Live data from Hacker News

“Just walk out” technology by Amazon

justwalkout.com

641–650 of 769 posts

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#641
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sa…

> It's fairly common amongst poor people. Are these people shopping at Amazon boutiques?

[deleted]

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#642

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…

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.

Looking at the status of American retail, not a chance. We put chips in credit cards 20 years too late, and to this day in major metro cities plenty of name brand stores have a little scrap of paper taped to the card reader telling you to swipe. No one likes chip readers unless you have a fetish for security, they are slow and fail before the rest of the credit card. Swiping is instant and works with the scrappiest of credit cards, and that's what people prefer when given the choice. Apple pay and other touchless systems are not in heavy use, either, and have also been around for years.

This is an industry with a lot of inertia, and customers are not going to be driving this change like a lot of optimists at amazon might expect. They will struggle when the tech isn't working right and prefer the old ways, as they do now.

Plus there is the rampant theft that will occur, unless you hire someone to stand there and man the door. And at that point you've spent millions on this fancy tech that your shareholders salivated over to have the same exact payroll overhead as you did when you had someone sitting there scanning items.

If this makes amazon and the dime a dozen clone startups some money, good for them, but I don't see this changing the world.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#643
post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What brand grocery store was that?

I've seen this at giant eagle a couple of years ago

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#644

It it just me or are people massively underestimating this? I feel like the impact of this will be close to the self driving car in terms of a vast rollout of massive new automation. I've been to Amazon Go a few times, the small one in NYC, and the selection is underwhelming but the walk out experience is amazing. And since then I've fantasized about just walking out pretty much every time I'm in a grocery store. The…

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.

I have never had a pain free experience with any grocery store's self check out. I suppose I am not proficient at scanning and placing items on the scale/bagging area one at a time. Or at following the prompts to swipe my credit card at the right moment. Self check out frustrates me to the point where I avoid it whenever possible.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#645

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…

What is stopping you from doing this and just not paying at all?

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#646
post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to imagine Amazon actually starting a bunch of retail locations. They'd probably buy Whole Foods or something…

Surprising to me that Whole Foods still doesn't have this tech integrated. You'd think that'd be the "beta" step after the Amazon Store's "alpha" step.

I think some parts of Whole Foods are hard to solve (produce, in particular). I’m sure they’ll get there though.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 valuabl…

> 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.

Data is useful for a lot more than ads.

Very helpful for identifying what’s hot and releasing your own version. Figuring out seasonal trends. Or getting competitive price information to match/beet. Walmart brags about their ability to presciently stock stores, which keeps turnover & capital efficiency high.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#648
post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprising to me that Whole Foods still doesn't have this tech integrated. You'd think that'd be the "beta" step after the Amazon Store's "alpha" step.

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.…

The third-last FAQ entry speaks precisely to your comment:

> 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.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#649
post #274

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 announce…

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…

I'm not saying Google isn't evil, but I don't buy this particular piece of conspiracy theory. Every major browser including Google Chrome is starting to phase out third-party cookies, which prevents exactly that kind of tracking.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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 al…

How does amazons tech add defense? You still need human personnel to do anything about theft. People shoplifting don't care if the door is beeping while they walk out and disappear.
Post reply on HN