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Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

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Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#291

Post by Talanes »

boh wrote: post #195
zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #92

I used to visit one of the NYC the Go stores daily until covid happened. It was cute and surgically clean, worked wonderfully, and their inventory management was much better then CVS and Duane Reade which often sell out of things and have empty shelves for days. But nobody ever went there - no matter what time of the day I went, there would be one person doing inventory and stocking, two people standing by to help pe…

I think "nobody ever went there" is difficult to gauge since most purchases are very quick. Typical purchase would take 30-60 seconds for me to make. Since people are quick in/quick out it seems less people shop there.

I'm a smoker who worked next to one of these stores, so I spent a good deal of time on the curb outside. I'd see multiple people enter and exit the CVS anytime I was out there, but I'm not sure I ever saw anyone do more than stand outside the Amazon Go trying to figure out what it was before moving on.

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#292

Post by asveikau »

__derek__ wrote: post #232
CydeWeys wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the whole point of Amazon generally, and these stores specifically in not having staff, that it's supposed to be cheaper? I think you've pinpointed the reason it failed, but I can't imagine why they thought it was going to succeed at those prices.

How did it fail? They just announced that eight stores were permanently closed after having been closed indefinitely, one of which was inside of an Amazon office that shut down last year.[1] It looks like they still have 29 Go stores open nationwide.[2] [1]: https://www.geekwire.com/2023/amazon-closing-eight-amazon-go... [2]: https://www.amazon.com/b?node=16008589011

This reminds me that the San Francisco ones, if I remember correctly, are in a part of town that's been famously devoid of foot traffic since the pandemic.

San Francisco might be receptive to the concept, but it would have to be close to where people live, rather than where office workers used to go.

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#293

Post by wzdd »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #249
nprateem wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't say I needed it.

It’s as if you didn’t read my comment at all. > If you need an app to enter that store and you need to enter the store to return an item, then it’s pretty clear you need an app to return an item at that store.

You don't need an app to enter the store. You need an app to shop at the store. Presumably many classes of person enter the store for various non-shopping reasons without needing the app. It's not beyond the bounds of reason to imagine that for the non-shopping purpose of returning an unrelated item you may not need the shopping app to enter the store -- or, indeed, to imagine that for the product return flow the shoppers' entrance may not factor into the equation at all.

(I don't have a horse in this race, I just don't think you can usually apply the transitive property to the real world.)

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#294

Post by bentley »

jrockway wrote: post #202
hanniabu wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"if you don't give up all your privacy to mega corp then you deserve to be blacklisted by society"

It's somewhat unclear to me what you have to lose here. You're going to their retail store that is littered with cameras as a feature they heavily advertise. You're returning a package with your name and address on it. If typing your password into the turnstile is the last straw, that just seems weird to me. But even that wasn't required. OP did their return successfully.

The loss of privacy comes not from actions taken at the Amazon store, but from having the app installed on the phone 24/7, including when you’re not at the Amazon store.

A somewhat similar example would be using Facebook purely through its Tor onion address, while simultaneously blocking facebook.com on your home network. The point is not to keep Meta from having any information about you, but to limit Meta to information it can acquire from your direct interactions, as opposed to the piles of unrelated browsing history it normally acquires through IP address correlation and Like buttons.

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#295

Post by cstejerean »

passwordqwe wrote: post #243
Spivak wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are people so weird about food? What about quinoa made it associated with rich yuppies? If you didn’t already know you would probably assume the main consumers would be dudes who want their chicken and carb to have even more protein.

There's reports of prisoners complaining about the torture of being fed salmon all the time, because it used to be common food. People signal their class and status through everything, also through food.

I used Blue Apron for a while and got an unreasonable amount of salmon for some reason. It's been almost 6 years and I can still barely eat salmon after that. So I can definitely understand where the prisoners were coming from on this one.

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#296

Post by lazyasciiart »

cavisne wrote: post #290
kentosi wrote: post #8

Slightly misleading title. They're closing 8 of their stores across NYC, SF, etc, and this is after they just opened a few more across the US.

And the 2 “closed” in seattle have been boarded up for some time, they are in an area that became even higher crime during Covid and never really recovered.

More accurately: they are in an area that dropped to zero foot traffic during covid and never really recovered. I think the literal number of people that go past the store on 6th is lower than the number of crimes committed in most areas.

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#297

Post by hezralig »

paxys wrote: post #212
mabbo wrote: post #115

I hope this doesn't signal the end of the entire business model. I know there are still speed bumps and problems to address, but cashier in a convenience store is one of those awful jobs I don't think anyone should have to do if we can avoid it. I've had plenty of friends and family work those jobs, and briefly did it myself (at a gas station). Often these friends worked overnight, with the risk of being held up at 3…

This is easy to say from the perspective of someone making tech money, but plenty of people (immigrants, minorities, people below the poverty line, people without a high school diploma) depend on such jobs and will gladly do them. Unless you also have a solution for employment for all such groups, "let's get rid of these jobs" comes off as way too simplistic. The benefits of automation are largely enjoyed by the uppe…

You have realize the purpose of SV automation then. Not to advance human productivity but to rid itself of a class of people en bulk.

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#298

Post by sammalloy »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #233
zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #92

I used to visit one of the NYC the Go stores daily until covid happened. It was cute and surgically clean, worked wonderfully, and their inventory management was much better then CVS and Duane Reade which often sell out of things and have empty shelves for days. But nobody ever went there - no matter what time of the day I went, there would be one person doing inventory and stocking, two people standing by to help pe…

The food was just really, really bad. The ones near me stocked a bunch of pre made meals and they were all horrible. I can't wait for this tech to get into my grocery store, but the convenience stores were not it.

My intuition tells me this is the problem. I moved away from purchasing any type of grab and go food about ten years ago and I think a lot of consumers have joined me.

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#299

Post by oblio »

emodendroket wrote: post #284
CydeWeys wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the whole point of Amazon generally, and these stores specifically in not having staff, that it's supposed to be cheaper? I think you've pinpointed the reason it failed, but I can't imagine why they thought it was going to succeed at those prices.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the long-term goal but in reality it was not yet cheaper. Automation often proves more difficult than one would expect.

https://xkcd.com/1319/

This should be branded on the forehead of every CEO of a company that promises full self driving capabilities for cars before 2030 and cryptocurrency mass adoption, also before 2030.

Re: Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle

#300

Post by code_runner »

Used one of these in an airport and it was fine. Felt like a novelty in that instance. I didn’t need a particular app but they did employ a person to explain and help… but it was a small enough booth he could’ve just been the cashier.

Probably 20-30 seconds faster than a normal place? I actually do like the idea in general but the implementation is ok at best and I didn’t even have to use yet-another-proprietary-app

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