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Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

finance.yahoo.com

71–80 of 572 posts

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#71

I’m in an interesting place. Here in Seattle I am two blocks from one of the largest Amazon Fresh stores. It was built on the former location of a local grocer. The construction was almost complete before Covid hit, but Amazon shuttered the store during that time. As a result there was no groceries in my neighborhood from 2018-2023. Now it seems Amazon is going to leave us a grocery desert yet again. They were piloti…

> They only hire non-union jobs program people at the registers because Amazon believes that cashier is a sub-human role.

The implication being that humans who aren't in a union are "sub-human" in your opinion? If so, that's pretty messed up man.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#74
post #18

> On April 4, 2024, it was revealed that Amazon's "Just Walk Out" technology was supported by approximately 1,000 Indian workers who manually reviewed transactions. Despite claims of being fully automated through computer vision, a significant portion of transactions required this manual verification. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Go ) Wonder how much of this is due to economics since computer vision tech ne…

It's great that they faced essentially no consequences for this. A sure sign that we have a functional and sane market.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#75

Hmm Amazon fresh was useless anyway. It was this weird niche of grocery delivery but for small urgent orders. I just don't have that need like ever, if I need a bottle of shampoo or a head of lettuce urgently I'll just go to the corner shop. Edit: oh oops I see this is about physical fresh stores, we never had those in the first place. Here in Europe Amazon fresh is a weird service for quick small grocery orders. For…

Amazon go I'm not even sure what that is, must be something like Pokémon go to the polls.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#76
Doesn’t surprise me. I frequently shop at Amazon Fresh in store and it’s a mediocre experience. It’s a poorly run store with no visible manager making sure things are in order. You constantly have to work around employees fulfilling online orders and they aren’t helpful. I always find expired groceries/produce on the shelf so I have to spend a lot of extra time inspecting each item. The only reason I put up with their nonsense is that some of their prices are insane and they have easy returns, for example $0.85 for a box of Barilla pasta. They actually don’t accept returns in store and just refund you automatically in the app (Returnless returns). It’s pretty silly and rife for abuse.

I also found a loophole with the Amazon.com return grocery credit. The systems are separate for the $10 off $40 coupon and you just scan a QR code in the store to get it. It turns out you can just take a photo of their QR code and reuse it over and over again.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#77

I’m in an interesting place. Here in Seattle I am two blocks from one of the largest Amazon Fresh stores. It was built on the former location of a local grocer. The construction was almost complete before Covid hit, but Amazon shuttered the store during that time. As a result there was no groceries in my neighborhood from 2018-2023. Now it seems Amazon is going to leave us a grocery desert yet again. They were piloti…

Not to be rude but there’s 4 Amazon Fresh locations in the greater Seattle area and each of them is next to multiple other large/small grocery options. For instance, the one in north Seattle (Shoreline) is within eyesight of a Safeway, a Sprouts, two international markets and a chef wholesaler. The other three locations are similarly crowded with options. What food desert are you referring to?

I wouldn’t describe central district as crowded with options…

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#78
post #48

My wife will be heartbroken. We moved recently and she loves shopping at Amazon Fresh. (Though part of the reason was that it was never busy :)

I don't know what your life/lives are like, and far be it for me to tell you how to live, but if your schedule allows it try shopping later at night.

I show up at CostCo, on weekdays, like 30 minutes before closing time and it's _wonderful_. Few people, nobody blocking lanes while they consider their choices, etc. Same goes for Safeway, Fred Meyer, Trader Joe's, etc.

It doesn't work so great if you've got young kids, or you want to come home from work and just stay home (reasonable), but it's worth considering :)

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#79

I’m in an interesting place. Here in Seattle I am two blocks from one of the largest Amazon Fresh stores. It was built on the former location of a local grocer. The construction was almost complete before Covid hit, but Amazon shuttered the store during that time. As a result there was no groceries in my neighborhood from 2018-2023. Now it seems Amazon is going to leave us a grocery desert yet again. They were piloti…

"non-union jobs program people at the registers because Amazon believes that cashier is a sub-human role." What grocery stores still have union workers?

Literally all the grocery stores in my Northeast US city are unionized.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#80

I don't live around any Amazon Fresh stores so I never saw them though I did see the technology in use at several airports (though I've never personally used it). IMO I think places like airports are the best place for something like this, people are usually in a rush so not having to wait in line to checkout is nice and you don't have to worry about security as much because everyone there is a ticketed passenger (on…

I saw these in several different airports. It usually had multiple people staffed at the gate to get in and out meanwhile most of the other snack vendors often only had a single person employed.

So you spend a few hundred thousand dollars extra on all the cameras, many millions on all the design, pay all the overseas contractors to manually review the transactions, and you still end up with twice the in-person staff than the average store in the airport.

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