5 ms·

Amazon Fresh kills "Just Walk Out" shopping tech–it never worked

25 points by LopRabbit 3y ago

ChrisArchitect 3y ago
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39908579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39908579
bmitc 3y ago
Hardly anything Amazon touches works. They can barely deliver stuff that isn't scuffed up and damaged. Their website is terrible. Prime Video borders on almost unusable. They still sell Kindles without USB-C. Their customer service is impossible to get a hold of now, as you are blocked by an inane "AI" chatbot. I've done their Amazon Day shipping, and they just toss a bunch of heavy stuff in a big box with (literally) a single piece of paper of "packing material". I'm still a bit chaffed by the interview I had with them. They acted like their principles made everything they touch turn to gold, whereas I can't name an Amazon product that I'm impressed by the technology or even process. Amazon just does everything at scale. It's like they win 51% of the time, but since they place millions and billions of bets, they make oodles of money.
- akmittal 3y ago
  Amazon may not be best but this is being overly negative. Amazon is still growing at a decent pace(https://www.statista.com/statistics/266282/annual-net-revenue-of-amazoncom/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266282/annual-net-revenu...). AWS is thriving, Microsoft and Google are hardly able to compete with AWS. > They still sell Kindles without USB-C. Every Kindle(latest model) they sell now has USB-C even the basic one.
  - bmitc 3y ago
    I don't think it's overly negative in the sense that everything I said is basically the case. And the Kindle Oasis doesn't have USB-C. The fact that AWS might be entrenched or useful doesn't negate the general public's interaction with Amazon. They're even now actively discouraging returns. They are intentionally taking longer and longer to process returns, despite receiving items days, weeks, and even months prior to the return.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  It would be remarkable to say AWS doesn’t work.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 3y ago
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- k_roy 3y ago
  This is a fantastically myopic view on amazon. > They can barely deliver stuff that isn't scuffed up and damaged. Get probably a dozen orders every week that are just fine > Prime Video borders on almost unusable. Umm, okay. Never had this problem. > They still sell Kindles without USB-C. Kindle oasis eh? >> Currently unavailable. >> We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock. > Their customer service is impossible to get a hold of now, as you are blocked by an inane "AI" chatbot. I've done their Amazon Day shipping, and they just toss a bunch of heavy stuff in a big box with (literally) a single piece of paper of "packing material". Never really had this problem. Though when I've gotten an underpacked delivery they've fixed it. > I'm still a bit chaffed by the interview I had with them. They acted like their principles made everything they touch turn to gold, whereas I can't name an Amazon product that I'm impressed by the technology or even process. Did this really happen? Because there are a whole lot of reasons to hate Amazon, but EC2 really isn't one of them. And Amazon is a literal career springboard for everyone I've known. To add to this, I made it all the way through the Canonical process. Which was a bit more involved than being “chaffed at a single interview”. Because if the first interview chaffs you, just wait until you get to 4 or 6. I can proudly say, I know nothing more about Canonical’s overreaching principles and process than I would have had just farting around in the news. So I believe you are full of it.
deleted 3y ago
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HlessClaudesman 3y ago
Scanning groceries is a non-problem, so the actual problem Amazon is trying to solve is: employing people. It's absolutely wild, yet unsurprising, that they tried to solve it by employing less well paid people. The Amazon future is mechanical turks all the way down.
- _nalply 3y ago
  You mean mechanical turks to train AI? Or in what way they are "all the way down"?
zoky 3y ago
The first time I went into an Amazon Go store, I was fairly impressed with how accurate it was, to the point that they knew that I had filled my cup with an Icee rather than a fountain beverage. This was notwithstanding the creepiness factor of feeling like you’re under constant surveillance. The second time I went in, I tried to game it a little bit—putting items back on shelves after a while, taking two items and putting only one in my bag and the other on the shelf, that kind of thing. They still got my purchases 100% correct. I was still fairly impressed. The most recent time I went there, I wasn’t even trying to be crafty, but they still only ended up charging me for three out of five of the things I got, and that’s when I realized that the whole thing was a facade, running on something akin to Amazon Mechanical Turk. The problem as I see it is that the technology is working at cross-purposes with itself. On the one hand, it has to tend to err in favor of undercharging, because it won’t take many false charges that customers have to dispute to turn them off from ever wanting to come back to the store again. I suspect that’s why Amazon Go has an extremely liberal return policy—In essence, say you want to return anything and they just give you your money back, no questions asked, no need to even bring the product back. On the other hand, merchants obviously aren’t in the business of giving away free stuff, so unless this technology can have insane levels of accuracy, as in at least 99.9% accurate, there’s no way it makes financial sense for other businesses to adopt it.

25 points by LopRabbit 3y ago

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39908579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39908579

Hardly anything Amazon touches works. They can barely deliver stuff that isn't scuffed up and damaged. Their website is terrible. Prime Video borders on almost unusable. They still sell Kindles without USB-C. Their customer service is impossible to get a hold of now, as you are blocked by an inane "AI" chatbot. I've done their Amazon Day shipping, and they just toss a bunch of heavy stuff in a big box with (literally) a single piece of paper of "packing material". I'm still a bit chaffed by the interview I had with them. They acted like their principles made everything they touch turn to gold, whereas I can't name an Amazon product that I'm impressed by the technology or even process. Amazon just does everything at scale. It's like they win 51% of the time, but since they place millions and billions of bets, they make oodles of money.

akmittal 3y ago
Amazon may not be best but this is being overly negative. Amazon is still growing at a decent pace(https://www.statista.com/statistics/266282/annual-net-revenue-of-amazoncom/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266282/annual-net-revenu...). AWS is thriving, Microsoft and Google are hardly able to compete with AWS. > They still sell Kindles without USB-C. Every Kindle(latest model) they sell now has USB-C even the basic one.
- bmitc 3y ago
  I don't think it's overly negative in the sense that everything I said is basically the case. And the Kindle Oasis doesn't have USB-C. The fact that AWS might be entrenched or useful doesn't negate the general public's interaction with Amazon. They're even now actively discouraging returns. They are intentionally taking longer and longer to process returns, despite receiving items days, weeks, and even months prior to the return.
fnordpiglet 3y ago
It would be remarkable to say AWS doesn’t work.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
k_roy 3y ago
This is a fantastically myopic view on amazon. > They can barely deliver stuff that isn't scuffed up and damaged. Get probably a dozen orders every week that are just fine > Prime Video borders on almost unusable. Umm, okay. Never had this problem. > They still sell Kindles without USB-C. Kindle oasis eh? >> Currently unavailable. >> We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock. > Their customer service is impossible to get a hold of now, as you are blocked by an inane "AI" chatbot. I've done their Amazon Day shipping, and they just toss a bunch of heavy stuff in a big box with (literally) a single piece of paper of "packing material". Never really had this problem. Though when I've gotten an underpacked delivery they've fixed it. > I'm still a bit chaffed by the interview I had with them. They acted like their principles made everything they touch turn to gold, whereas I can't name an Amazon product that I'm impressed by the technology or even process. Did this really happen? Because there are a whole lot of reasons to hate Amazon, but EC2 really isn't one of them. And Amazon is a literal career springboard for everyone I've known. To add to this, I made it all the way through the Canonical process. Which was a bit more involved than being “chaffed at a single interview”. Because if the first interview chaffs you, just wait until you get to 4 or 6. I can proudly say, I know nothing more about Canonical’s overreaching principles and process than I would have had just farting around in the news. So I believe you are full of it.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

HlessClaudesman 3y ago

Scanning groceries is a non-problem, so the actual problem Amazon is trying to solve is: employing people. It's absolutely wild, yet unsurprising, that they tried to solve it by employing less well paid people. The Amazon future is mechanical turks all the way down.

_nalply 3y ago
You mean mechanical turks to train AI? Or in what way they are "all the way down"?

zoky 3y ago

The first time I went into an Amazon Go store, I was fairly impressed with how accurate it was, to the point that they knew that I had filled my cup with an Icee rather than a fountain beverage. This was notwithstanding the creepiness factor of feeling like you’re under constant surveillance. The second time I went in, I tried to game it a little bit—putting items back on shelves after a while, taking two items and putting only one in my bag and the other on the shelf, that kind of thing. They still got my purchases 100% correct. I was still fairly impressed. The most recent time I went there, I wasn’t even trying to be crafty, but they still only ended up charging me for three out of five of the things I got, and that’s when I realized that the whole thing was a facade, running on something akin to Amazon Mechanical Turk. The problem as I see it is that the technology is working at cross-purposes with itself. On the one hand, it has to tend to err in favor of undercharging, because it won’t take many false charges that customers have to dispute to turn them off from ever wanting to come back to the store again. I suspect that’s why Amazon Go has an extremely liberal return policy—In essence, say you want to return anything and they just give you your money back, no questions asked, no need to even bring the product back. On the other hand, merchants obviously aren’t in the business of giving away free stuff, so unless this technology can have insane levels of accuracy, as in at least 99.9% accurate, there’s no way it makes financial sense for other businesses to adopt it.