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

gizmodo.com

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

#241

Post by themadturk »

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…

Shopping there always felt supremely weird to me. Scanning in, getting stuff, and walking out, but I always felt incomplete without a receipt being right there in my email, wondering if I'd done something wrong and had just inadvertently shoplifted.

I shop more often at Walmart, which has recently increased the number of manned checkout lanes and restricted their self-checkout to 15 items or less.

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

#242

Post by Iulioh »

colinng wrote: post #232
rgmerk wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s been discussed before on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38715111 Unlikely to work for groceries given the costs of RFID tags, I imagine.

If we had a better Blue Bin system it might work. Remove tags at home and place in compartment of Blue Bin, and at the recycling centre they get sorted out and sent back to the retailers. But if we really could scale RFID tag production down to 1 cent each, then we’d likely just throw them out. Not that I’m a fan of throwing away silicon…

I mean, they cost 5-10c

Still more than printed paper but the cost is not astronomical. Some sellers on Alibaba even advertise 3c cad

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

#243

Post by rwbt »

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…

I'm glad it's gone for good, if the process really works like how it's described in the article. Thousands of poor souls doing terrible pointless menial work just so that a few entitled customers can avoid the clunky self checkout (eww- the horror!). The entitlement of the west has no bounds really.

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

#244

Post by Iulioh »

whyenot wrote: post #181
noodlesUK wrote: post #6

I think that the scan-as-you-shop style systems are definitely the next realistic step for grocery stores. I really like using them, as they allow me to put stuff directly into my bags as I go. I think a further improvement on a system like that would be to use the cheap RFID tech (UHF EPC) so that when you walk through the anti-theft barriers, the system knows exactly what you got, and then there's no need to scan a…

How would this cheap RFID system work for produce and other items sold without packaging or by weight? (for example fruit/veg)

I don't see the problem, you just need a machine that prints a custom tag with the information.

My city use it for public transit tickets

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

#245

Post by sunshowers »

bilalq wrote: post #240
alden5 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's not manual. This is a case of mistaken journalism. The labeling is for training data of the models. Before covid, the hours were much better too.

> 700 out of 1,000 Just Walk Out sales required human reviewers as of 2022

That's manual by any reasonable description.

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

#246

Post by Iulioh »

timr wrote: post #165
jcrawfordor wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost-per-unit on RFID product tags (EPCs) has tended to limit them to products with a relatively high margin and a relatively high theft potential---clothing being the most obvious example and the most common application of EPCs, with retailers all the way down to WalMart using them for apparel. You'll note that WalMart doesn't even use the EPCs at POS, which is telling: for most retailers, the main advantage of…

Amazon Fresh was definitely not the cheapest option. It was on par with Whole Foods for groceries, IME. But that said, interesting point. Didn't know the cost of an RFID tag was that high -- after all, Uniqlo is putting them on some pretty cheap clothing items!

Rfid tags are really cheap, some sellers advertise prices as low as 3c per tag but realistically 10c is probably the cost of a finished product (print, glue, maybe extra protection of the plastic)

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

#247

Post by wyager »

rwbt wrote: post #243
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…

I'm glad it's gone for good, if the process really works like how it's described in the article. Thousands of poor souls doing terrible pointless menial work just so that a few entitled customers can avoid the clunky self checkout (eww- the horror!). The entitlement of the west has no bounds really.

> Thousands of poor souls doing terrible pointless menial work just so that a few entitled customers can avoid the clunky self checkout

Wanting to make your life more convenient and pleasant isn't "entitled".

99% of jobs are things people would rather not be doing (otherwise you wouldn't be getting paid for it). The point is that we can allocate this work in a way that minimizes the amount of time everyone has to spend doing undesirable work.

Are you mad that I sometimes pay "poor souls" to do the "menial work" of cooking me food so I can avoid doing it myself?

> The entitlement of the west has no bounds really.

A very bizarre response to "darn, this was so convenient" - I wonder if this is a troll.

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

#248

Post by bombcar »

Johnny555 wrote: post #239
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…

Lots of services would be phenomenal when you can offload much of the cost to run them to cheap offshore labor. Remember how great Uber and Doordash were when much of the cost of operating was offset by underpaid workers and VC funds? Now that they don't have unlimited piles of money and cities/states are making them pay more fair wages, the cost-benefit of those services has diminished. I was ok paying $5 for $20 of…

I wish it could all be managed intelligently; I'm hungry but I can wait, let orders collect and make them all at once or something.

Dominos had this down pat twenty years ago, how come everything with an app is so much more expensive?

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

#249

Post by annexrichmond »

steelframe wrote: post #227

Cool. Now can I pay with cash? Because I'm not going to let anyone build a profile on whether I like warming lube or just regular lube, how much sugar and alcohol I consume, what kind of romance novels I read, how often I floss, and whether I feel I can afford organic fruit.

I think it should be a fundamental right to pay for goods with cash.

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

#250

Post by bombcar »

themadturk wrote: post #241
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…

Shopping there always felt supremely weird to me. Scanning in, getting stuff, and walking out, but I always felt incomplete without a receipt being right there in my email, wondering if I'd done something wrong and had just inadvertently shoplifted. I shop more often at Walmart, which has recently increased the number of manned checkout lanes and restricted their self-checkout to 15 items or less.

The local Walmart expanded self-checkout and it works surprisingly well (the bag scale seems to be very loosely calibrated or off). I wonder if they're doing things differently depending on how much product walks out the door.
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