Amazon Go: the cashier-less convenience store

[jakeroot]

And I do not have any cell phone service and I never will....As for Amazon, I am boycotting it.

With that kind of attitude, I wouldn't exactly describe you as this store's target audience. Respectfully, I doubt anyone would care.

[Bruce]

An update to an old thread:

Obviously Amazon's plan to scale this concept up nationally hasn't quite worked out due to the pandemic, and they are now closing some stores in Seattle for a number of reasons. Their stubborn refusal to open stores on weekends really hurt the thing, since it would be amazing being able to bypass the crowded convenience stores in downtown during a major weekend event (such as last weekend's Pride).

They have been rolling out the same tech in their larger Amazon Fresh stores, as well as stadiums and airports. Those last two are really good use cases for the technology, since getting people out fast for turnover is really important. Watched a good line of soccer fans get through a "just walk out" booth at Lumen Field a while ago in mere minutes during half-time, ready to go back to their seats in time for kickoff. Hard to do that with a traditional cashier setup.

[jakeroot]

Before I moved, my main grocery story was the Amazon Fresh in Factoria. It was a great store, I have no complaints.

I am surprised to see that they opened an Amazon Go off Canyon Road in Puyallup. Its hours are everyday, 5:00 to 22:00. Why were the Seattle locations not open on weekends if they kept the suburban locations open 7 days per week?

[formulanone]

They have been rolling out the same tech in their larger Amazon Fresh stores, as well as stadiums and airports.

I have not yet encountered Amazon's version of an employee-less storefront, but have seen several similar concepts at airports and even at a few auto dealerships. A few airports still staff someone and it's largely a self-checkout procedure; it's nice to have the staff available if you have a less-common circumstance (for example, an airline food voucher*) or something refuses to scan, which probably leads to a lost sale.

As for the dealerships, I'm not sure how much profit they really take in at all but the busiest locations, and I'm sure there's also a good bit of shrink. For one, some people may not be aware there are charges for the snacks (some brands/locations offer lots of little freebies, some do not) while others feel the added cost of doing business means they're entitled to it. But given that customers are doing such things openly and in the eyes of other guests, society creates is own invisible and silent repelling force which means that few want to be seen as thieves for any period of time.

* Airlines now tend give you a paper chit with a credit card number on it, but with an expiration date of approximately 24-48 hours. It's not a bad idea because you can use it at your connection point as well, provided it's not too early or late.

[SectorZ]

Anyone know why all the Amazon Fresh locations in Massachusetts are becoming vaporware?

They built one in Saugus, MA which is so done there's even empty cart corrals outside, and it's been like that for a year. They even had a sign up and took it down. Billerica, MA, in the old Billerica Mall, they've been slow-walking the build of one for over a year, with most days nothing going on at it.

The media is noticing, https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2023/04/19/saugus-amazon-grocery-store-moving/

What I don't get is they said (in the link) they were stopping expansion, yet they're still working on the unfinished ones and not opening outright finished ones. It's weird behavior.

[1995hoo]

There's an Amazon Go store near the World Trade Center. I haven't been there. But I have been to an Amazon Fresh store near my house. It's not a regular stop for me because for the most part I prefer Wegmans (among other reasons, they have a much better selection of meat and fish). I go to Amazon primarily for Keurig coffee because their prices are better than Wegmans' prices and they sell larger boxes (32 K-Cups to a box instead of 12). But I also try to time it so that I go when there's a good coupon–in order to drum up business, they sometimes send out coupons for things like 20% off if you spend $40 or similar.

The special shopping carts that let you skip the checkout work pretty well and the only negative to them, in my view, is that they only accept Amazon's coupons, not manufacturers' coupons. So, for example, earlier this month I had a coupon for some amount off two pints of Ben & Jerry's. If I'd had an Amazon 20% off coupon, I could not have stacked those coupons using the special cart, although I could have gone to a cashier and used them there. I did notice on my most recent trip that they replaced all the special carts with a larger model–I guess people complained that the carts didn't hold enough stuff. The Amazon cart uses barcode scanners on the cart itself to detect what you put in the bag, and if you try to cover up the barcode to put something in without scanning it will sound an alert (the scanners detect the movement and flag an "unrecognized item"). The way the cart knows you are you and what card to charge, BTW, is that you use the Amazon app to generate an in-store barcode and you scan that code using the cart's scanner. That logs you in and it charges the card you have tied to your Amazon account.

Verizon Center in Washington DC has a concession "stand" that works somewhat similarly. "Stand" isn't really the right word. It's more like a concession "room" that sells only beverages (beer, soda, and water). You tap or swipe your card when you enter the room and it puts a $25 hold on your card. You then pick up what you want to buy and you simply walk out (an attendant cards you for beer if needed). A day or so later, the charge adjusts to reflect what you actually bought–conceptually similar, I suppose, to a gas station, except that they must use cameras all over the room to figure out what you're picking up because I found no barcode scanners anywhere, much less anything to tie what you pick up to your particular card. It worked correctly the two times I tried it, though.

[ET21]

We have one down the street but have yet to actually check it out