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

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

#331

Post by kjkjadksj »

op00to wrote: post #294
akira2501 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already have good videos of thefts. Wheel locks have been around forever. I can just _tell_ you where all the stolen carts "end up." None of this has an impact on theft; however, it does a great job of making me feel like I live in a prison.

Target allegedly has such good video capabilities they can recognize repeat thieves, keep a record of what they steal, and wait until it reaches felony level after multiple trips before they flag a person to be detained. All in super duper high definition.

All that money down the drain now that people just wear hoodies and facemasks to shoplift

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

#332

Post by User23 »

hn_user82179 wrote: post #226
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…

Regular grocery stores have really gone downhill as well. Whenever I shop, there’s at most 1 cashier doing checkout and usually 0 (only self-checkout being open). I consider myself pretty proficient about knowing what sets off the machine but still set it off 60% of the time (about some weight imbalance etc) that requires an attendant to come fix manually. I’ve gotten to dread the grocery store trips as they require…

There is one grocery store near me that always has at least two staff members ready to work the checkout and no self checkout at all. There are virtually never lines more than two persons deep. The only time I ever go anywhere else is when I absolutely have to. Vote with your wallet.

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

#333

Post by allan_s »

rwbt wrote: post #314
allan_s wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does having somebody sitting next to the checkout machine watching me (directly or through security camera) while I finish my groceries ? I fail to see the major difference with somebody working physically in the shop that makes it ridiculous and excessive. One may even argue that remotely it could opens the job to more people (one could do that from home in their wheelchair while their baby is taking a nap )

There is a difference. In a typical grocery store, people only have to tally what you bought only once at the end during checkout. Where as in this "walk out" system someone has to follow you around "virtually" and keep track of everything you do in the store.

I've adressed that point with the security camera (or adequatly positionned mirror in old-fashion store)

And the workers just sit idle when there is no customer and you have to physically go there. So I dont see the clear advantage, i see it more as a "choose your poison"

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

#334

Post by kjkjadksj »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #298
ska wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never experienced one reliable enough for this to be true (for me).

Try the ones at Home Depot. Pretty sure they developed it in-house. It may not prevent loss but from a customer experience, a good barcode scanning gun and legible barcodes is about as friction free as it gets.

Home depot is so overengineered. They are using 24” high res touchscreen pcs with an i7 to just run self checkout. Whoever locked in that contract must be pretty pleased.

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

#335

Post by MrFoof »

madeofpalk wrote: post #254
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…

> Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped. Wow - I did not know this. This makes it all a whole lot less impressive and interesting that it was just people off shore watching you.

This is like learning that there actually 1000 tiny elves inside of your television drawing the pictures.

This a real-life, genuine Flintstones-esque cartoon gag.

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

#336

Post by ScoobleDoodle »

WrongAssumption wrote: post #320
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having used the UK/US type self checkout machines while travelling, I must say it is so nice to live in Northern Europe where the self checkout machines are largely just based on trust, with randomly sampling ~five items of every 100 shoppers. There is no weighing at any of the stores. If you don't get randomly selected for inspection, there is nothing stopping you from just walking out with groceries you didn't pay…

I’ve never been nor seen anyone in the US get inspected at a self checkout. Not once.

That's because all of the self checkouts in the US use the weight change to match against the scanned item and any discrepancy leads to having to wait for a self-checkout attendant to manually override to let you continue. That manual override is equivalent to the inspection you're talking about not seeing. And I in the US get blocked needing an attendant 60%+ of the time at some point in the process. Usually up front with the bags I brought from home.

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

#337

Post by kjkjadksj »

seattle_spring wrote: post #319
Ajay-p wrote: post #80

I recently finished a book called "The Secret Life of Groceries" by Benjamin Lorr. Amazing book. I learned that grocery and supermarket stores of the past, seemed to have worked very hard to give the best customer experience possible. Today it feels that customer experience has been replaced by cost cutting. Self checkout has been rife with problems, internally and socially, but supermarkets keep pushing them. I can…

> Today it feels that customer experience has been replaced by cost cutting This seems to be true of all businesses, and I really hate it. Flying sucks, trying to reach a human for any reason sucks, lines are huge everywhere. Life just seems a lot more stressful purely to put a few extra bucks in shareholders' pockets.

Why they build 24 bag claim desks when they ever staff two of them I will never know

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

#338

Post by sebzim4500 »

xyst wrote: post #315

Some of the questionable "grocery store tech" that I have seen Amazon push out: - "just walk out" - what a joke. just another way to capture more data points on your "shopping habits" and build more meaningful profiles against you. Oh John picked up the "Radical Juice X", let's start pushing out the "GOP" package of ads when John searches on Amazon for products. Prefer products with "red" color. - "pay with your palm…

Surely the data of what products you picked up is much less valuable than the data of what products you actually bought, which would be trivial to collect with a normal checkout system.

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

#339

Post by ScoobleDoodle »

robertlagrant wrote: post #302
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having used the UK/US type self checkout machines while travelling, I must say it is so nice to live in Northern Europe where the self checkout machines are largely just based on trust, with randomly sampling ~five items of every 100 shoppers. There is no weighing at any of the stores. If you don't get randomly selected for inspection, there is nothing stopping you from just walking out with groceries you didn't pay…

> Another benefit of having a proper social safety net I guess. I doubt it's as simple as this. People don't only steal because they could technically afford things. Just as people don't only kill in self defence.

Social safety net is more than just being able to afford it. It's a combination of not being able to afford it and general erosion of social values leading to "take what you can get away with" mentality. So even those that can afford it will still try to get more since it's everyone for themselves.

Instead of cooperation under a system with a social safety net, we get a game theoretic weighting on defection without a social safety net.

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

#340

Post by idontwantthis »

xp84 wrote: post #305
madeofpalk wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped. Wow - I did not know this. This makes it all a whole lot less impressive and interesting that it was just people off shore watching you.

Apparently this news came out in May 2023. I also was bamboozled into thinking that sophisticated computer vision algos -- that worked -- were doing this. I'm now picturing the remote workers constantly switching between cameras, studying: Did he put down the can of kidney beans or the can of corn there? Wait, the man picked up the bananas, but then he handed them to the woman in the white shirt. Let's charge them to…

If you did some kind of shell game with 5 different people all passing around their items, then you don’t get charged correctly is it theft? Did anyone ever try that?
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