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Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

finance.yahoo.com

331–340 of 572 posts

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#331

Doesn’t surprise me. I frequently shop at Amazon Fresh in store and it’s a mediocre experience. It’s a poorly run store with no visible manager making sure things are in order. You constantly have to work around employees fulfilling online orders and they aren’t helpful. I always find expired groceries/produce on the shelf so I have to spend a lot of extra time inspecting each item. The only reason I put up with thei…

Interestingly, we only went to our local Amazon Fresh store a handful of times but it was always a perfectly fine experience. It seemed reasonably clean, well-stocked, and well-organized. Other than those new self-checkout shopping carts (which also actually worked well, even weighing produce), it was fairly indistinguishable from other grocery stores in our area. Amazon Go, on the other hand, always seemed like a de…

They had Amazon Go by Grand Central Terminal and it was great to grab a snack and drink on the way to the train, with no worry about being delayed by the checkout line. I figured they had people in India verifying things but saw no reason to care as a customer.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I walk into a McDonalds I see people who will rather stand 5 minutes at the counter waiting for a human cashier than use one of the available kiosks. I'm sure some are paying cash but there are certainly people who are just not comfortable with technology. The Go stores were a great experience but they would certainly be uncomfortable for anyone other than early-adopter or tech-forward types of people. I w…

A lot of people have trouble using those and it's not just tech discomfort or whatever. You have to be able to hold your arms up in front of you, touching specific points in space. The UI is not good and does not provide good moment-to-moment feedback about whether you've pressed a button or which one. You have to be moderately-to-strongly literate, you have to wrap your head around the menu organization, know what y…

I hate McDonald's, but I've used one at a Subway that took five seconds to respond to every button press. Useless! Feels like it was written in Electron and running on an Android tablet from 2012.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#333
post #18

> On April 4, 2024, it was revealed that Amazon's "Just Walk Out" technology was supported by approximately 1,000 Indian workers who manually reviewed transactions. Despite claims of being fully automated through computer vision, a significant portion of transactions required this manual verification. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Go ) Wonder how much of this is due to economics since computer vision tech ne…

Another case where AI = "actually Indians". It's funny how often this has happened.

I remember this case the one who put "Actually Indians" in my mind. What other instances do you know?

(Not to refute your point, of course, I am just curious)

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're most likely correct; I originally started writing this comment to refute your statement, but found that my assumptions appear to be wrong. Americans have the nearly the highest nominal and PPP income of OECD countries as of 2024, only behind Luxembourg, Iceland, and Switzerland [1]. India experiences substantially higher shelter and food insecurity and poverty rates than the United States. However, tech worker…

> It appears to be reasonable for a technology worker to be able to perform a sustained strike. I don't think the strikes are done by tech people at all. Just normal workers.

Then indeed these striking workers are doing so bravely, especially in comparison to the wealth of American workers.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What food desert are you referring to? His food desert that doesn’t exist.

Food deserts do exist, but Seattle's Central District is not one of them. This US government tool used to literally be called the "Food Desert Locator" until the current administration re-named it to "Food Access Research Atlas" https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-access-research-... It's really the suburban areas of Seattle that develop food deserts, likely due to restrictive zoning for commercial properties…

> Food Access Research Atlas

You just know at least five people within the administration, one of whom being Elon Musk, wanted to change "Atlas" to "Tool"

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're most likely correct; I originally started writing this comment to refute your statement, but found that my assumptions appear to be wrong. Americans have the nearly the highest nominal and PPP income of OECD countries as of 2024, only behind Luxembourg, Iceland, and Switzerland [1]. India experiences substantially higher shelter and food insecurity and poverty rates than the United States. However, tech worker…

> However, tech workers in Bangalore are paid an order of magnitude higher than prevailing local wages in other sectors 250 million people striking in India isn't mainly “tech workers in Bangalore”, or mainly tech and other elite workers at all. It’s about 40% of Indian workers, and most articles I've seen about it centered on widespread participation of workers in coal, construction, and agricultural sectors.

Thank you for the correction. Indeed these workers' livelihoods are more perilous than their American contemporaries.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#337
post #39

These bastards drove out some nice stores near me (supposedly the lease ended and did not renew) and rebuilt the buildings in order to open an Amazon Fresh location. That Amazon Fresh store never opened. Now we have a giant empty storefront nobody uses.

Reminds me of the time they made towns all around the US do a dog and pony show to attract "HQ2" and then just located it where Bezos wanted to be all along. I remember AOC getting it right all along, she did the most milktoast of pushback in her district and it caused Amazon to huff and puff and just walk away(causing many property speculators to lose out). She got raked over the coals but a few years later and the…

> milktoast

fyi since you may not have ever seen it spelled before it's milquetoast

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber is far better for me than the old taxi system.

Maybe the one where you flagged down a car on the street, but you could always call to book a taxi and those companies worked exactly like Uber — over the phone, because it was the pre–app era.

Uber also gives you a price upfront, and that is the most you will pay (+ tip, if you feel like it). I don't remember pre-mobile phone taxi system that gave you a price upfront. They used to list the price per mile, and then it was up to you to figure out the distance and make sure the driver took a reasonably short route.

So no, the old taxi companies did NOT work "exactly like" Uber.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#339
post #43
post #26

Has anyone used their go stores? I'm curious how the experience felt from a consumer standpoint. Do you feel welcomed or more like a thief? I remember WAY back in the day when Arby's implemented touch screen ordering (on CRTs!) and it was a very quirky process. An Arby's employee would sit behind the counter and stare at you while you spent 5 minutes poking a CRT display. Very slow and very impersonal. They discontin…

our university has been rolling out just walk out markets across campus due to rampant stealing. shopping there doesn't feel like stealing, but the store design feels oppressive with racks of cameras and thick black shelves because it's designed for sensors first not humans one minor downside (especially since I don't live on campus anymore) is that in order to walk around and peruse the shelves, I have to give them…

Here they replaced all the markets that were staffed by people with these big vending machines that are 3 or 4 refrigerated cabinets (even chips are refrigerated). You pay, wait a bit for it to process it, and then it unlocks the doors and you grab whatever. And if it gets it wrong there’s no dispute process to tell it you didn’t pick something up (I think there is an email listed but I didn’t care enough the time it messed up to send an email). And half the time when you click the pay button to finish, it’ll complain about a door not locking.
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