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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

#261

Post by madeofpalk »

Iulioh wrote: post #242
colinng wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Orders of magnitude more than existing barcodes which are practically free due to being printed on the packaging. A 10c RFID tag would be 10% of the cost of many products, which im sure is unacceptable to grocery stores which I can't imagine have great margins.

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

#262

Post by pierrec »

Say goodbye to the future! The one that IBM promised us 18 years ago in this advertisement: https://vimeo.com/29120357

In fact, that ad also shows how awkward the concept is (or maybe the fact that we're still not ready for it). It's a really fun well-made video but a thoroughly unconvincing advertisement.

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

#263

Post by kevingadd »

bombcar wrote: post #248
Johnny555 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There is some degree of that in these apps already, for example I believe both grubhub and doordash will group up orders so one courier can do multiple deliveries back-to-back in a single trip.

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

#264

Post by bombcar »

t0mas88 wrote: post #93
diggan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that the scan-as-you-shop style systems are definitely the next realistic step for grocery stores. Scan-as-you-shop has been around for at least a decade at this point I think, at least in some parts of the world. ICA (supermarket in Sweden) been doing it for as long as I can remember, and I came across this image of the scanner being used at the store on Mediawiki: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:S…

Jup it has been available for a very long time in the Netherlands as well. When I moved to the UK, what surprised me is that Tesco self check out is so much more cumbersome. It weighs your stuff, stops working when something isn't exactly the right weight. Super annoying to use if you're used to the system used in Sweden and The Netherlands. But that was in stores in the middle of central London, it may be very diffe…

It's entirely up to the store how sensitive (or if it cares about weight in the bagging area at all).

And how that's set usually has more to do with the store's location than anything else.

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

#265

Post by bombcar »

yencabulator wrote: post #164
Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wal-Mart tried it here in Canada for a bit, but it didn't last long at all.

US side Sam's Club (same Sam Walton) has scan-as-you-shop.

Membership clubs can get away with quite a bit more because they're controlled access.

I notice Costco has self-checkouts now.

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

#266

Post by kevingadd »

bombcar wrote: post #252
saalweachter wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the "if anything goes wrong you now stand around with your thumb up your ass while one employee makes their way from broken kiosk to broken kiosk to manually resolve the problems" model has soured me on self-checkout. I find I have a very low "dealing with this bullshit" limit, to the point that if I have trouble I'm likely to just say fuck it and walk out of the store without completing my purchase.

It's really tunable and some stores are tuned to "Fort Knox" where even a fly landing UNKNOWN ITEM IN BAGGING AREA. Others are so loose that you don't even have to take things out of your cart, scan and pay and go.

The Whole Foods location nearest to me has self-checkout stations that don't even have a scale under the bagging area. You just scan, put it in your bag and go. I assume they can afford to tank the shrinkage that results from this due to their high profit margins, or they just don't consider the costs associated with the scales to be worth it.

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

#267

Post by freedomben »

nemomarx wrote: post #61
freedomben wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a huge privacy advocate and don't think stores should track what you buy at all, so don't confuse what I say next with the is/ought fallacy. They already have perfect resolution and data retention of everything you buy at checkout time when it's scanned, plus they can verify your identity rather than have to rely on facial recognition or other things. I don't think this is any creepier than what they already do s…

That's fair as far as tracking purchases go, but high resolution cameras while You're in the store could also read your phone screen or other things on your person right? That seems more concerning than normal cashiers.

Yes very fair point. I just had a dystopic thought of dynamic prices (electronic price tags?) that update in real time based on information. Is the person undecided? Brand A bids to lower their price slightly. Is the person looking at the same item on Amazon? Read the price and beat it by 10 cents or whatever. Those are situations where it might benefit the shopper, but I could easily see it going the other direction also. not looking at the item on Amazon? Now you're gonna pay too much. And of course, store the complete history of what strategy works with which people so "the algorithm" can tune for your individual weaknesses.

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

#268

Post by jcrawfordor »

Iulioh wrote: post #246
timr wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

That's the problem though - $0.05 is a LOT to a grocer, that's all they keep on a lot of products. Barcodes are free since they mostly go on labels that are being printed anyway. They could push for source tagging, but the vendor would pass on the cost, and grocery is a very price sensitive industry.

For apparel, on the other hand, source tagging is common - even before EPC on higher end goods, Calvin Klein used to sew magnetostriction tags into clothing. Apparel just has so much more price elasticity and loss prevention is a huge part of that industry. Tools are another industry where EPC and source tagging are common, once again, high dollar items with a lot of theft.

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

#269

Post by xp84 »

kevingadd wrote: post #263
bombcar wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There is some degree of that in these apps already, for example I believe both grubhub and doordash will group up orders so one courier can do multiple deliveries back-to-back in a single trip.

They do, and they also make that a profit center too by allowing you to pay another $3 to ensure a nonstop point-to-point delivery to you.

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

#270

Post by bombcar »

I_AM_A_SMURF wrote: post #172
noodlesUK wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing, the same as current self-checkout systems. You can already easily just put stuff in your pocket or ring expensive items up as incorrect, cheaper things. I suspect shops have done a risk analysis and decided that they'd prefer to have more shoplifting and fewer staff.

> You can already easily just put stuff in your pocket or ring expensive items up as incorrect, cheaper things This is actually already somewhat solved. The other day I was at a Safeway and one carton of milk had an unreadable label so I scanned a different carton and put the unreadable one in the bag instead (same product). The system showed me a video of me doing that, highlighting the fact that I didn't put the it…

They've gotten a bit more advanced, but that can be bypassed too, you just need to know where the cameras are.

Or shop somewhere where they have all that turned off.

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