• Noxy@pawb.social
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    8 hours ago

    Wow, I remember when they had a single Go store at Amazon HQ in Seattle, and it was employee only. It sure was neat as a novelty, but it doesn’t surprise me that they could never figure out the tech.

    Good riddance. These days, I more and more cherish the brief but real interactions I have with real grocery store cashiers.

    • Joelk111@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      For me, it isn’t the interactions, it’s the inconvenience of having to wait in line and either wait for a checker to scan my items or scan them myself at self checkout. I don’t mind small talk with the checker, but faster grocery trips would be awesome.

      • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        You need to ask yourself, why the rush? For me it was/is social anxiety. Hated the store. Hated shopping. Rush rush in out go go go.

        Once I worked on that, I found ways to make it much more tolerable. Now the five minutes in line are just five minutes I can play on my phone.

        • Joelk111@lemmy.world
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          38 minutes ago

          Because I’d rather be doing anything else at home that I can’t do while in line at the grocery store.

      • insaneinthemembrane@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        Stores I go to have lines for both. For me, it’s about how I didn’t want to go to the shop in the first place and I want to do as little as possible there while I listen to music on my earbuds. I also prefer to pack my stuff without someone right there… the pressure!

      • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        They already bought Whole Foods.

        Their systems for the just-walk-out technology never worked right, and they just ended up opening grocery stores in sketchy locations in an already-crowded market.

            • reddig33@lemmy.world
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              3 hours ago

              Corporations shouldn’t be allowed to donate to politicians. They can’t vote. If the ceo wants to support a candidate, make them take the money out of their own pocket.

          • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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            10 hours ago

            How did they ruin it? I don’t really shop there because I don’t want to spend eight dollars on asparagus water.

            • reddig33@lemmy.world
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              10 hours ago

              A lot of quality merch is no longer carried. Their deli and premade fridges are poorer quality now. I used to stop by there to pick up a healthy lunch from time to time. Not anymore.

              Employees have complained online about working conditions being more like an Amazon warehouse now than a grocery store.

        • Drusas@fedia.io
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          9 hours ago

          What sketchy locations? I’m guessing by your name that you’re in Seattle. I live in Seattle. There are no sketchy places here.

          They never did work well, though, that’s true. It was more awkward than just paying normally.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      Did they ever get it to be actual AI?

      Last time I heard about it they were just paying very low wages to people in India to watch everyone on webcams or something stupid

      • JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        It was more accurately described as computer vision at the time, but your memory is right. They wanted to get to 5% of sales being human reviewed, but it was more like 70%.

        What’s funny about Amazon’s efforts for Just Walk Out is that checkout free shopping already existed. Simply by letting customers carry a handheld scanner and payment terminal around the store with them.

        • Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world
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          8 hours ago

          I miss those hand scanners. I used to shoplift ~$50 worth of veg every trip. I wish I could get away with just burning Kroger to the ground, but that was all I could manage at the time.

        • wjrii@lemmy.world
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          9 hours ago

          7-11 theoretically already has it for their app; you scan with your phone and pay with Apple or Google Pay. The only thing is that you’re supposed to sort of wave the completed transaction at the cashier as you go, but the only reason you’d really need to use portable self-checkout is if the cashier is busy, and when they’re busy they don’t want you breaking in line or to stop what they’re doing to see that you’re showing them a plausibly legitimate checkout screen.

          In a completely, utterly, definitely unrelated story, I got accused of shoplifting by a 7-11 cashier the other day.

        • Drusas@fedia.io
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          9 hours ago

          It seems like it would work better to build the scanning tech into baskets/carts.

          • JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world
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            7 hours ago

            That could work also, but not all shops have carts, and people don’t always need a basket. It’s common enough to scan things and pop them directly into a bag you brought, skipping the need for a basket altogether.

  • Drusas@fedia.io
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    9 hours ago

    I went into the Amazon Fresh store to make a return once and decided to check it out. The store looked like a regular grocery store, except there was almost nobody in it. Everyone there was for returns and pickup orders.

    Also, as you might expect, it had only the most popular versions of the most commonly consumed products. It was like a caricature of an American grocery store.

  • yonderbarn@lazysoci.al
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    9 hours ago

    I relied on Amazon Fresh deliveries during the pandemic. While convenient, after using them a few times I realized they have poor produce quality and a very limited selection of premium brands.