that online.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Unless you operate your own farm, sooner or later you
| need to eat, and that implies you're buying food from
| somewhere.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > "Real-life shopping" is just as optional as online
| shopping is.
|
| Really? And how do you get your food if you don't go
| shopping? Most people can't run a self-sufficient farm.
| [deleted]
| egdod wrote:
| Gotta eat. Some kind of shopping is essentially non-
| optional unless you grow all your food.
|
| And using cash isn't opting out of real-life shopping,
| it's just opting out of one payment method.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I would guess even in these amazon stores you'll have the
| option to print a paper receipt right away.
|
| There are probably laws requiring it in some places round
| the world, there are probably customers who want it, it
| speeds up the process by not requiring an email address to
| be typed in, and the total cost of a receipt printer is
| tiny.
| askafriend wrote:
| > But you may as well. By giving them a CC# you're allowing
| Amazon to spy on you anyway -- and that's not even mentioning
| the copious surveillance in such stores in the form of cameras
| and behavior detection.
|
| Ha! They already have a decade of my purchase history from
| being a Prime customer and I shop using an Amazon Credit Card.
| They've got everything they need and I don't mind.
|
| Few people would be bothered by something like this. If they
| would be bothered, we'd see bigger noise about grocery store
| loyalty programs which are basically to track purchases.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > we'd see bigger noise about grocery store loyalty programs
| which are basically to track purchases.
|
| In my area, anyway, a huge outcry happened when these
| programs began to be adopted. Even now, eyeballing people
| checking out at the local shops, I'd say that only half of
| people (at most) are using loyalty cards. And many people I
| personally know who use loyalty cards do so in a manner to
| subvert the data collection (usually by having one loyalty
| card that is used by many people).
|
| So it seems to me a substantial percentage of people really
| are bothered by them.
| danShumway wrote:
| I don't use a loyalty card at any of the stores I shop at,
| and anecdotally, there's about a 50% chance that if I say
| "no" when the cashier asks if I have a card or want to
| create an account, I will later on discover that they've
| used a store code to give me the same discount.
|
| This is without any prompting on my end, I never ask a
| cashier to do this for me.
|
| So apparently it's common enough that some cashiers on-
| instinct just stick a store card in whenever someone says
| "no". It's common enough that none of them look at me
| surprised when I refuse.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| Really you only have to use a (loyalty card, credit card)
| pair once for them to correlate all your purchases. But
| even then, I bet (store ID, name from credit card) is
| sufficiently unique in many cases to identify you.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| Ah, something that tracks you based on appearance, and can
| later do so outside stores, is very different from a keychain
| fob that you can register with 555-867-5309.
|
| I, for one, won't ever go in an Amazon Go store. If other
| stores implement this tech without an opt-out, I will either
| start shopping in a ski mask or go without.
| Zimahl wrote:
| > 555-867-5309
|
| Just FYI, the local area code and Jenny's number (867-5309)
| is a default that exists for most loyalty programs. So if
| you don't want to be tracked you can use that. I've heard
| that this was implemented for military folks who tend to be
| a lot more transient than regular locals.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| > we'd see bigger noise about grocery store loyalty programs
| which are basically to track purchases
|
| You'd be surprised how few people actually ever think about
| the motivations behind such loyalty programs. If you asked,
| they'd probably say it's good for the shop as it keeps us
| going to the place where we get discounts though these cards
| instead of the competitors (hence, "loyalty"). Most of them
| most definitely don't know how valuable that data is and how
| it can be used and for what purposes.
| nmeofthestate wrote:
| Do you seriously never buy things from shops using a credit (or
| debit) card? That's dedication. Not sure what it gets you, but
| well done!
| JohnFen wrote:
| It depends on what I'm buying. I do pay by card sometimes if
| the amount exceeds a certain level, or if it's an urgent
| situation. Otherwise, it's cash. It doesn't take that much
| dedication -- cash is not that inconvenient.
|
| What it gets me is a few less entries in the databases of the
| store, credit card companies, and the marketers who buy
| credit card information. Every little bit helps!
| pdkl95 wrote:
| I never buy thing with a credit card, because I don't _have_
| a credit (or debit) card. Don 't assume that everyone has the
| same options.
| sschueller wrote:
| Since petty theft is no longer prosecuted in some places what
| stops someone from just walking in taking what they want
| without paying?
| dTal wrote:
| >shoppers enter the store using a credit card
| phamilton wrote:
| The current Amazon Go stores have entrance gates that only
| open if you scan your app.
|
| That's not a complete deterrent, but it's something.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It's honestly a pretty good application of "trust but
| verify."
|
| How does the system deter shoplifting? You can just do it.
|
| ... approximately once. ;)
| txcwpalpha wrote:
| Not sure why you're harping so hard on the privacy front in
| regards to those statements. The quotes you've chosen (and the
| linked website) make no attempt to say that they are privacy
| related at all. The purpose of mentioning that they don't need
| to download an app or create an account are about mentioning
| the level of effort that patrons have to go through to sign up
| (as compared to current Amazon Go stores that do require an app
| and account).
|
| If you want to talk about privacy, it's always a valid concern
| in this day and age, but your comment feels like you're
| building a strawman.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > The quotes you've chosen (and the linked website) make no
| attempt to say that they are privacy related at all.
|
| I was pointing those out because of their obvious privacy
| implications, not because I thought that the article was
| presenting them as privacy-related.
|
| > your comment feels like you're building a strawman.
|
| How so? I was merely pointing out two of the several things
| the article said that got my spidey-senses tingling. I don't
| see how what I said is anything remotely like a strawman
| argument.
| txcwpalpha wrote:
| In your original comment, the statement "But you may as
| well" misses the entire point of the quote from the
| article. You only "may as well" if the only point of that
| quote is privacy related, but it is not. The benefit of not
| providing an account or downloading an app is that it
| provides less friction for the shopper, so you shouldn't
| "may as well" do it just because of an unrelated privacy
| side-note.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I was not commenting on the thing that the quote was
| intending to talk about. I was commenting on the privacy
| implications of what it actually said. From a privacy
| point of view, you may as well sign up for an account or
| install an app -- that's a problem for those of us who
| wouldn't sign up for an account or install an app due to
| security concerns.
| txcwpalpha wrote:
| >I was not commenting on the thing that the quote was
| intending to talk about.
|
| Exactly, and that's the definition of a strawman.
|
| Again, I do agree with your larger points about privacy,
| but the presentation of your argument rubbed me the wrong
| way.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| It absolutely is not the definition of a strawman.
|
| Reading between the lines of marketing (or any text,
| really) is an important element of critical thinking.
| There's no rule that says I have to only talk about what
| your commercial wants me to talk about.
|
| Are you really suggesting we should just uncritically nod
| along with whatever facile ideas are fed to us by an
| advert? <-- (Psst...this is actually a strawman)
| txcwpalpha wrote:
| "A straw man (or strawman) is a form of argument and an
| informal fallacy based on giving the impression of
| refuting an opponent's argument, _while actually refuting
| an argument that was not presented by that opponent._ "
|
| Saying "but you may as well" gives the impression that
| you refuted the point the quote was making, but in
| reality you were refuting a point that, by your own
| admission, the quote was not making. That is a strawman.
|
| Reading between the lines of a commercial is fine, and
| encouraged. Dismissing the point of the commercial
| entirely because of a semi-related tangent is not.
|
| If you meant it differently (perhaps not to dismiss the
| quote's "argument" but instead to just bring up the
| privacy implications separately) that's great and I'll
| take your word for it (and even agree with it), I just
| found your original quote to be saying something
| different.
|
| edit: I see that you are not the original poster of the
| comment. This comment was meant for that person, not you.
| Apologies.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Exactly, and that's the definition of a strawman.
|
| No, it's not. A strawman is when you are asserting that
| someone is making an argument they aren't making, so that
| you can knock down that argument rather than what they
| are really postulating.
|
| I am not doing that. I haven't asserted that Amazon was
| making any sort of privacy argument here. I am the one
| making the privacy argument.
| Leynos wrote:
| I really wish everyone offered email receipts. They soon build
| up, and you spend a lot of time shredding them.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I just tell them I don't want the receipt. Then they either
| don't print it, or dispose of it for me.
| m0zg wrote:
| I heard CA had legalized "just walk out" technology state wide
| for up to $950 in shoplifted goods a few years ago?
|
| https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/05/14/shoplifting-cal...
| sebringj wrote:
| My young sons rejoice in that now they can easily sneak snacks
| into the shopping cart at any "just walk out" store and us parent
| won't know until we already bought it. :)
| fallat wrote:
| This is going to be insanely successful.
| OrangeMango wrote:
| Perhaps. You could also interpret this in non-positive ways:
|
| * The technology investment isn't going to pay off unless they
| scale up to thousands of stores very quickly.
|
| * Running a small convenience store is boring and not very
| profitable. The technology is cool though, so lets see if
| someone else is will to do all the boring stuff while we focus
| on the interesting things.
| mollems wrote:
| I'm a technologist, but I can't help but be reminded of the novel
| _This Perfect Day_ by Ira Levin here.
|
| (Especially once you replace the question "do I have enough money
| to walk out the door with this item?" with "is my government-
| calculated social reputation score high enough to walk out the
| door with this item?")
| nerdponx wrote:
| I like how they avoid explaining how this actually works. Does it
| use a mobile app? The MAC address of your cell phone? The RFID
| chip in many credit cards? Facial recognition? Some combination
| of the above?
| buboard wrote:
| What's the point of this? Dont' people want to know how much they
| are being charged on the way out? What problem is this tech
| solving?
| lozaning wrote:
| IDK what happened to it, but for a while the Mountain View
| Walmart had a system where your cart had a pricing gun thing and
| you'd scan stuff as you put it in your cart. Then when you got to
| self checkout you paid in the Walmart app and left with no other
| steps. I thought it was pretty convenient.
|
| Its no longer there and I've not seen it anywhere else so I guess
| maybe it was a failed pilot program or something.
| sky_rw wrote:
| Was probably a local pilot. Wallmart labs is located in
| Mountain View. Would not be surprised if that area was used for
| a lot of experiments.
| buckminster wrote:
| Tesco in the UK has this in my local store. I don't live in a
| hotbed of innovation so I assume it's nationwide.
|
| Edit: it's called 'Scan as You Shop' and is offered in about
| 500 stores.
| londons_explore wrote:
| It's kinda rubbish when you buy an item without a barcode...
| rstupek wrote:
| Yeah the walmart near me in the Woodlands TX was the same way
| and I don't see the pricing gun any longer
| maddyboo wrote:
| > Our tech - your stores
|
| "Our tech - your x" is Amazon's core underlying strategy for
| market dominance.
| scarejunba wrote:
| This is awesome. I hope more places do this and I have to
| interact with the minimum number of people through the
| experience. It'll also be great if there were a high-end store
| that was for low-problem-shoppers only. i.e. I'd like a place I
| can shop at that can control loss through theft, etc. and pass
| the savings on to me.
|
| It would be awesome if there were some sort of universal social
| credit score you could combine with that so that I won't have to
| share my store with thieves and all that.
| callmeal wrote:
| From TFA: >Shoppers can think of this as similar to typical
| security camera footage.
|
| Great. Now they know not just what I bought, but also what I
| browsed as I was walking through the store.
|
| How long is this footage going to be stored for, and who is it
| going to be sold to? If there's a crime of happenstance around
| the store, will everyone who purchased (or looked at purchasing)
| the item used in the commission of the crime be rounded up and
| made to prove their innocence?
| gsich wrote:
| Why would Amazon sell it? If you think advertising - think
| again.
| sailfast wrote:
| Are you really going to steal from a store that requires you to
| sign your credit card and surveils you throughout the shopping
| process? If anything I could see significant improvements in
| typical loss prevention numbers paying off pretty favorably.
|
| If there is a crime, would they know exactly who took the item
| and didn't pay, without you having to get "rounded up"? If not,
| can they really say their tech works?
|
| Related to this post: I wonder if retails aren't already
| applying algorithms to browsing habits / security footage.
| Understanding whether large displays or end caps are working
| could be valuable.
| petilon wrote:
| I suspect Amazon will not be licensing this as a traditional tech
| license -- they are more likely to take a percentage of your
| revenue. Just like their online store. Amazon gains in two ways:
| (1) percentage of your revenue and (2) data such as what is
| selling well in your store, which they will then use to compete
| against you. Just like their online store.
| [deleted]
| johnmarcus wrote:
| Yay! The big brother distopia I always wanted! Finally.
| superkuh wrote:
| As long as there's still an option for human people to pay using
| their own money it's fine. But if these stores only allow for
| corporate people to purchase items (on behalf of their customer
| humans (credit cards)) then it is a very unethical system and
| probably should be made illegal.
| bmgxyz wrote:
| I agree, at least generally. However, something I've learned is
| that privacy always has a cost. I wouldn't count on retailers
| to pay it when most of their customers won't notice or care,
| and I wouldn't count on governments to deliberately avoid
| reducing friction in their economies either.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Either made illegal or made to comply with government
| intervention to issue all citizens an identification that can
| be used universally for this purpose.
| exhilaration wrote:
| Oh they will, but it'll be the minimum number of checkout lanes
| and you'll have to wait 15 minutes in line.
|
| That's my experience at my local Walmart. There are maybe 2-4
| lanes with human cashiers (2 when it's slow, 4 when it's
| busier, but I've never been there at peak) and 10-15 stations
| for self-checkout.
| superkuh wrote:
| Or worse, https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-pay-cash-
| amazon-go-sa... https://gizmodo.com/i-used-cash-at-amazons-
| cashless-store-an...
| Qub3d wrote:
| It may soon be illegal in NYC: https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2020/jan/24/new-york-cit...
|
| I expect to see similar legislature to roll out elsewhere;
| these are interesting times.
| mayank wrote:
| It's a little unfortunate that the FAQ doesn't address the "hey,
| I didn't take that but you billed me for it!" issue. How will the
| store adjudicate disputes? Video replays of the item being put in
| the cart?
| thallukrish wrote:
| So Amazon can now control the brick and mortar as well.
| WheelsAtLarge wrote:
| I hate the no people future, therefore, I hate this service.
| Unfortunately for me, that means nothing.
|
| I see this service taking over, at the very least, a large
| percentage of the 7/11 bodega type of stores. I see a future
| where the corner store will return. Over the last few years,
| companies have gone large so they can take advantage of the
| economy of scale. This service will reduce labor costs and have
| costs fall relative to similar stores previously.
|
| Pundits were talking about Amazon opening stores with this tech.
| Why bother when you can get someone else to do it while expanding
| your core business. Imagine this, a one-man store where I order
| my inventory from Amazon and have it delivered daily or close to
| that. They brought their multivendor Amazon model where anyone
| can sell online using their online tech to the real world. This
| is a case of most retailers playing checkers while Amazon is
| playing chess. Yikes.
| seibelj wrote:
| Do you wish that elevators had employees to hit the button for
| you, and every door had a doorman to open it? This isn't
| exactly something new...
| tinyhouse wrote:
| My life wouldn't be the same without communicating with the
| Pakistani dude who is looking at his phone when I buy something
| at 7/11...
| korijn wrote:
| Sure, there's downers everywhere but there are also positive
| people that affect your day positively! There's a great lady
| at the local supermarket where I live who has such high
| energy and good spirits that just seeing her manage her team
| is uplifting.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Absolutely, and I hope there will continue to be artisan
| shops providing that experience for those who want it. But
| I'm optimistic there will be, just as farmers' markets
| haven't been entirely eliminated by your local supermarket.
| nmeofthestate wrote:
| Do you hate filling your car with fuel? Do you hate buying ham
| in a packet instead of a person slicing bits off for you as you
| wait?
| bluGill wrote:
| I buy my ham from the guy who slices it for me. I don't like
| thin shaved ham that all the pre-sliced it, instead I want
| the thick slices that the guy provides for me.
| nborwankar wrote:
| Amazon will have some record of all the transactions, at least
| initially to help in the transition, and that means it can figure
| out what's selling best where, then undercut the stores online.
| Allowing Amazon inside your transactions is not a strategy for
| long term survival. Having said that it's hard to see what other
| options retailers have when their competitors start using this
| tech and improving margins. High end retailers can differentiate
| by saying "we have actual people".
| timfrietas wrote:
| And undercut them offline in Amazon Go, Whole Foods and
| whatever other physical grocery initiatives are coming
| jessriedel wrote:
| It is amazing to me that _this_ is the technological solution to
| eliminating scanning barcodes at check-out lines. The obvious
| alternative is RFIDs, i.e., just push your cart through a scanner
| like airport security and all your items appear on the display.
| (The "automatically bill your Amazon account or credit card"
| part is optional either way.)
|
| From talking to a couple supply chain people, the best
| explanation I have heard for why RFIDs aren't ubiquitous, even
| though they now cost less than a penny (EDIT: I'm wrong, more
| like 7-15 cents), is that barcodes are too entrenched; RFIDs
| aren't nearly as useful until everything has one (since if you
| have to barcode scan half your products, and they are intermixed
| with with the RFID'd products, you might as well scan them all),
| and even retailers like Walmart weren't able to pressure all
| their suppliers to switch at once.
|
| I wonder if this could have been fixed years ago with a
| collective-action solution like a stronger industry standards
| body or government regulation.
|
| EDIT: Huh, could have sworn the cheap passive RFIDs cost less
| than a penny now, but apparently they are still 7-15 cents. That
| would explain a lot. Presumably the price would fall quite a bit
| if every product in America had an RFID on it, but we're not
| there yet.
|
| https://www.rfidjournal.com/faq/show?85
| michaeltbuss wrote:
| There's no way a cart full of goods will scan properly if you
| roll through a scanner. RFID scanners don't handle RFID tags
| being stacked very well.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| Apart from RFID, how many cameras would be "reading"
| everything and from how many angles? Will bluetooth be always
| on to track movement and where we paused and for how many
| seconds?
|
| Just from these two technologies the "machine" can see that I
| picked one bag of crisps, one soda (oops wrong flavour I put
| it back and got the other flavour)(machine saw this and made
| the change).
|
| RFID would only validate at the exit.
|
| As for the cost 7-15 cents per RFID tag: -cash management
| costs. A lot. If you only do e-payments then you save from
| that -10 cashiers cost a lot (mistakes, skimming also costs)
|
| Just from these two cost-cuts a super market can cover the
| cost to RFID everything in the store. Also the fact that a
| retailer (I am thinking Carrefour of Sainsbury's that move
| millions of items per day can get far better prices on tags).
| kweks wrote:
| This is an area of extensive research ("anti-collision") and
| a solved issue.
|
| Even decades old protocols support interacting with a
| plurality of tags simultaneously.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singulation
|
| (Edit: added wiki article discussing anti-collision, which
| specifically references grocery examples)
| m4rtink wrote:
| Maybe the RFID chips in question are just too low end ?
|
| I have read an article about race timing chips runners have
| in their badges during a marathon and they can apparently
| handle large number of runners, about 50 per second:
|
| http://www.righto.com/2016/06/inside-tiny-rfid-chip-that-
| run...
| julienb_sea wrote:
| RFID are not good enough for this application. In the end you'd
| still need to take the items out of the bag to scan them, as
| RFID blocking tech is real, and RFID at a distance doesn't work
| that well - especially with a lot of different RFID chips
| involved.
|
| It's also very wasteful and time consuming. You'd need to chip
| every item in the store, which is a LOT of human labor
| (expensive), plus those chips are essentially throwaway which
| adds ongoing marginal cost - adds up over time.
|
| Amazon's solution is more expensive to spin up, but its a fixed
| cost. Vastly more efficient long term and vastly more scalable
| than RFID.
| mkolodny wrote:
| I was under the impression that Amazon is using RFID for
| "just walk out". They filed patents for a "shelf with
| integrated electronics", which mentions RFID as a potential
| implementation [0].
|
| Does anyone here know for sure whether "just walk out" uses
| RFID?
|
| [0] https://sqoop.com/details/uspto/10064502
| [deleted]
| Slippery_John wrote:
| If this really is the same tech they use for Amazon Go then
| no. I'm not sure where they would have hid an RFID chip in
| the single apple I picked up from their larger store a week
| ago.
| avianlyric wrote:
| Biggest problem with RFID is getting suppliers to add the tags
| to their products. After all you're asking them to make a big
| change to their manufacturing processes.
|
| Some companies have managed this, Decathlon is a good example,
| but normally manage it by owning almost their entire supply
| chain. Which means they benefit from extreme integration.
|
| Basically anything that means universally modify packaging is
| usually a no-go for most retailers, it's amazing we've even
| managed to standardise on barcodes.
| goatlover wrote:
| Problem is some people still prefer or need to pay in cash.
| Maybe I don't want my shopping habits collected. Maybe I get
| paid in cash and don't have a card. There's lots of different
| kinds of shoppers.
| kweks wrote:
| While I agree with you totally, you would be surprised the
| extent to which RFID has permeated almost every market.
|
| It's often not consumer facing, or simply invisible (there's a
| very good chance your shoes have a chip embedded in their
| sole...) but there are wide scale, functional examples in
| retail of exactly what you describe today.
|
| Decathlon, for example, a very large EU sporting goods store
| has this technology: RFID tags are baked into every product.
| You fetch your products, throw them all into a basket at
| checkout, and it instantly "scans" them all.
| tootie wrote:
| There are RFID based shopping experiences, but I think it's too
| easy to hack. An RF-shielded shopping bag makes theft too easy.
| I'm also not sure how accurate the readers are when tags are
| all piled together.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| I actually like this idea[0]. I have a couple of tweaks I'd like
| to see.
|
| I'd like to walk in, swipe my CC and get a QR code printout. At
| any point, I should be able to scan the QR code with my phone and
| see a receipt showing what I have in my cart and how much it will
| cost me as well as my status (in/out of the store). Once I leave
| the store, I should be able to scan the QR and get my final
| receipt. If there's an issue, I can turn right around and get it
| resolved.
|
| I don't want to have to deal with going to a kiosk unless I need
| help.
|
| Also, I don't like that this is an Amazon thing.
|
| [0] As an option. I don't want this to be the way of the future.
| alkonaut wrote:
| I'll use this tech if and only if Amazon sells it as a package of
| technology but aren't themselves in the loop seeing the
| transactions.
|
| That is, they should be either seeing none of the transactions,
| or they should be considered a third party that can't collect or
| resell the data.
|
| With contactless payments I fail to see the attraction too. Seems
| like it's ten years too late. Back when people stood in line to
| wait for slow card transactions or people paying cash this thing
| would have worked.
| ttoinou wrote:
| In France all our Decathlon (generic sport gear) stores already
| have RFID chips and checking out (at a free outlet to self
| checkout or at a cashier who'll basically do the same thing as
| you) consist of only putting the goods in a basket, the
| recognition / scanning of the RFID chip is very good and fast. If
| you walk out with goods you didn't buy the guard will have a
| notification on his smartphone with the list of unpaid items.
|
| They're already very close getting to "Just Walk Out" from Amazon
| situation but I'm not sure how expensive putting an RFID chip in
| every product is.. ?
| mpettitt wrote:
| UK ones have baskets you put stuff in, but they appear to be
| using multiple barcode scanners, at least for low value items.
| I'm guessing there is a cost-benefit trade-off at some point,
| as well as a potential functional impact problem (hard to put
| an RFID tag in a solid lump of plastic!). The combination seems
| to work well though, and is certainly faster than most
| supermarkets.
| londons_explore wrote:
| It's still at the ~8cents per item pricerange. Metal cans
| require a different kind of more expensive tag.
|
| Thats still to much for groceries where items are typically
| only ~$2.50, and the staff time to scan a barcode is ~$0.01
| jessriedel wrote:
| Do you have a reference for that ~8 cent figure? I thought it
| had dropped below a penny.
| 7777fps wrote:
| I went to a Decathlon in the UK to buy a bag and it was a weird
| experience. There was something a bit unnerving about
| interacting with a system with not enough feedback.
|
| A reassuring 'beep' from the system would have helped me know
| it had scanned and was happy rather than waiting for it to show
| up on a screen.
|
| Overall I find self-checkouts with barcodes quicker and easier.
| A scan and beep is a quick action. Putting something in a
| basket and waiting an unspecified amount of time was weird but
| no doubt would be something I'd get used to if it was a regular
| thing.
| gmadsen wrote:
| I didn't think it was legal to not have an option for a printed
| receipt, unless these kiosks have that feature which they didn't
| mention.
| k__ wrote:
| Good idea.
|
| The self checkouts I see here simply don't cut it.
|
| Don't know if people are just too dumb for them or the machines
| are too flakey
| gok wrote:
| Having used it a few times, it is really cool. I noticed my local
| Amazon Go locations never really had items worth stealing out on
| the shelves though, which make me wonder if they're not actually
| confident in its performance yet. I'd be curious to see if
| they're willing to give retailers some kind of loss prevention
| SLA.
| amelius wrote:
| It seems like lately the technological advancements are getting
| ever smaller. They are just conveniences at this point.
|
| And by the way, what happened after Amazon's announcement of
| drone delivery?
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