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Amazon Unveils 'Self-driving' Brick-and-Mortar Convenience Store (seattletimes.com)
Amazon announced Monday it has built a convenience store in downtown Seattle that deploys a gaggle of technologies similar to those used in self-driving cars to allow shoppers to come in, grab items and walk out without going through a register (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternate source). From a report on Seattle Times: The 1,800 square-foot store, officially dubbed "Amazon Go," is the latest beach in brick-and-mortar retail stormed by the e-commerce giant, which already has bookstores and is working on secretive drive-through grocery locations. It's clearly a sign that Amazon sees a big opportunity in revolutionizing the staid traditions of Main Street commerce. Located on the corner of Seventh Avenue and Blanchard Street, the store is open to Amazon employees participating in a testing program. It is expected to be open to the public in early 2017.
The people at the self-checkout registers are there when the machine (or customer) screws up, or when there is some exception which requires human interaction (ie. the self-checkout register can't currently measure a length of wire, for example, and charge the correct amount per foot).
You can steal something anywhere in a store. I'm not sure why you'd do it at a register (there's more cameras in this area than anywhere else, to prevent theft of cash by employees).
You can steal something anywhere in a store. I'm not sure why you'd do it at a register (there's more cameras in this area than anywhere else, to prevent theft of cash by employees).
Plausible deniability*.
You go to the bakery section and self select a bunch of expensive pastries and place them in the non-seethrough (provided by the bakery) bag and then proceed to the self-service checkout. At that location you punch in the code for a much cheaper pastry. They system only works on a weight basis and accepts your code. So you get an instant discount that amounts to theft. Plus if you actually get caught (unlikely) you can easily blame the error on confusion in selecting the correct product at the register.
* Not that I would advocate stealing or that my knowledge of this loophole is anything but theoretical /s
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The most common jobs for Females in the US is Retail Cashier. The most common jobs for Males in the US is driver. Amazon is coming out with a store which doesnt need cashiers and Google is coming out with a truck which doesnt need drivers.
Just what are people with only high school supposed to do? This is not Europe where govt pays for you to go to college. Many poor families cannot afford college and need jobs which can be done with a high school education.
If this goes on the govt. will have to fund college including a living stipend while people made redundant go back to college to learn skills for the new economy.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Over here in the UK all that is plausible but the customer would still risk the public embarrassment. At Tesco supermarkets, about 1 in every 4 times I use the "Scan as you shop" portable device I get a random check at the till.
It's still practical shopping: I take one bag into the shop, scan the barcodes as I pick the products and use a specific group of tills (usually less busy) without having to take the stuff out of the bag. If I get delayed by the "random check" it's their staff that has to unpack and pack my items again. Not a huge problem for anyone involved.
The scan as a you shop is for registered shoppers only, so it would be silly to try fraud after scanning the loyalty card that links the products to your address and identity. Non-registered shoppers using the self-checkout tills possibly get more attention and more sensitive scales to be sure that the 100 grammes of cheap pastry is not really 102 grammes of expensive pastry or cheese.
I was behind a YOUNG couple at a self checkout in a grocery store. She had TWO items. She scanned the item and it didn't work, then she scanned it 3 more times before it took. Then she LAYS IT BACK on the rubber mat. Scans the 2nd item and of course the machine started complaining about it not being correct. You have to place it IN the sack because that is how it knows. The WEIGHT determines it. When you scan an object, it knows the weight. After she scanned the 2nd item and then placed both in the sack, she sits her purse on the table too. It's starts complaining again. She picks it up, inserts her chipped card, and pulls it out and then inserts it again. I'm sitting there just shaking my head. She then plays with her phone, shows something to her boyfriend and by this time I'm thinking about saying something, but from their youth, and they were wearing college clothes I was thinking if I said something, they would have to run off to their safe space. It amazes me that kids that should be "connected" with all of this tech had that much trouble with a self check out. My mom is in her 80's and handles this stuff like no ones business.
So I'm going to be a naysayer here (and yes I watched the video)
1. How do you control age restricted materials?
By not selling them. Obviously a better choice is for everyone to stop policing their neighbors' lives, but...
2. How do you control for multiple people co-ordinating to select a complete set of goods?
By not opening the stores in high crime neighborhoods. But mostly by not worrying about it. You know who is in the store and presumably you have cameras.
3. How are they going to use the huge amount of personal information they will collect on what you buy?
Add it to the info Amazon already has on what you buy from Amazon.
4. You can't pay with cash.
Shut down Internet commerce. You can't (generally) buy things online with cash.
5. You have to have a smart phone plus the Amazon App. So it verges on "company store" mentality and all the negative connotations of "company towns"
Apparently you don't know what company stores and company towns are. Hint: it's not when there are lots of competing stores around.
6. You can't come in and browse to see if you want to shop at the location before committing.
... to download Amazon's free app.
7. How do they control for turning your phone off after entering the store (or the battery dies)?
Same way self checkout handles exception conditions.
Yes, because Europeans are inherently all honest and Americans are all t'ieves aren't we?
Self-service checkouts turn honest shoppers into thieves, warn criminologists
The study involved data from nearly 12 million shopping trips from four major British retailers as well others in the US, Belgium and Holland between 2013 and 2015
The researchers found that introducing self-checkouts raised the rate of loss by 122 per cent to an average of 3.9 per cent of turnover.
It is also difficult for retailers to identify whether a customer wilfully took items without scanning or were simply absentminded.
I'm in the US and I must plead guilty to being absentminded and "stealing" a loaf of bread once. It was very crowded and I just wanted to get the hell out of there. After I exited the store I noticed it sitting there in the lower basket of my cart (not scanned or paid for). I briefly thought about going back inside and paying for it, but then I thought of the crowds and the time it would take.
I figured I could just make it right the next time I shopped there. I never did.
I've also seen, but never taken, the opportunity to mis-enter the codes for my produce. Am I buying the expensive apples or the cheap ones? Hmmm....I could easily claim it was an honest mistake.
I don't do that because the risk is not worth the few pennies I might save. I also consider myself honest, but I guess I'm not that honest since I never made good on that loaf of bread.
And they don't always watch given that I sometimes have to track down an employee when the self-checkout thinks there's a problem. Usually they just clear the register without checking to make sure I didn't cheat.
I believe that Honesty through paranoia is a real thing. Of course sometimes they really are watching. You can never know for sure unless you try, right?
Of course that's not going to stop everyone. Even before self-checkout some people would switch price tags, barcodes or just stuff more expensive merchandise into cheaper packaging. And then there's what's called "sweethearting" where the cashier just cooperates with the thief and doesn't ring certain things up properly if at all.
Don't kid yourself. Shoplifting and other forms of theft are a real problem all over the world. There are people who actually make a living at it.
Believe it or not, one of the arguments against allowing grocery stores to sell beer is that the grocery stores (who are very eager to sell beer) would have to hire people over 21 to ring people up.
It was an absurd argument and some day we'll be able to buy beer with our groceries in my state.
This is tied to your Amazon (probably Prime) account (you can't get in otherwise). If you are a bad customer,we lock you out of your account.
And then you die a slow, unpleasant death. You have no access to bulk toothpaste and clever little bits of Chinese electronics. Not to mention movies and books that no one has ever heard of (for good reason). Or whatever else we tacked onto the Prime subscription last week (I keep forgetting just what it was).
-- All the best, Jeff.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Companies adopt self-checkout because the money they save on employee wages far outweighs the money that they lose on additional theft.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.