Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

Post by sfjailbird » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 12:27 AM UTC

lelandfe wrote: post #144

randycupertino wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like they artificially made their prices super low for the last couple years and intentionally operated at a loss as a business tactic to force out competition and kill off local grocery stores. There were instances of their prices being lower than Walmart or other budget stores. The avocados were $0.25 each and carrots were half price of ones in Safeway, even ground beef was weirdly cheap. One time as a compa…

> operated at a loss as a business tactic to force out competition and kill off local grocery stores Wouldn't surprise me. I know a guy who invented a device for truckers that became ubiquitous in truck stops across the US. This would've been like 2014. He refused to sell on Amazon, so Amazon duped his product and sold it at something crazy, like half price, until he agreed to list (at which point they dropped their…

Post by ipaddr » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 12:33 AM UTC

gamblor956 wrote: post #298

felixgallo wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of any Amazon product lines or organizations that specializes in devices for truckers. Can you provide a listing?

There's no listing. The story is made up. While the general premise is true (big company will try to rip off small company), Amazon doesn't have the magical power to get around patent law and the economic penalties are fairly harsh, which is why most companies don't do it. And no war chest of tech patents is going to get Amazon around a patent in the trucking industry because the inventor of the trucking gizmo couldn…

Post by llbbdd » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 12:48 AM UTC

direwolf20 wrote: post #364

llbbdd wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure, I was there. But we also used to have to have the people on the phone read our order back to us to confirm it, now I've got a screen that does that automatically. I'm not at all nostalgic for the alternative.

We're talking about the ride service itself, not the interface used to book it.

Post by CamperBob2 » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 12:57 AM UTC

Cornbilly wrote: post #172

colinplamondon wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Their initial advertising claimed near full automation by their "AI" system when, in reality, they had people manually handling around 70% of the transactions. I get that this is a message board for YC, so lying about your company's tech is considered almost a virtue but that is an unreasonably big lie to tell without getting your hand-slapped by some regulatory body or investor backlash.

Post by Izkata » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 1:01 AM UTC

AppleAtCha wrote: post #174

vikingerik wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self checkout is fine, if the happy path works. If everything scans once and doesn't accidentally scan a second time, if everything scans at the price you thought it was posted for, if you don't have any controlled substances requiring approval, if the weight sensor doesn't freak out incorrectly or from putting your bags on it, if it accepts any coupons you have, if it accepts and processes your payment method correc…

Yeah I agree that it can potentially go wrong but in my experience here in east TN the machines have gotten better to the point that hasn't happened for me in the past few years. Also it seems like the "just walk out" process would have more potential error modes but I never visited one.