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Walmart Wants To Deliver Groceries Straight To Your Fridge (consumerist.com)
New submitter Rick Schumann writes: Walmart has a new marketing idea: "Going to the store? No one has time for that anymore," Walmart says. They want to partner with a company called August Home, who makes smart locks, so a delivery service can literally deliver groceries right into your refrigerator -- while you watch remotely on your phone. Great, time-saving idea, or super-creepy invasion of your privacy? You decide. Here's how the company says it would work:
1. Place an order on Walmart.com for groceries or other goods.
2. A driver for Deliv -- a same-day delivery service -- retrieves items when the order is ready, and brings them to the customer's home.
3. If no one answers, the delivery person can use a one-time passcode that's been pre-authorized by the customer to open the home's smart lock.
4. The customer receives a smartphone notification when the delivery is occurring, and can choose to watch it all play out in real-time on home security cameras through a dedicated app.
5. Delivery person leaves packages in the foyer, then brings the groceries to the kitchen, unloads them into the fridge, and leaves.
6. Customer receives notification that the door has locked behind them.
1. Place an order on Walmart.com for groceries or other goods.
2. A driver for Deliv -- a same-day delivery service -- retrieves items when the order is ready, and brings them to the customer's home.
3. If no one answers, the delivery person can use a one-time passcode that's been pre-authorized by the customer to open the home's smart lock.
4. The customer receives a smartphone notification when the delivery is occurring, and can choose to watch it all play out in real-time on home security cameras through a dedicated app.
5. Delivery person leaves packages in the foyer, then brings the groceries to the kitchen, unloads them into the fridge, and leaves.
6. Customer receives notification that the door has locked behind them.
Delivery driver, making minimum wage and being treated like shit by Wal-mart, then tells his friends about the shit he saw in your house and 3 months later you get robbed. No thank you. What the fuck are these companies thinking and how fucking lazy are people? I'd only allow this if I was rich as fuck and had hired help to do this. Which at that point, they would be my employee, well compensated and not some untrustworthy Wal-mart meth head employee. But then the rich have been doing this for centuries already.
Smart locks are exactly the opposite too. If it's connected to the internet, it's hackable. End of story. Not to mention, a simple kick and the door opens anyway.
What about pets? Will they make sure to keep the door closed so the cat or dog doesn't bolt? Will they refuse to enter the house if there are pets?
What about grabbing something small in the fridge or elsewhere in the house? Does everyone have 360 degree surveillance in every room of their house now?
What about disputing the purchase if you don't get the things you bought? Something missing, wrong items etc.?
What about delivery guys taking pictures with their phones while they're in your house to, off the top of my head, either shame you on the net for old appliances, dirty dishes in the sink etc., or maybe to plan a future burglary now that they have ACCESS TO YOUR HOUSE to look around?
What about just doing your grocery shopping yourself? Is the world really so stressed now we can't do that?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Wow, I would never let an unknown person have unsupervised access to my home. Especially someone employed by Walmart.
Aside from all the new security issues that are opened up by generating one time access to a digital lock, doesn't this raise all sorts of red flags for people?
What happens when law enforcement decides that they want to sneak in an poke around? We going to have another of situations where they can make it fly just because the Supreme Court hasn't gotten around to pointing out that it isn't legal just because it is novel, like we have with feds intercepting internet and phone data?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
...something like Costco. I remember Amazon Fresh in LA and all their dry-ice totes and such. They can't compete with something like Costco doing that. They need a warehouse with freezers for perishables etc. just like Costco. But unlike Costco, Amazon then pays to have delivery fleet take inventory from warehouse to customer. Costco, on the other hand, has the customer PAYING A YEARLY SUBSCRIPTION to wander into the warehouse and do the delivery part for Costco on their own dime and time. Going to take pretty fancy drone to beat Costco at that game.
What I do when shopping for food is a) I decide on what I want to cook and eat. This is based on what is fresh, looks good, is in season and generally appeals to me. And b) it is low-stress time that I take off from all other things and concerns. The last thing I want is for this to be taken away and automatized. May as well automatize away going for a walk. This is seriously messed up.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
We participated in a test market of this concept in 2003. Place order online, food arrives direct from the distribution center in refrigerated truck next day - friendly service man puts on paper booties so as not to mark up your floor and delivers the groceries straight into your kitchen - letting themselves in is a new twist, but otherwise the same concept.
It could work, I feel like the grocery chain we trialed with aborted the program because it would have lessened their brick and mortar presence in the market area - potentially stunting their growth. The charge per order back then was $10 - on a $300 or $400 order of groceries, I'd say that's more than worth it.
I think WalMart will abort the program because they'll lose "K-Mart effect" tack-on sales. Go to the store for milk and juice enough times and most people will end up also buying a $50 lego set for the kids, a $60 PS4 title, a new HD tv set, and a couple of potted plants for the balcony.
No way ever will I do this.
Feeding a vegan family of six, for starters.
"A fucking database" indeed.
What about the fact that all this is unnecessary if you put a secured, padlocked cool box (possibly even one with active cooling) outside your door and let them put the groceries in that? It's probably a lot cheaper than installing a smart lock plus video surveillance throughout your house and has no security implications. It might not keep them cool all day in the summer but if you arrange delivery for a 3-hour window before you return home it should do fine. Milk used to be delivered door-to-door in the UK and it was fine for an hour or so with zero refrigeration or insulation.
Of course this solution does not involve high tech locks, flying drones, autonomous delivery trucks or robots so it's clearly less amazon-y but who knows, perhaps it might work?
Awesome, another IoT network I can hack and use for spying upon people!
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Let me get this straight:
You want me to let Walmart employees ( who are among the lowest paid workers there are ) into my home which is full of things that might be of financial interest to such a person ? Are you insane ? Even WITH live camera surveillance, not a fucking chance.
This is a burglars wet dream. Get inside, take a peek to see if anything is worth the trouble and come back later ( or get your buddies to do it for alibi reasons ).
As for the " smart lock ", more nope on that. If you haven't learned anything else, you need to learn that if it's internet connected, it's a security issue waiting to happen.
I've hired maid services, contractors, plumbers, electricians, appliance delivery guys, dog sitters, plant waterers, and I'm sure many others - all of whom I've let into my house while I'm not there by giving them a key (or leaving a key for them and giving them instructions as to where I left the key). I've never been ripped off, raped, or burgled as a result.
And this service is absolutely no different than what I've just described - except by giving them a key to the lock, they could technically make a copy (or just take the key), and come back and rape, murder, and burgle me all night long, whereas with this, I'm able to see them enter, see them leave, and know that they can't get back into the house because they had a one-use code that allowed them in.
Seems like it's an improvement on a system that largely works just fine already without all the safeguards you think you need. Perhaps the issue is that you don't know how to hire reliable, reputable people to perform these services for you, while other people do.
Look, this isn't an argument.