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My biggest problem with this is that from what I can tell, the only way to know how much you're going to be automatically charged (as well as what items the tec

My biggest problem with this is that from what I can tell, the only way to know how much you're going to be automatically charged (as well as what items the tech thinks you're purchasing), is to go to a kiosk in the store and get a receipt. Which seems to completely defeat the convenience of just walking out in the first place. I wouldn't feel comfortable just walking out without knowing how much I'm going to be charged, so this tech is essentially useless to me.

thinkling 7y ago
When I've used to Amazon Go store, it has usually taken a while for the app to update with a receipt. Last time I went to the new, bigger store it was about an hour before they had the receipt available.
- throwaway3157 7y ago
  > When I've used to Amazon Go store, My receipt was in the app shortly after (I walked about two blocks and checked). I think it took longer for an email to show up, but can't recall exactly
  - grandmczeb 7y ago
    My experience had been that it can vary quite a bit. Most of the time it’s pretty quick, but occasionally it can be over an hour.
    - sgc 7y ago
      Maybe that is a person verifying because the software flagged something as uncertain.
      - grandmczeb 7y ago
        Very possible.
      - dodobirdlord 7y ago
        More likely, there's a work queue and sometimes it gets a bit backed up or falls a little behind while autoscaling resources kick in. Having fully dedicated capacity for something that's handled asynchronously, fluctuates with time, and can tolerate many minutes of processing delay would be a waste of money.
        sgc 7y ago
        It's Amazon, to me it seems more likely they are tuning their ML with human input than they somehow need an hour to spin up AWS for their shiny new baby.
    - hamandcheese 7y ago
      Maybe they use spot instances for all the compute.
egdod 7y ago
Grabbing a receipt at a kiosk is a lot quicker than manually scanning your items. My main problem with this is how invasively creepy it all is.
- njarboe 7y ago
  Yes. Amazon will know every item you buy, how much, and when. But not much different than grocery store discount cards already used by most everyone for decades. I'm sure that info is sold, traded around, and aggregated.
  - bonoboTP 7y ago
    They will have data on how people walk around the stores, in what order, what shelves they look at, what items they take off and put back. What they put back and rather take as an alternative instead. How long they ponder before picking an item. Etc. etc. so much data to mine for advertisers and marketers to manipulate people into spending more.
  - egdod 7y ago
    Yeah, and I don't use grocery discount cards either. But doing it via camera gives a ton of data beyond just what I buy and when.
    - njarboe 7y ago
      Grocery stores also use cameras to see how customers behave. I have not heard of them connecting them to face recognition systems, but I would not be surprised if they do. I agree that this is another increase in the invasion of privacy that will probably end in a bad place. We need laws to prevent these systems, not just a few people holding on to scraps of privacy with desperate measures, like not buying a new car.
stronglikedan 7y ago
I'm sure the items have posted prices, so it would really be simple math that could be done in one's head.
- SamuelAdams 7y ago
  In the United States taxes are not included on the sticker price. As a result adding up the total price of a purchase can be tricky. However, I don't think this technology will be used extensively by people who purchase a large quantity of products at a time. Instead, this will be catered to the times when someone needs to pick up 5 or less things at a store. In this instance, these customers are not typically price-sensitive about what they need.
  - donarb 7y ago
    In certain places, tax is not added for certain goods. For example, in Seattle food is not taxed, unless it is prepared, like fast food or deli counters.
    - tialaramex 7y ago
      This is also routine in Europe where tax is included in the advertised price. Here for example the price shown for your hilarious Xmas sweater is inclusive of tax, the price shown for your toddler's equally hilarious sweater is not, because it's tax exempt (clothing for kids isn't taxed) and so in both cases the displayed price is the price you'll pay. We added a sugar tax, so the sticker price for beverages like original Coke went up, but similar zero sugar products (Coke Zero, Pepsi Max) did not. Of course some stores just raised the before-tax price to capture the difference as profit, and others just eliminated sugary drinks. So... a mixed result. The EU's focus is that consumers always pay what the sticker price says. So, no "plus tax", no "shipping fees not included" on items that unavoidably have to be shipped to you, no "service fees" no "card fees" nothing like that. I think even if you don't actively like this, you can see the point of this approach. Would it be easier to get consumers angry about taxes if the tax wasn't "baked in" ? Maybe. But it's not as though it has proved impossible to campaign against, for example, tax on tampons or even toilet paper.
emiliobumachar 7y ago
If there are enough kiosks to avoid a line, always getting the receipt is still a huge improvement over scanning, even if it falsifies the "just walk out" bit. Another potential alternative for the anxious (and I definitely include myself) is an app showing up-to-the-second billing state on the smartphone screen. At a glance, usability issues seem hard but doable.
- saber6 7y ago
  > Another potential alternative for the anxious (and I definitely include myself) is an app showing up-to-the-second billing state on the smartphone screen. That sounds like an awesome idea! You just load up your cart, peek at your (account-linked) smartphone, and see what your total will before heading to your car.
grandmczeb 7y ago
Unfortunately the current system doesn’t exactly work in real time (sometimes it can take a while for a receipt to appear in the app) but I don’t think that’s a fundamental limitation. I also don’t think this is a major concern though; so long as there’s still price tags (which there are) and it’s easy to dispute mistakes in the app I don’t think most people will really have a problem with it.
- jschwartzi 7y ago
  If my experience with Amazon hubs is anything to go by, the store employees will not be empowered to make any decisions or help you with anything and will direct you to call the customer-service number, and the customer-service people will not be empowered to fix any pricing errors on the spot.
  - grandmczeb 7y ago
    That hasn’t been my experience actually going to one of these stores.
- withinboredom 7y ago
  I think the price tag only makes sense when tax is included on them. Things are taxed differently in different places, and sometimes people are tax exempt (in the US). But without the tax on the price tag, it’s literally impossible to know how much you’re going to pay (this is why I love living in the EU).
  - grandmczeb 7y ago
    1) “literally impossible” is obviously untrue. 2) Sales tax is <10% basically everywhere. Unless you’re paying in cash, this isn’t a real problem.
tialaramex 7y ago
The closest I have to this today is the grocery store nearest me - I walk in, I pick up a scanner (you can use an app on your phone but I use their scanner because my phone locks immediately with a passphrase when unused so it's ghastly for this purpose) and I just wander about scanning items and putting them into bags. The scanner shows its estimate of the price paid, which in my experience is always 100% accurate but I guess "estimate" is needed because legally the shop is not promising to sell at this price yet. I walk to the exit and scan the exit and give back the scanner, it tells me the final price which is the same as that estimate and then I pay with my card and walk out. This is still extra steps compared to "Just walk out" but it's close. There is no interaction with store employees (which suits some friends who struggle to do human interaction on "bad" days) for example, this store would seem to work just fine without any employees although of course it's a huge grocery store so it has dozens doing various things and couldn't in fact function without some. The really nice optimisation of course is to get rid of the money. If you stop caring about trying to make the numbers add up and just rely on people going "Huh, I only need two cabbages, why would I take sixty cabbages? What am I going to do with sixty cabbages?" then this is all much simpler. But I think even Amazon doesn't expect to deploy this to a culture where that's realistic.
- ascagnel_ 7y ago
  When I last used one of those systems, I found it to be reliable, as you said. And to keep people honest, they'd randomly pick shoppers to go through a regular checkout, which is both understandable and annoying. It also made it super easy to bag groceries.
  - wojciii 7y ago
    I used something like this deployed to Coop stores in Denmark. It's a nightmare to use and the random check pissed me off enough so I deleted the app and decided never to use it again. Try shopping with a little kid and using one hand on your phone and being randomly checked when there are 20 people waiting before you. This is not working in the current version of the technology.
- wingworks 7y ago
bytematic 7y ago
No way does that completely defeat the convenience. To just walk up and put your email in, is even much easier than ordering at kiosks at something like mcdonalds
nimblegorilla 7y ago
> I wouldn't feel comfortable just walking out without knowing how much I'm going to be charged, so this tech is essentially useless to me. I'm sure they can make an app for that.
- maest 7y ago
  I am not sure they can make an app for that. For one, there's usually a delay before you get your receipt.
miguelrochefort 7y ago
They could easily put a screen next to the exit that shows you what you purchased when you walk to it.
mithr 7y ago
As long as the process for getting refunds is frictionless and well-implemented (perhaps similar to Prime Now), then if you can afford holding the charge on your credit card for a few days, this doesn't really seem like a problem. The process becomes: go to the store, pick up what you want, and then at some later point take a quick look at the "receipt" for verification, quickly flagging anything that seems off. With Prime Now, you get your groceries delivered and pay for them in advance. Once in a while, you don't get an item, get the wrong item, a rotten piece of fruit, or an expired bottle of milk. When this happens, you simply go to the app where every item is listed, and follow the quick prompts to get a refund. You can optionally give a reason for asking, but in my experience they don't actually seem to care; in fact, whenever I've left a comment that, for example, one of the ten oranges I ordered was bad, they've always refunded me for _all_ the oranges on my order. I assume this is because the number of refunds is low enough relative to the number of purchases that they can afford to just always refund, keeping the customer happy enough. If this is how it ends up working, then I'd gladly trade standing in long lines at the store for just walking out and reviewing my purchases later. The tracking part is still a bit creepy, though.
- bonoboTP 7y ago
  > quickly flagging anything that seems off Do you memorize all the time whether you grabbed two or three bags of chips or exactly how many cans of beer etc? How do you prove you didn't buy something? Or will they just accept your word? If anyone can just say whatever, then people will just ask for refunds of stuff. Will they check the footage in each case? But maybe it can work in the US. It sure as hell won't work in many other countries, where people look for loopholes all the time.
  - balls187 7y ago
    > How do you prove you didn't buy something? Or will they just accept your word? I I'd imagine it's similar to the heuristic Amazon uses today with their A-Z Customer Guarantee. If you request a lot of refunds for a single trip, or have a history of requesting refunds, your individual risk score goes up, and the hoops you jump through to get a refund increase. Also for retail grocery stores now, loss prevention is already an issue. Right now, a person can take an item off the shelve and hide it, leaving only security cameras and human personnel to watch for theft. Adding in amazon's technology would be additional layers of defense.
machiaweliczny 7y ago
They could probably add app that displays your cart live.
deanCommie 7y ago
This is the "lame - no wireless, less space than a nomad" take. Are the prices not listed on the individual items? Purchasers make decisions on a product by product basis, not based on the total. How often are you at the checkout and say "Wait, HOW MUCH is my bill? never mind then, going to go put some things back." Sure, it happens, but it's a 0.0001% use case. edit: OK, fair play to everyone who responded and said this is a common use case if you're poor. Not sure how relevant the food stamps argument is here, since this is an automatic pay and checkout system. But, remember - this requires a credit card and an app. As you put things in your basket, your app shopping cart is also updated, and you can track your running tally.
- pjmorris 7y ago
  I'm more concerned about whether the store system gets my order right than whether I do. What if it, e.g., mistakes a can of soda for a 12-pack? Three hundred times on the order?
  - mentat 7y ago
    That would be very unlikely and easily reversed based on video data.
    - thfuran 7y ago
      >That would be very unlikely Would it? >easily reversed based on video data That suggests a level of effort from multiple parties well in excess of the typical "look at item; look at receipt"
      - miguelrochefort 7y ago
        Given that the exact timestamp of when the system thinks an item is picked up is known, it should be trivial to review a 5-second clip and flag it as correct or not, training the ML model at the same time.
  - noahtallen 7y ago
lstamour 7y ago
Having used Amazon Go once as a tourist, it was frictionless only because of the Amazon app. You can scan the app instead of a credit card (your card is already linked to Amazon for payment), and when you leave the app tells you what you bought. In my case it thought I bought a drink when all I did was browse the options, so when I saw this in the app, I deleted the drink from the receipt by saying I didn’t get one, and it corrected the receipt without any human interaction that I could see. The app was essential for me to go back, otherwise I’d assume the system was inaccurate and not worth the trouble.
- danShumway 7y ago
  But, and I know I'm apparently in a minority here... I don't want an app for my grocery store. I do my shopping spread between 4 different grocery stores depending where in the area I'm closest to, what specifically I need, etc.. and I don't want an app for any of them. I already get pestered about loyalty cards, now I'm going to get pestered about installing my local Rite-Aid's mobile app?
  - filoleg 7y ago
    It doesn't even need to be a special app, it could just be another Apple Wallet/Android Wallet card. If you tried the Amazon Go app, it is literally just an app that displays a QR code that you use to scan when entering the store. That's literally it, no notifications, no other extra functionality, nothing. As soon as Apple Wallet/Android Wallet integrate it, it will become even more seamless. A good example for people familiar with electric car charing is the ChargePoint integration. I have the app, but I never open it, and I don't even really need it (as I only use it for rare circumstances where I am in an unknown area and need to find a charging spot asap). Whenever I want to charge my car at a ChargePoint station, I just open up the ChargePoint card in Apple Wallet, NFC scan it, and that's it. It already knows that the ChargePoint card is associated with my account, so I can later open the app and see how charged my car is, what's the charging rate at the moment, my billing history, etc. If I don't have the app, I can check it on the web just as well.
    - 7y ago
zaidf 7y ago
I’d expect amazon to email you a receipt with an easy way to dispute payments. I realize this is not the same as seeing the aggregate cost at the time of purchase but I’m skeptical this alone will create lots of friction in ppl adopting this. To me, the biggest thing that has kept me from trying it is that I need to open my app and scan a QR code. Looks like they’re addressing this by left you swipe your card.
Aeolun 7y ago
I think that is only problematic the first 5 times or so? After that you’ll likely trust the tech. I’m sure they have a ‘you charged me incorrectly’ resolution service as well.
takeda 7y ago
That's the point of this technology - to increase impulse buying. Credit cards purpose is that it hides from you how much money you have left. If you were paying in cash and see how much money you have left in your wallet, you're more likely end up not purchasing a given item. This is one step further, since you now don't know how much you're paying (unless you calculating the cost in your head, which most people don't do) and typically you'll know once you get a CC statement. Note that the kiosk doesn't print the receipt, it e-mails it, which makes it even harder to instantly see what you've paid.
- ajkjk 7y ago
  Well, that's one of the points. Another point is to not pay for cashiers or have checkout lines.
  - hamandcheese 7y ago
    Not to mention all the data to be mined.
    - miguelrochefort 7y ago
      Already mined by all stores.
  - asdff 7y ago
    You won't have to pay for cashiers but you will have to still pay for people stocking, security when people inevitably try and beat this system, customer service for when old people without cellphones get confused, etc. Maybe you shave off one minimum wage worker off your payroll, for the cost of however much amazon licenses this tech to you.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
julienb_sea 7y ago
I mean, you do it a single time and your email is registered. Just like square. This is standard practice at this point and the inconvenience factor is eliminated pretty much immediately.
Dunedan 7y ago
> My biggest problem with this is that from what I can tell, the only way to know how much you're going to be automatically charged (as well as what items the tech thinks you're purchasing), is to go to a kiosk in the store and get a receipt. You only need to use the kiosk once per credit card (to enter your e-mail address). From the page: > If shoppers need a receipt, they can visit a kiosk in the store and enter their email address. A receipt will be emailed to them for this trip. If they use the same credit card to enter this or any other Just Walk Out-enabled store in the future, a receipt will be emailed to them automatically.
ramon 7y ago
If I was the owner of the Store I would put a security guy to validate that it was paíd, if not then don’t let them put of the Store. I’m a tech guy but if it was my store I would like to double check somehow. From a security perspective it’s great to only let people in with credit and also I would be able to somehow track who was trying to do something wrong.
roel_v 7y ago
You'll do that the first 5 times, then start to feel OK with it, and not do it any more. I felt the same about ordering fruit & veg for home delivery. Nowadays I don't even think about it any more, except when people who don't get groceries delivered say they don't trust they won't get the wilted ones.

thinkling 7y ago

When I've used to Amazon Go store, it has usually taken a while for the app to update with a receipt. Last time I went to the new, bigger store it was about an hour before they had the receipt available.

throwaway3157 7y ago
> When I've used to Amazon Go store, My receipt was in the app shortly after (I walked about two blocks and checked). I think it took longer for an email to show up, but can't recall exactly
- grandmczeb 7y ago
  My experience had been that it can vary quite a bit. Most of the time it’s pretty quick, but occasionally it can be over an hour.
  - sgc 7y ago
    Maybe that is a person verifying because the software flagged something as uncertain.
    - grandmczeb 7y ago
      Very possible.
    - dodobirdlord 7y ago
      More likely, there's a work queue and sometimes it gets a bit backed up or falls a little behind while autoscaling resources kick in. Having fully dedicated capacity for something that's handled asynchronously, fluctuates with time, and can tolerate many minutes of processing delay would be a waste of money.
      - sgc 7y ago
        It's Amazon, to me it seems more likely they are tuning their ML with human input than they somehow need an hour to spin up AWS for their shiny new baby.
  - hamandcheese 7y ago
    Maybe they use spot instances for all the compute.

egdod 7y ago

Grabbing a receipt at a kiosk is a lot quicker than manually scanning your items. My main problem with this is how invasively creepy it all is.

njarboe 7y ago
Yes. Amazon will know every item you buy, how much, and when. But not much different than grocery store discount cards already used by most everyone for decades. I'm sure that info is sold, traded around, and aggregated.
- bonoboTP 7y ago
  They will have data on how people walk around the stores, in what order, what shelves they look at, what items they take off and put back. What they put back and rather take as an alternative instead. How long they ponder before picking an item. Etc. etc. so much data to mine for advertisers and marketers to manipulate people into spending more.
- egdod 7y ago
  Yeah, and I don't use grocery discount cards either. But doing it via camera gives a ton of data beyond just what I buy and when.
  - njarboe 7y ago
    Grocery stores also use cameras to see how customers behave. I have not heard of them connecting them to face recognition systems, but I would not be surprised if they do. I agree that this is another increase in the invasion of privacy that will probably end in a bad place. We need laws to prevent these systems, not just a few people holding on to scraps of privacy with desperate measures, like not buying a new car.

stronglikedan 7y ago

I'm sure the items have posted prices, so it would really be simple math that could be done in one's head.

SamuelAdams 7y ago
In the United States taxes are not included on the sticker price. As a result adding up the total price of a purchase can be tricky. However, I don't think this technology will be used extensively by people who purchase a large quantity of products at a time. Instead, this will be catered to the times when someone needs to pick up 5 or less things at a store. In this instance, these customers are not typically price-sensitive about what they need.
- donarb 7y ago
  In certain places, tax is not added for certain goods. For example, in Seattle food is not taxed, unless it is prepared, like fast food or deli counters.
  - tialaramex 7y ago
    This is also routine in Europe where tax is included in the advertised price. Here for example the price shown for your hilarious Xmas sweater is inclusive of tax, the price shown for your toddler's equally hilarious sweater is not, because it's tax exempt (clothing for kids isn't taxed) and so in both cases the displayed price is the price you'll pay. We added a sugar tax, so the sticker price for beverages like original Coke went up, but similar zero sugar products (Coke Zero, Pepsi Max) did not. Of course some stores just raised the before-tax price to capture the difference as profit, and others just eliminated sugary drinks. So... a mixed result. The EU's focus is that consumers always pay what the sticker price says. So, no "plus tax", no "shipping fees not included" on items that unavoidably have to be shipped to you, no "service fees" no "card fees" nothing like that. I think even if you don't actively like this, you can see the point of this approach. Would it be easier to get consumers angry about taxes if the tax wasn't "baked in" ? Maybe. But it's not as though it has proved impossible to campaign against, for example, tax on tampons or even toilet paper.

emiliobumachar 7y ago

If there are enough kiosks to avoid a line, always getting the receipt is still a huge improvement over scanning, even if it falsifies the "just walk out" bit. Another potential alternative for the anxious (and I definitely include myself) is an app showing up-to-the-second billing state on the smartphone screen. At a glance, usability issues seem hard but doable.

saber6 7y ago
> Another potential alternative for the anxious (and I definitely include myself) is an app showing up-to-the-second billing state on the smartphone screen. That sounds like an awesome idea! You just load up your cart, peek at your (account-linked) smartphone, and see what your total will before heading to your car.

grandmczeb 7y ago

Unfortunately the current system doesn’t exactly work in real time (sometimes it can take a while for a receipt to appear in the app) but I don’t think that’s a fundamental limitation. I also don’t think this is a major concern though; so long as there’s still price tags (which there are) and it’s easy to dispute mistakes in the app I don’t think most people will really have a problem with it.

jschwartzi 7y ago
If my experience with Amazon hubs is anything to go by, the store employees will not be empowered to make any decisions or help you with anything and will direct you to call the customer-service number, and the customer-service people will not be empowered to fix any pricing errors on the spot.
- grandmczeb 7y ago
  That hasn’t been my experience actually going to one of these stores.
withinboredom 7y ago
I think the price tag only makes sense when tax is included on them. Things are taxed differently in different places, and sometimes people are tax exempt (in the US). But without the tax on the price tag, it’s literally impossible to know how much you’re going to pay (this is why I love living in the EU).
- grandmczeb 7y ago
  1) “literally impossible” is obviously untrue. 2) Sales tax is <10% basically everywhere. Unless you’re paying in cash, this isn’t a real problem.

tialaramex 7y ago

The closest I have to this today is the grocery store nearest me - I walk in, I pick up a scanner (you can use an app on your phone but I use their scanner because my phone locks immediately with a passphrase when unused so it's ghastly for this purpose) and I just wander about scanning items and putting them into bags. The scanner shows its estimate of the price paid, which in my experience is always 100% accurate but I guess "estimate" is needed because legally the shop is not promising to sell at this price yet. I walk to the exit and scan the exit and give back the scanner, it tells me the final price which is the same as that estimate and then I pay with my card and walk out. This is still extra steps compared to "Just walk out" but it's close. There is no interaction with store employees (which suits some friends who struggle to do human interaction on "bad" days) for example, this store would seem to work just fine without any employees although of course it's a huge grocery store so it has dozens doing various things and couldn't in fact function without some. The really nice optimisation of course is to get rid of the money. If you stop caring about trying to make the numbers add up and just rely on people going "Huh, I only need two cabbages, why would I take sixty cabbages? What am I going to do with sixty cabbages?" then this is all much simpler. But I think even Amazon doesn't expect to deploy this to a culture where that's realistic.

ascagnel_ 7y ago
When I last used one of those systems, I found it to be reliable, as you said. And to keep people honest, they'd randomly pick shoppers to go through a regular checkout, which is both understandable and annoying. It also made it super easy to bag groceries.
- wojciii 7y ago
  I used something like this deployed to Coop stores in Denmark. It's a nightmare to use and the random check pissed me off enough so I deleted the app and decided never to use it again. Try shopping with a little kid and using one hand on your phone and being randomly checked when there are 20 people waiting before you. This is not working in the current version of the technology.
wingworks 7y ago

bytematic 7y ago

No way does that completely defeat the convenience. To just walk up and put your email in, is even much easier than ordering at kiosks at something like mcdonalds

nimblegorilla 7y ago

> I wouldn't feel comfortable just walking out without knowing how much I'm going to be charged, so this tech is essentially useless to me. I'm sure they can make an app for that.

maest 7y ago
I am not sure they can make an app for that. For one, there's usually a delay before you get your receipt.

miguelrochefort 7y ago

They could easily put a screen next to the exit that shows you what you purchased when you walk to it.

mithr 7y ago

As long as the process for getting refunds is frictionless and well-implemented (perhaps similar to Prime Now), then if you can afford holding the charge on your credit card for a few days, this doesn't really seem like a problem. The process becomes: go to the store, pick up what you want, and then at some later point take a quick look at the "receipt" for verification, quickly flagging anything that seems off. With Prime Now, you get your groceries delivered and pay for them in advance. Once in a while, you don't get an item, get the wrong item, a rotten piece of fruit, or an expired bottle of milk. When this happens, you simply go to the app where every item is listed, and follow the quick prompts to get a refund. You can optionally give a reason for asking, but in my experience they don't actually seem to care; in fact, whenever I've left a comment that, for example, one of the ten oranges I ordered was bad, they've always refunded me for _all_ the oranges on my order. I assume this is because the number of refunds is low enough relative to the number of purchases that they can afford to just always refund, keeping the customer happy enough. If this is how it ends up working, then I'd gladly trade standing in long lines at the store for just walking out and reviewing my purchases later. The tracking part is still a bit creepy, though.

bonoboTP 7y ago
> quickly flagging anything that seems off Do you memorize all the time whether you grabbed two or three bags of chips or exactly how many cans of beer etc? How do you prove you didn't buy something? Or will they just accept your word? If anyone can just say whatever, then people will just ask for refunds of stuff. Will they check the footage in each case? But maybe it can work in the US. It sure as hell won't work in many other countries, where people look for loopholes all the time.
- balls187 7y ago
  > How do you prove you didn't buy something? Or will they just accept your word? I I'd imagine it's similar to the heuristic Amazon uses today with their A-Z Customer Guarantee. If you request a lot of refunds for a single trip, or have a history of requesting refunds, your individual risk score goes up, and the hoops you jump through to get a refund increase. Also for retail grocery stores now, loss prevention is already an issue. Right now, a person can take an item off the shelve and hide it, leaving only security cameras and human personnel to watch for theft. Adding in amazon's technology would be additional layers of defense.

machiaweliczny 7y ago

They could probably add app that displays your cart live.

deanCommie 7y ago

This is the "lame - no wireless, less space than a nomad" take. Are the prices not listed on the individual items? Purchasers make decisions on a product by product basis, not based on the total. How often are you at the checkout and say "Wait, HOW MUCH is my bill? never mind then, going to go put some things back." Sure, it happens, but it's a 0.0001% use case. edit: OK, fair play to everyone who responded and said this is a common use case if you're poor. Not sure how relevant the food stamps argument is here, since this is an automatic pay and checkout system. But, remember - this requires a credit card and an app. As you put things in your basket, your app shopping cart is also updated, and you can track your running tally.

pjmorris 7y ago
I'm more concerned about whether the store system gets my order right than whether I do. What if it, e.g., mistakes a can of soda for a 12-pack? Three hundred times on the order?
- mentat 7y ago
  That would be very unlikely and easily reversed based on video data.
  - thfuran 7y ago
    >That would be very unlikely Would it? >easily reversed based on video data That suggests a level of effort from multiple parties well in excess of the typical "look at item; look at receipt"
    - miguelrochefort 7y ago
      Given that the exact timestamp of when the system thinks an item is picked up is known, it should be trivial to review a 5-second clip and flag it as correct or not, training the ML model at the same time.
- noahtallen 7y ago

lstamour 7y ago

Having used Amazon Go once as a tourist, it was frictionless only because of the Amazon app. You can scan the app instead of a credit card (your card is already linked to Amazon for payment), and when you leave the app tells you what you bought. In my case it thought I bought a drink when all I did was browse the options, so when I saw this in the app, I deleted the drink from the receipt by saying I didn’t get one, and it corrected the receipt without any human interaction that I could see. The app was essential for me to go back, otherwise I’d assume the system was inaccurate and not worth the trouble.

danShumway 7y ago
But, and I know I'm apparently in a minority here... I don't want an app for my grocery store. I do my shopping spread between 4 different grocery stores depending where in the area I'm closest to, what specifically I need, etc.. and I don't want an app for any of them. I already get pestered about loyalty cards, now I'm going to get pestered about installing my local Rite-Aid's mobile app?
- filoleg 7y ago
  It doesn't even need to be a special app, it could just be another Apple Wallet/Android Wallet card. If you tried the Amazon Go app, it is literally just an app that displays a QR code that you use to scan when entering the store. That's literally it, no notifications, no other extra functionality, nothing. As soon as Apple Wallet/Android Wallet integrate it, it will become even more seamless. A good example for people familiar with electric car charing is the ChargePoint integration. I have the app, but I never open it, and I don't even really need it (as I only use it for rare circumstances where I am in an unknown area and need to find a charging spot asap). Whenever I want to charge my car at a ChargePoint station, I just open up the ChargePoint card in Apple Wallet, NFC scan it, and that's it. It already knows that the ChargePoint card is associated with my account, so I can later open the app and see how charged my car is, what's the charging rate at the moment, my billing history, etc. If I don't have the app, I can check it on the web just as well.
  - 7y ago

zaidf 7y ago

I’d expect amazon to email you a receipt with an easy way to dispute payments. I realize this is not the same as seeing the aggregate cost at the time of purchase but I’m skeptical this alone will create lots of friction in ppl adopting this. To me, the biggest thing that has kept me from trying it is that I need to open my app and scan a QR code. Looks like they’re addressing this by left you swipe your card.

Aeolun 7y ago

I think that is only problematic the first 5 times or so? After that you’ll likely trust the tech. I’m sure they have a ‘you charged me incorrectly’ resolution service as well.

takeda 7y ago

That's the point of this technology - to increase impulse buying. Credit cards purpose is that it hides from you how much money you have left. If you were paying in cash and see how much money you have left in your wallet, you're more likely end up not purchasing a given item. This is one step further, since you now don't know how much you're paying (unless you calculating the cost in your head, which most people don't do) and typically you'll know once you get a CC statement. Note that the kiosk doesn't print the receipt, it e-mails it, which makes it even harder to instantly see what you've paid.

ajkjk 7y ago
Well, that's one of the points. Another point is to not pay for cashiers or have checkout lines.
- hamandcheese 7y ago
  Not to mention all the data to be mined.
  - miguelrochefort 7y ago
    Already mined by all stores.
- asdff 7y ago
  You won't have to pay for cashiers but you will have to still pay for people stocking, security when people inevitably try and beat this system, customer service for when old people without cellphones get confused, etc. Maybe you shave off one minimum wage worker off your payroll, for the cost of however much amazon licenses this tech to you.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

julienb_sea 7y ago

I mean, you do it a single time and your email is registered. Just like square. This is standard practice at this point and the inconvenience factor is eliminated pretty much immediately.

Dunedan 7y ago

> My biggest problem with this is that from what I can tell, the only way to know how much you're going to be automatically charged (as well as what items the tech thinks you're purchasing), is to go to a kiosk in the store and get a receipt. You only need to use the kiosk once per credit card (to enter your e-mail address). From the page: > If shoppers need a receipt, they can visit a kiosk in the store and enter their email address. A receipt will be emailed to them for this trip. If they use the same credit card to enter this or any other Just Walk Out-enabled store in the future, a receipt will be emailed to them automatically.

ramon 7y ago

If I was the owner of the Store I would put a security guy to validate that it was paíd, if not then don’t let them put of the Store. I’m a tech guy but if it was my store I would like to double check somehow. From a security perspective it’s great to only let people in with credit and also I would be able to somehow track who was trying to do something wrong.

roel_v 7y ago

You'll do that the first 5 times, then start to feel OK with it, and not do it any more. I felt the same about ordering fruit & veg for home delivery. Nowadays I don't even think about it any more, except when people who don't get groceries delivered say they don't trust they won't get the wilted ones.