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Amazon’s Cashierless Store Is Almost Ready for Prime Time

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Re: Amazon’s Cashierless Store Is Almost Ready for Prime Time

#71

Post by tarboreus »

BlytheSchuma wrote: post #60
tarboreus wrote: post #12

You know what I find convenient? Cash. You just take it out of your wallet and hand it over in exchange for goods. No tracking, no receipt emails, no machine learning of my behavior to figure out when my partner is pregnant or whatever, no extra apps, no facial recognition, no 2-4% charge for businesses that only doesn't apply if you're an international monopoly. Oh, my phone is out of batteries. Guess I'll just give…

You love to carry cash? So do muggers. After living in SF for over a year I would never carry cash again. Period.

Do you leave your phone at home as well?

Re: Amazon’s Cashierless Store Is Almost Ready for Prime Time

#72

Post by simonebrunozzi »

justonepost wrote: post #27
Navarr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if you're a single mom you now need to get a babysitter to go grocery shopping?

Yeah or pick a different store.

Babysitter-as-a-service, conveniently available just next to the Amazon store.

Re: Amazon’s Cashierless Store Is Almost Ready for Prime Time

#74

Post by obmelvin »

tarboreus wrote: post #71
BlytheSchuma wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You love to carry cash? So do muggers. After living in SF for over a year I would never carry cash again. Period.

Do you leave your phone at home as well?

So yoy shouldn't minimize a problem just because you can't completely nullify it?

Re: Amazon’s Cashierless Store Is Almost Ready for Prime Time

#75

Post by tolien »

rtpg wrote: post #53
tarboreus wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally love $5 and $10 bills. I frequently do exact change when I have a bunch of those. Buying a BLT at the bodega? That's $5.75 with a coke. Here's $6. At the end of the day, I fire my change in a bucket and bring it to a machine once a year to get exchanged. Also, taking out $100 in 2017 is silly, at least if you spend more than $200 a week, which is most non-students here. I just get out the max that the AT…

This works less well with other currencies If you're working with euros your largest denomination coin is 2€ . In Yen it's 500 yen! This is not chump change and just throwing those coins into the charity box can leave you with effectively increasing your lunch pricing by 50% if you have a "give all coins to charity" policy. If you have the cash for it more power to you, of course.

Ignoring the coin jar/charity box confusion, I've tended to keep the bigger coins around and just spend them - a few £1-2 coins don't weigh that much, aren't taking up a great deal of room and will buy your lunch entirely. Then they're not your problem any more.

500 yen's over £3, so I'm guessing you don't get many of those in your lunch change? The top result for "how much is lunch in Japan" [1] suggests that your 500 yen coin would just about cover the next day's lunch and is lighter (barely; 7 grams versus 8.75g) than a British one pound coin [2,3].

The coin sorting machines that you might tip a coin jar into take a decent chunk of your money for the privilege of counting it (e.g. CoinStar charge 9.9% [4]).

1: https://www.withhusbandintow.com/costs-to-eat-in-japan/

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_pound_(British_coin)

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/500_yen_coin

4: http://www.coinstar.co.uk/FAQ

Re: Amazon’s Cashierless Store Is Almost Ready for Prime Time

#76

Post by ZenoArrow »

justonepost wrote: post #26
alwaysanon wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to have an app on your phone and scan a code from the app/phone to enter. My guess is that it is based on location tracking of the phone (via either Bluetooth or WiFi) rather than facial recognition.

Probably some facial / clothing recognition goes on as well when you scan to keep track of you.

How about if someone dressed in a niqab, how will those people be identified?

Re: Amazon’s Cashierless Store Is Almost Ready for Prime Time

#77

Post by brownbat »

harryh wrote: post #66
brownbat wrote: post #65

My pain point isn't checkout, it's wandering around a store and dodging large carts in narrow aisles. Maybe they'll tackle that next. I really wish Amazon would let me put dry and frozen goods in an app, then have kiva robots fetch those while I just browse produce. Like, you could leave the produce section normal, people freak about produce, but make the rest of the store a robot filled warehouse that customers don'…

People spend more money when they spend time wandering around the rest of the store.

Yeah, planet money had a good episode debating whether that's why they put milk way in the back of the store.

But people also spend more money when it's easy to do so, and when they aren't frustrated by the process. How many trips to the store aren't even happening because it's an ordeal?

Malls are playing the strategy of keeping people in store, while the internet is lowering barriers to the experience.

Malls are dying and the internet is winning. There are a lot of reasons, but 'make it easier for customers to give you money' is probably not an awful business model.

Re: Amazon’s Cashierless Store Is Almost Ready for Prime Time

#78

Post by Operyl »

gwern wrote: post #46

> Shoppers visiting an Amazon Go store will scan their smartphones upon entering. Cameras and shelf sensors will then work together to figure out which items have been removed and who removed them, the person says; there will be no need for tracking devices, such as radio frequency chips, embedded in the merchandise. Hold on - "shelf sensors"? Wasn't Amazon originally advertising this as being purely camera-based, an…

I wonder if it still is camera based, and just a disconnect with the press' understanding of Amazon's technology/terminology. I consider a camera to still be a sensor, in this fashion. So, a camera pointed at a shelf could still be a "shelf sensor."

Re: Amazon’s Cashierless Store Is Almost Ready for Prime Time

#79

Post by tarboreus »

obmelvin wrote: post #74
tarboreus wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you leave your phone at home as well?

So yoy shouldn't minimize a problem just because you can't completely nullify it?

Your phone likely has a value of $600. Your cash at any time might range between $0 and $200 (or more if you're me). Considering that losing your cash has no inconvenience or replacement overhead, I don't really mind losing it in the rare event that I'm mugged. I would mind losing my phone or laptop, which I pretty much carry all over. The way I see it, cash is pretty incidental to muggings.
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