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Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

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Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#211

Post by seabass-labrax »

giantg2 wrote: post #155
walterbell wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After advertising "Just Walk Out"?

Yeah, the author is trying to see what would happen if they roll a can into the bag. This is meant to conceal the act from the computer. The act of concealing merchandise is all that is required in many jurisdictions. If they walked out without the concealing act, then I would think the error should be on the store. There have been some cases of self checkout prosecution too. They don't need any proof of intent. Even…

> They don't need any proof of intent. Even regular errors can be prosecuted.

In Common Law jurisdictions, there's no intent required for prosecution of alleged theft, but there absolutely is intent required for conviction! Anything else is a miscarriage of justice.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#212

Post by nemothekid »

There was a startup, Standard Cognition, that offered the same experience, but I checked their website (https://standard.ai/) and it seems they have given up on it too.

Edit:

Looking over their marketing videos now and taking a more optimistic approach, is "just walk out" technology all that useful? It seems they pivoted to a product where is much clearer what the value add is (Predictive analytics, loss prevention, context-aware marketing). I imagine "just walk out" technology was likely pretty expensive to implement, but wouldn't have saved much more that self checkout. Maybe the lesson here isn't that "it didn't work", and more so "it wasn't economically efficient"

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#214

Post by skyyler »

noodlesUK wrote: post #111
underyx wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See also the RFID tags Uniqlo and Decathlon use for self-checkout. You just place your shopping bag in a bin and it reads all the items within in a second.

My guess is that right now this isn't viable for lower margin food products. Uniqlo and decathlon probably don't sell that much for less than £10. It's going to be a while before you can reasonably do that for a pint of milk.

You're right - the cheapest thing uniqlo sells are $5 pairs of socks.

Their $15 shirts are the next cheapest thing they sell, I'd imagine.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#215

Post by mathgeek »

smugma wrote: post #194

Uniqlo (in Japan and at least in SF) has a cool checkout method. You drop your clothes into a big bin (I’ve always done it one piece at a time, didn’t think to do all at once) and it adds up all your items. I’ve used this maybe 8 times, 100% accurate so far. Not sure how it works but I guessed RFID and quick Google appears to confirm: https://www.wsj.com/articles/uniqlos-parent-company-bets-big...

Uniqlo in Orlando also does this. Wonderful system.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#216

Post by gambiting »

smugma wrote: post #194

Uniqlo (in Japan and at least in SF) has a cool checkout method. You drop your clothes into a big bin (I’ve always done it one piece at a time, didn’t think to do all at once) and it adds up all your items. I’ve used this maybe 8 times, 100% accurate so far. Not sure how it works but I guessed RFID and quick Google appears to confirm: https://www.wsj.com/articles/uniqlos-parent-company-bets-big...

Decathlon in the UK has the same thing. You just drop everything in a bin near a till and it "magically" knows what you've put in.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#217

Post by alden5 »

bilalq wrote: post #190

This is pretty sad to read. Before Covid, the Amazon Go store experience was phenomenal. All the convenience of a 7-Eleven but with the pricing of a normal grocery store. The food options were really good and the BlueApron style meal-kits were amazing. The Alexa integration was also nice for being able to just verbally ask what's the next step on a recipe while you're busy stirring or chopping things. When it rolled…

What never made sense to me with their go stores was why a store that only needed 1-2 people max to operate had such bad hours. Hearing now that getting the bill is a mainly manual process i guess their hours had to line up with their data entry team in india so people could get their recipes quickly. insane to think about

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#219

Post by [deleted] »

nemothekid wrote: post #212

There was a startup, Standard Cognition, that offered the same experience, but I checked their website ( https://standard.ai/ ) and it seems they have given up on it too. Edit: Looking over their marketing videos now and taking a more optimistic approach, is "just walk out" technology all that useful? It seems they pivoted to a product where is much clearer what the value add is (Predictive analytics, loss prevention…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#220

Post by ska »

CSMastermind wrote: post #163
Ajay-p wrote: post #80

I recently finished a book called "The Secret Life of Groceries" by Benjamin Lorr. Amazing book. I learned that grocery and supermarket stores of the past, seemed to have worked very hard to give the best customer experience possible. Today it feels that customer experience has been replaced by cost cutting. Self checkout has been rife with problems, internally and socially, but supermarkets keep pushing them. I can…

Self checkout is a better customer experience for me personally.

I've never experienced one reliable enough for this to be true (for me).
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