“Just walk out” technology by Amazon

Post by meroes » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 3:59 AM UTC

gajus wrote: post #395

milofeynman wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Post by Talanes » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 4:14 AM UTC

bonoboTP wrote: post #389

mithr wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 i…

Post by sgc » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 4:16 AM UTC

dodobirdlord wrote: post #630

sgc wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that is a person verifying because the software flagged something as uncertain.

More likely, there's a work queue and sometimes it gets a bit backed up or falls a little behind while autoscaling resources kick in. Having fully dedicated capacity for something that's handled asynchronously, fluctuates with time, and can tolerate many minutes of processing delay would be a waste of money.

Post by rolltiide » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 5:03 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #617

mkolodny wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they don't want to draw attention to how many people are going to lose their jobs because of this yet. Cashier is the #2 job in the US (by number of people employed) [0]. If they released this at Whole Foods, I'd guess they'd fire all the cashiers there. That would make this rollout a lot less exciting for a lot of people. I hope Amazon comes up with an awesome way to help the cashiers this technology replaces.…

> If they released this at Whole Foods, I'd guess they'd fire all the cashiers there Since Whole Foods sells alcohol, I doubt that. There are things that lots of governments won't let you have customers “just walk out” with.

Post by 0xffff2 » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 5:05 AM UTC

CurrentB wrote: post #611

gordon_freeman wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to criticize or undermine this initiative in any way but someone like me who frequently uses Safeway's self-checkout machines at my local grocery store, to me this just feels like overengineering. I never had any problems with self-checkout and am always able to quickly scan-and-pay within a couple of minutes when I visit the store once a week.

So if you close your eyes and visualize a grocery store experience where you put stuff directly into your tote bags or your backpack and walk right out, with 0 time spent on anything after you have everything you need, this doesn't seem like something completely beyond self-checkout to you? I've used plenty of self checkout lanes too and it's roughly the same satisfaction as going in a cashier lane. It's still X + Y…