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Inside Amazon Go

nytimes.com

281–290 of 291 posts

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#281
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> finding barcodes and placing the goods at right angle so it can be scanned You should do that anyway to help out the cashier. It's common courtesy. Amazon Go obviously gets rid of it though.

> You should do that anyway to help out the cashier. It's common courtesy. O_O To be honest, I've never done that, and I'm surprised that It's common courtesy. I don't think I've ever been in a situation where I had a chance to help the cashier to find the barcode. What I do myself is placing items on the conveyor belt, putting items into the bags after checkout. Was I being impolite? What's the cashier's job then? P…

In my country there are signs in every store at the conveyor belt saying "turn the bar code toward you", i.e. so that the it lines up with the scanner.

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#282

Waitrose in the UK has had something called "Quick Check" for maybe the last 10 years. On the way into the store, you swipe your "My Waitrose" card and collect a barcode scanner. You then scan and bag everything on the way around and return your scanner to a dedicated terminal (which generally have no queue) and very quickly pay. More recently they added the ability to use your smartphone as the scanner so that you d…

What happens when you bag something without scanning?

With the Tesco system in the UK, if you are rescanned by an employee on a random scan and are found to have a mismatch then your Clubcard ( that you swipe to release a hand-scanner from the racks ) is marked as ineligible, and you have to go through the self-service or normal tills in future.

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#283

Get ready for some insanity in the next decade as this tech is adopted by walmart. https://i.redd.it/shbv27xwmzoy.png

Huh. Is there a year/source for that data? It's interesting Boeing out employees Amazon still in Washington. I also didn't realize Intel's Hillsborough office was that big! At least compared to their office in Folsom.

No source except a random whatsapp message ;)

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#284
post #82

Am I the only one living in a country where most stores have self-checkout already? The comments here make it sound like it's either Amazon Go or having to pay through a cashier. Jobs and social interaction have already been elminated by self-checkout. The revolution with Amazon Go is that you don't need to scan anything yourself, not that it removes the cashier.

It's not about self checkout, its about no checkout. I get really irritated when stores try to outsource their work to me. If I'm going to be scanning items myself, they better pay me for it. Ditto with restaurants expecting me to clean their table up after eating.

My point was that most of the comments focus on stuff that is already a "problem" with self-checkout (jobs, social interaction) and is not exclusive to Amazon Go.

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#285
post #83

not entirely serious, but not entirely joking: in a world where all stores are like this; you drop your phone and it smashes, can you still buy food? (what about people without phones?)

It looks like you need to scan in on the way into the shop. If your phone runs out of the battery, is it impossible to eat?

Maybe a physical barcode card combined with some kind of biometric (thumbprint, faceID, microbiome biopsy) could form an "offline" backup authentication.

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#286
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> will just report you to the cops if they see sleight-of-hand Why? Just add it to the order.

And when you try to cancel your Amazon Prime subscription: Hey, remember that time when you tried placing an item under your coat (video link)?

Subscribe for a year now, or your shoplifting videos get sent to everyone on your Family Account...

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#287
I wonder what would happen if you reached through a gap in the products (perhaps one is a big seller and the shelf location is empty) and pulled an item from the back of the next product's location. Like - reaching where the strawberry Pop-Tarts are normally stocked, to remove a box of the cinnamon flavored. (Why would you do this? Normally the older product is on the front of the shelf so it gets sold first)

Your hand would be out of view of the ceiling-mounted cameras so it can't see directly (covered up by the shelf above). Your arm would be in the strawberry opening but you'd pull out a cinnamon. Is it's vision system good enough to tell the difference from the packaging, or does it just go off position when you pull it off the shelf?

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#288
post #82

Am I the only one living in a country where most stores have self-checkout already? The comments here make it sound like it's either Amazon Go or having to pay through a cashier. Jobs and social interaction have already been elminated by self-checkout. The revolution with Amazon Go is that you don't need to scan anything yourself, not that it removes the cashier.

Plus Amazon Go eliminates the payment process. When you think how much time you lost by scanning every item and paying via cash or credit card. Amazon Go is much more easier and quicker.

Contactless payments take less than 5 seconds. For 5-10 items, I can scan and pay in less than a minute. And that without being registered for that store.

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self scan lines tend to be filled with people incapable of the basic mechanics of using the technology. I prefer to use them. But if I see five people in the self scan line and ten in the normal line...I go for the longer line and am out the door in less time

Sometimes it's the machines. Walmart, I'm looking at you and your recent "upgrade" to what feels like an Electron app running in a VM on a raspberry pi. Button presses take whole seconds to register and loading a different page (e.g. payment or product code entry) takes tens of seconds. It's demoralizing.

I haven't been to Walmart in quite a while but their UX used to be horrible. They had buttons with white lettering and the button background used to cycle between light blue and white. Half the time you couldn't read what the button was for and the other half of the time it was difficult to make out.

Re: Inside Amazon Go

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The marketplace today is hardly the place for meaningful interaction, whether with employees or other shoppers. What it seems like to me is unpaid emotional labor. To have interesting social time, we need less hours at work and more public (non-commercial) spaces to meet. For example, where are children supposed to meet?

> What it seems like to me is unpaid emotional labor. Are cashiers not paid?

do you think that they're paid to be nice or paid to scan your groceries?
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