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Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#111

Post by 12_throw_away »

freedomben wrote: post #71
justonceokay wrote: post #13

I’m in an interesting place. Here in Seattle I am two blocks from one of the largest Amazon Fresh stores. It was built on the former location of a local grocer. The construction was almost complete before Covid hit, but Amazon shuttered the store during that time. As a result there was no groceries in my neighborhood from 2018-2023. Now it seems Amazon is going to leave us a grocery desert yet again. They were piloti…

> They only hire non-union jobs program people at the registers because Amazon believes that cashier is a sub-human role. The implication being that humans who aren't in a union are "sub-human" in your opinion? If so, that's pretty messed up man.

A giant, multinational, multi-trillion-dollar corporation that will only bargain with individual people living paycheck-to-paycheck? Huh, what a weird power imbalance!

Surely it doesn't have anything to do with their documented history of treating their blue-collar workforce like utter garbage.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#112

Post by spike021 »

Bluecobra wrote: post #76

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…

> You constantly have to work around employees fulfilling online orders

To be fair I've noticed this in multiple supermarket chains the last few years. Although they aren't usually employees, they are instacart runners or whatever.

I go fairly often to a Sprouts grocery store and there are times I need to avoid multiple people clearly doing an Instacart run with 2+ carts full of items.

Shelves are often emptier than they used to be also at these times.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#114

Post by acdha »

colinplamondon wrote: post #84
Cornbilly wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's great that they faced essentially no consequences for this. A sure sign that we have a functional and sane market.

Why would they face consequences? Every store has video surveillance that can be reviewed. They trusted their tech enough to accept the false-positive rate, then worked to determine / validate their false positive rate with manual review, and iterate their models with the data. From a consumer perspective the point is that you can "just walk out". They delivered that.

If the stock price goes down, I won’t be surprised if there’s a shareholder lawsuit claiming that they misrepresented their level of AI achievement and that lead to this write-off by keeping operating costs and error rates high. The whole business model really assumed that they could undercut competitors by lower staffing.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#116

Post by mitaphane »

proee wrote: 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…

I use the one situated in Seattle, Amazon HQ. It's just like self-checkout at a grocery store with fewer steps. The entrance/payment mechanism is Amazon One (a palm scan associated with a payment wallet). At Whole Foods, it's used as an optional payment option at checkout.

It's convenient; I only ever remember one problem where it thought I had purchased an item that I picked up and decided on something else. I disputed it online and it was resolved in a day.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#118

Post by RIMR »

Bluecobra wrote: post #76

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…

For a while, they had two stackable 10-off-40 coupons, and a 2-off-10 coupon, and it activated $36, so you could buy $36 worth of groceries for $14.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#119

Post by thijson »

DrinkingRedStar wrote: post #92

Doesn't surprise me either. Anecdotal story coming, but there is physical location on Philadelphia, and I stopped by as I needed an item for dinner that night, and it was on my way home. Store was kind of bare, and poorly organized. But the kicker is they didn't accept any form of mobile wallet! They had an identical POS system to wholefoods which takes it just fine. So I quickly put my items back and headed to Giant…

They have a good price on take out pizza. Unlimited toppings, and with Prime membership it's $8 something for a large pizza. It was probably their loss leader to get people in the store. I felt like the store was usually pretty empty when I was there. I wonder if Amazon will keep Whole Foods too.
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