6 ms·

The automated system should say "weight, that can't be right". Works fairly reliably in supermarkets, especially if you allow a bigger margin of uncertainty on

by joshvm 6y ago

The automated system should say "weight, that can't be right". Works fairly reliably in supermarkets, especially if you allow a bigger margin of uncertainty on sku weight. Or verify the volume/shape - or both, like volumetric weight that shipping companies use. I'm guessing amazon has some system to automatically assign boxes based on the dimensions of stuff that's being picked.

beart 6y ago
Not all distribution centers validate weight, don't recall if Amazon does but I would be surprised if they don't. High speed scales are expensive.
- lumberingjack 6y ago
  A few people got a box of rocks instead of a $4k camera awhile back, one guy got two boxes of rocks after returning the first.
- joshvm 6y ago
  Thinking about this more, I'm surprised this couldn't be caught when the items got delivered to Amazon. I find it extremely unlikely that a picking robot accidentally found an item with the same barcode if they weren't already in the wrong place. Seems like when the items arrived at the fulfilment centre, they got mis-scanned and ended up comingled. Presumably that's the stage where you can check weight and volume - eg does this item fit with the known dimensions. This check must be made somewhere otherwise people wouldn't bother returning high value electronics with rocks inside (presumably someone does a cursory check of weight before the inventory gets comingled again).
  - michaelt 6y ago
    It's not unusual for warehouses to deal with items with multiple barcodes. For a technology example, you might get a network card with a UPC barcode, but also a MAC address barcode, and a manufacturer's part number barcode. A wholesaler/ manufacturer sells boxes of 20 items to resellers? The outer box will have a barcode. That box got sent by courier? Three barcodes on some mailing labels. So at a goods-in station, the usual response to "multiple barcodes, some don't make sense" is "Keep trying until you find one that does make sense"
    - myself248 6y ago
      Those multiple barcodes also confuse the crap out of self-check-out stations. Once it picks up on the wrong one, it throws a fault that the attendant has to come back out of, so you can't just back out scan the right one. What baffles me is that the store/software can't build a dictionary of "known misdirection" barcodes, like "this is the shipping carton not the product itself, fault and tell the user to rescan, but don't just lock up" when they're seen.
      - beart 6y ago
        Scanners in distribution centers contain a barcode hierarchy that filter out unused barcode types. For example, after something has been picked, a UPS label might be applied to it. Subsequent scanners will be programmed to only read either the internal routing label or the UPS label (or both and let the software handle it). The scanners in supermarkets are made by the same companies and I would assume run on the same software. However, it might be more difficult to ensure a specific type of barcode is used on 100% of products in the store. So if you see the scanner picking up the wrong barcode at the check-out aisle, it is most likely either the scanner is not programmed correctly, or the scanned barcode is the same type as a valid barcode used somewhere else in the building. As far as handling faults, that would probably be done on the POS system, not the scanner itself. The scanner software is perfectly capable of handling errors in different ways (for example, sending a specific code to indicate two different non-matching barcodes were read in the same pass), but from a functional standpoint, the scanner is 'dumb'.
j7ake 6y ago
Weight can easily be gamed by adding a bag of water. Verifying shape would be difficult without knowing what to expect beforehand, but can also be gamed. You won’t get the precision of supermarket weighting if you are dealing with diverse restaurants with a dynamic menu.
- 0xffff2 6y ago
  Unless I'm missing something, this thread is talking about the automated system making a mistake on its own. No one is trying to game the system.
hrktb 6y ago
> Works fairly reliably in supermarkets No it doesn’t. Not just because they can be badly calibrated, but also because the range of weight they have to deal with must make it hard to manage any sane range. The only SCO I’ve seen doing a decent job at dealing with weight use a binary check (“was there any product at all added to the to total weight of the basket ?”) and they still miss products like lollipops or anything too light to pass the range. Sure much more reliable system could be built, especially at Amazon’s engineering scale. But so far supermarkets are mediocre at best at this game.
- Kiro 6y ago
  Works great in any supermarket I've been to with a self-scanning systems and that's been the standard in my country for many years now.
  - mnd999 6y ago
    “Unexpected item in bagging a area” gets me every time.
    - user5994461 6y ago
      Same. Have to have a clerk unlock the machine 3 times on bad days. It feels like the shop doesn't want me to shop there.
    - Kiro 6y ago
      It used to be like that the first couple of years but the newer systems never give me that and feel very accurate.
      - VBprogrammer 6y ago
        I used to pickup lunch from Tesco most days. Occasionally you'd find one item that must have been weighed wrongly at the input stage. It would cause an issue every time you checked out. Usually got fixed within a couple of days. I wonder if they built in correlation of items which on a mis-weighed basket.
wnissen 6y ago
I just had a package from Amazon that literally weighed less than the product that was supposed to be in it. I peeled off the shipping label and found another one underneath that was labeled "weight error". Someone had apparently intercepted it, overridden whatever check was going on, and sent it out anyway. Weirdly, Amazon still made me mail back the underweight one (I would happily have paid the correct amount for the smaller quantity to save the trouble of remailing) and a few days later sent out the correct one. You'd think in this case they have a record of the actual weight of the package and could sort things out instantly, but apparently not.
- crystalPalace 6y ago
  A couple of months ago Amazon shipped me a completely empty, sealed envelope labeled as 1 pound. At least Amazon support immediately shipped me the correct item.

by joshvm 6y ago

beart 6y ago

Not all distribution centers validate weight, don't recall if Amazon does but I would be surprised if they don't. High speed scales are expensive.

lumberingjack 6y ago
A few people got a box of rocks instead of a $4k camera awhile back, one guy got two boxes of rocks after returning the first.
joshvm 6y ago
Thinking about this more, I'm surprised this couldn't be caught when the items got delivered to Amazon. I find it extremely unlikely that a picking robot accidentally found an item with the same barcode if they weren't already in the wrong place. Seems like when the items arrived at the fulfilment centre, they got mis-scanned and ended up comingled. Presumably that's the stage where you can check weight and volume - eg does this item fit with the known dimensions. This check must be made somewhere otherwise people wouldn't bother returning high value electronics with rocks inside (presumably someone does a cursory check of weight before the inventory gets comingled again).
- michaelt 6y ago
  It's not unusual for warehouses to deal with items with multiple barcodes. For a technology example, you might get a network card with a UPC barcode, but also a MAC address barcode, and a manufacturer's part number barcode. A wholesaler/ manufacturer sells boxes of 20 items to resellers? The outer box will have a barcode. That box got sent by courier? Three barcodes on some mailing labels. So at a goods-in station, the usual response to "multiple barcodes, some don't make sense" is "Keep trying until you find one that does make sense"
  - myself248 6y ago
    Those multiple barcodes also confuse the crap out of self-check-out stations. Once it picks up on the wrong one, it throws a fault that the attendant has to come back out of, so you can't just back out scan the right one. What baffles me is that the store/software can't build a dictionary of "known misdirection" barcodes, like "this is the shipping carton not the product itself, fault and tell the user to rescan, but don't just lock up" when they're seen.
    - beart 6y ago
      Scanners in distribution centers contain a barcode hierarchy that filter out unused barcode types. For example, after something has been picked, a UPS label might be applied to it. Subsequent scanners will be programmed to only read either the internal routing label or the UPS label (or both and let the software handle it). The scanners in supermarkets are made by the same companies and I would assume run on the same software. However, it might be more difficult to ensure a specific type of barcode is used on 100% of products in the store. So if you see the scanner picking up the wrong barcode at the check-out aisle, it is most likely either the scanner is not programmed correctly, or the scanned barcode is the same type as a valid barcode used somewhere else in the building. As far as handling faults, that would probably be done on the POS system, not the scanner itself. The scanner software is perfectly capable of handling errors in different ways (for example, sending a specific code to indicate two different non-matching barcodes were read in the same pass), but from a functional standpoint, the scanner is 'dumb'.

j7ake 6y ago

Weight can easily be gamed by adding a bag of water. Verifying shape would be difficult without knowing what to expect beforehand, but can also be gamed. You won’t get the precision of supermarket weighting if you are dealing with diverse restaurants with a dynamic menu.

0xffff2 6y ago
Unless I'm missing something, this thread is talking about the automated system making a mistake on its own. No one is trying to game the system.

hrktb 6y ago

> Works fairly reliably in supermarkets No it doesn’t. Not just because they can be badly calibrated, but also because the range of weight they have to deal with must make it hard to manage any sane range. The only SCO I’ve seen doing a decent job at dealing with weight use a binary check (“was there any product at all added to the to total weight of the basket ?”) and they still miss products like lollipops or anything too light to pass the range. Sure much more reliable system could be built, especially at Amazon’s engineering scale. But so far supermarkets are mediocre at best at this game.

Kiro 6y ago
Works great in any supermarket I've been to with a self-scanning systems and that's been the standard in my country for many years now.
- mnd999 6y ago
  “Unexpected item in bagging a area” gets me every time.
  - user5994461 6y ago
    Same. Have to have a clerk unlock the machine 3 times on bad days. It feels like the shop doesn't want me to shop there.
  - Kiro 6y ago
    It used to be like that the first couple of years but the newer systems never give me that and feel very accurate.
    - VBprogrammer 6y ago
      I used to pickup lunch from Tesco most days. Occasionally you'd find one item that must have been weighed wrongly at the input stage. It would cause an issue every time you checked out. Usually got fixed within a couple of days. I wonder if they built in correlation of items which on a mis-weighed basket.

wnissen 6y ago

I just had a package from Amazon that literally weighed less than the product that was supposed to be in it. I peeled off the shipping label and found another one underneath that was labeled "weight error". Someone had apparently intercepted it, overridden whatever check was going on, and sent it out anyway. Weirdly, Amazon still made me mail back the underweight one (I would happily have paid the correct amount for the smaller quantity to save the trouble of remailing) and a few days later sent out the correct one. You'd think in this case they have a record of the actual weight of the package and could sort things out instantly, but apparently not.

crystalPalace 6y ago
A couple of months ago Amazon shipped me a completely empty, sealed envelope labeled as 1 pound. At least Amazon support immediately shipped me the correct item.