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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

#351

Post by bentley »

crazygringo wrote: post #344
bentley wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inform…

OK, I'll bite: what could possibly be the issue with keeping an app installed? If you quit it it's not running, and if you don't give it location permissions it's not tracking your location. Is there something I'm missing?

The situation has gotten better over time as the OS manufacturers have locked down permissions and made background operations more visible. But many privacy leaks have been only recently fixed or remain unfixed—for instance, it was only in 2021 that Android removed the ability for apps to collect the full list of installed apps. And there have been some real stinkers in the past, like when Facebook used its app to modify people’s contacts lists to make @facebook.com email addresses the primary. Companies that make money from aggregating data will always be on the cutting edge of these techniques compared to ordinary people. The app that’s not installed leaks no data at all, and I don’t blame anyone for avoiding apps that aren’t absolutely necessary.

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

#352

Post by Izkata »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #221
dragonwriter wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If getting rid of human labor lowers operating costs then why doesn't that reflect on the price tag on the shelf Are they getting rid of human labor? Who is doing stocking, as needed cleanup, opening/closing, and overseeing all that? I'm guessing humans are doing that. And as a customer. It seems to be most of what the people who also work as cashiers are doing, outsidd of a few rush periods where those other tasks…

Your comment just made something click for me. CVS (a drug store) by me has also gotten rid of cashiers... but for self-checkout. So have Royal Farms, a regional gas station/convenience store chain. At both places, if you really try, you can maybe get a cashier at a single human cashier counter, but it's normally unstaffed, and everyone directed to the multiple self check out stations. (I think USA readers know what…

> I assume universal self-check-out does reduce staffing needs, which is why they are all moving to it?

My grocery store has 8 self-checkout stations overseen by one employee, and like 10 or so regular checkout lanes. Advantages of self-checkout:

* Less employees to manage it (regular checkout usually has the cashier and a bagger, so we're looking at 1 employee vs 16 for the same number of open registers).

* A single entry line, so if one customer gets stuck the rest of the customers behind them aren't just standing there waiting, so as long as you know how to use self-checkout it's going to be faster.

* The conveyor belts on regular checkout are often pretty gross (dried sticky pop for example), while at self checkout you're putting your items directly into the bag after scanning them.

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

#353

Post by [deleted] »

oceanplexian wrote: post #334
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…

This will be huge rant but as someone who worked right next to one of these in San Francisco I didn’t use it because it was obnoxiously annoying. Speaking as someone technically inclined who writes code for a living, I don’t want to have to scan a QR code or use an App to go through some weird robot gate to buy a thing from the automated store. And that’s (me), not the average Joe Blow who can’t even figure out how t…

[deleted]

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

#354

Post by wiseleo »

Someone1234 wrote: post #89
crazygringo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of those cameras housings don't contain cameras Do you have a source for that? Because at my local grocery store for example, above the customer service area they have a whole wall of TV's showing the live camera feeds. They're all working. My local convenience store has the live TV's too, by the cashier.

> Do you have a source for that? I know people who work there. Your average Walmart has hundreds of camera housings. Every single aisle has a couple. The amount of cabling alone to populate them all simply doesn't exist (as you can often see, it is an open-box ceiling), and monitoring that many cameras is impractical (in particular for a store staffed at BARELY sustainable levels). Just look at how understaffed the f…

There are systems to follow the subject. I configured my work’s cameras to show a few key cameras on the live feed, but several more are quietly recording. When we review the footage, I can follow a subject across my entire array of cameras. I can track someone from the point they enter the parking lot with a plate camera.

I had facial recognition in a nightclub over a decade ago. Modern cameras’ capabilities are scary.

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

#355

Post by bogomipz »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #274
bogomipz wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: >"The retailer also opened a number of locations last year in Southern California. As of last month, Amazon operated 31 Go stores in total." >"With these closures, the company will have 23 Go stores, the spokesperson said." That's a loss of 8 stores.

It's a loss of 8 Go stores, but Amazon has been ramping up the Amazon Fresh grocery stores over the last 2 years. There are 33 Amazon Fresh stores from my count.

Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh are two distinct and different retail entities. The subject of the post is specifically Amazon Go. That being said, on the most recent earnings call Amazon also announced that they were "pausing" the rollout of Fresh stores.

“We’ve decided over the last year or so that we’re not going to expand the physical Fresh doors until we have that equation with differentiation and economic value that we like, but we're optimistic that we're going to find that in 2023,” [1]

[1] https://www.supermarketnews.com/retail-financial/amazon-halt...

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

#356

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

ElFitz wrote: post #113
jstummbillig wrote: post #99

I have actually had a very positive experience with cashier-less shopping – albeit not with Amazon Go and in the EU. As of now, it's been heavily benefited from never having to wait in a line (because the vast majority of people will still opt for the cashier lanes) but I actually found the UX (which in my case always included scanning of products like a cashier would) actually quite delightful and surprisingly never…

Amazon Go was even more incredible than that. Walking out without even having to deal with those pesky self-service cash register, their sometimes finicky scales, and some supermarkets’ more than annoying rules, feels like a weird magic trick. You would just walk in, pick stuff up, and walk out. That’s it. Each time I couldn’t help but feel like I was shoplifting. And then the invoice came in by email, always accurat…

> You would just walk in, pick stuff up, and walk out. That’s it.

In my friend's case it was walk in, spend a half hour working out the app issues, pick stuff up, and walk out, get charged for something you didn't take, go to Amazon to ask for a refund.

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

#357

Post by jonathankoren »

asveikau wrote: post #292
__derek__ wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The only one I know in SF was down in the FiDi, and I can’t imagine that area had much traffic during the pandemic, and I question how much it has now.

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

#358

Post by aendruk »

dan_quixote wrote: post #313
paxys wrote: post #206

The cashierless thing is fine, but is never going to be the reason people pick one store over another. The problem with Amazon Go is that they have been trying to target the "upscale convenience store" demographic which doesn't really exist. If getting rid of human labor lowers operating costs then why doesn't that reflect on the price tag on the shelf? Charging 2x what the CVS next door does defeats the purpose. Mor…

> The cashierless thing is fine, but is never going to be the reason people pick one store over another. There is a Go-style Amazon Fresh very near my house. There are 4 other grocery stores roughly the same distance away. I find myself going to Amazon Fresh more often than not because of how easy it is to walk in, grab something, and walk out. They even put your shopping time on the emailed receipt - and I've made i…

Amazon Fresh is my nearest grocery store but I bike two miles farther just to avoid it.

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

#359

Post by buzzert »

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.

> after it opened a location in Puyallup, Washington that follows its larger suburban-focused format.

Sounds like they’re focusing on the suburban market instead. Related to rising crime in the cities maybe?

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

#360

Post by philip1209 »

Amazon bought Whole Foods because there's massive overlap between Prime members and Whole Foods shoppers.

Amazon bought One Medical because there's massive overlap between Prime Members and One Medical members.

Look at convenience store shoppers and Prime members, and I don't think there's massive overlap between those customer bases.

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