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Comment by jstummbillig | Hacker News Reader

I have actually had a very positive experience with cashier-less shopping – albeit not with Amazon Go and in the EU. As of now, it's been heavily benefited from never having to wait in a line (because the vast majority of people will still opt for the cashier lanes) but I actually found the UX (which in my case always included scanning of products like a cashier would) actually quite delightful and surprisingly never had any issues.

I can totally see this scaling quite nicely, considering stores will have to employ less personal, even if it it requires some additional store space, and I would be mildly surprised if cashiers were still a thing in 10 years. It increasingly seems like a job no one should be doing, in a combination of "bad for your health", "a waste of of human resources in a world where they are becoming rapidly scarce" and "boring" and I don't think they will, in the not so far future.

What are other experiences?

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Amazon Go was even more incredible than that.

Walking out without even having to deal with those pesky self-service cash register, their sometimes finicky scales, and some supermarkets’ more than annoying rules, feels like a weird magic trick.

You would just walk in, pick stuff up, and walk out. That’s it.

Each time I couldn’t help but feel like I was shoplifting.

And then the invoice came in by email, always accurate.

Truly bewildering.

Wait, you don't even have to scan your items? Are they using cameras to detect the items you grab?

Correct. It's pretty amazing when it works. I used to try and speedrun the Go store and see how fast it worked. My fastest visit was 9 seconds, receipt was 100% accurate.

Interesting. Another commenter made the point that retail stores already have massive surveillance systems in place, and that it was a good thing that they're being used non-punitively for once.

Me, I'm not so sure. I don't think I'd like being reminded that my every movement is being watched. At least when I go to a store, I completely forget about security because I'm, you know, not there to steal something. It doesn't even cross my mind.

Or maybe it's a good thing to remind people that they're constantly under surveillance? I dunno.

The Go stores completely hide the technology. All the cameras and sensors are tucked away behind shelves or painted black and mounted on the blacked-out ceiling.

I mean, with the Go stores there really is no concept of shoplifting since you need a payment method to walk in. Shoplifting would involve fooling the sensors and I suppose Amazon takes that as a cost of training their systems. There are many videos of people trying things to fool the system but I don't know how successful that is.

On a philosophical level I don't see any difference between this and, say, an employee following you with a clipboard and marking down everything you do. You're a customer in a private business and they can make any rule they want. Short of anonymous bartering for goods and services in an outdoor setting you really don't have much of a say. If Amazon hides the surveillance is it a trap, or just a way of making you feel more comfortable making impulse purchases?

> At least when I go to a store, I completely forget about security because I'm, you know, not there to steal something. It doesn't even cross my mind.

Have you never been to a store that occasionally plays an announcement saying "Security to section 3" or some such nonsense? Those are the best, because that is 100% BS. It's theater, designed to make the people who do shoplift think they're going to be caught. And a lot cheaper than actual security when you're operating a grocery store on tight margins.

When I tried it I joked to my dad they offered San Francisco-style shopping: just grab the stuff and walk out

Cameras and other sensors. You do need to scan a QR code from the app before coming in.

Some other comments mention having trouble with it, being billed for things they shouldn’t have.

But I personally never did. Even though I enjoyed fooling around and trying to trick it by picking stuff up just to put it back. Or coming together with someone else, both using my QR code, and picking stuff up separately. Never any issue. Although, obviously, ymmv.

It’s honestly among my most memorable experiences in the past two years.

> You would just walk in, pick stuff up, and walk out. That’s it.

In my friend's case it was walk in, spend a half hour working out the app issues, pick stuff up, and walk out, get charged for something you didn't take, go to Amazon to ask for a refund.

I find it amusing because I did spend quite some time trying to figure out how to get the QR code from the app.

But that’s because I usually don’t use Amazon US, and you need to change to the US store, in app, to get that qr code.

I feel like they could make things smoother, like Apple does when you go to an Apple Store. Or perhaps use a geofenced iOS wallet card? Unless the QR code is dynamic?

In Italy, it has been years, if not decades, that in a chain of large supermarkets there is a system where, when you enter the supermarket, you can pick up a barcode reader.

While you are doing your shopping, you scan your products. At the exit, you scan a QR code to end the shopping, you pay, and off you go.

The huge advantage, apart from no queues, is that you don't have to remove stuff from your cart, making it way, way quicker.

You can have a “random” check where everything will be scanned again by a real cashier.

> is that you don't have to remove stuff from your cart, making it way, way quicker.

I don't understand the mechanics. You need to put the physical item back and also remove it from the barcode reader, no?

No, that's the fancy part. You pick up a barcode reader at the entrance, something like [0]. When you pick something from the shelf, you scan it, and put in the cart. You don't remove the stuff from the cart until your car, so you can already fill up your bags in the cart!

[0]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Barcode-...

Ah! You mean "remove" as in "after you bought and paid for it" and not "if you decide not to buy it" (as you would remove an article from a online shopping cart). Gotcha.

Not sure if I'm misunderstanding you here but he probably meant that you don't need to remove the items from your cart in order to pay for them.

Old method: Place items in cart -> Arrive at checkout -> Take all the items out of the cart -> Scan all the items -> Put all items back cart -> Pay -> Go to car -> Take all items out of cart.

Scanner method: Scan item -> Place in cart -> Pay -> Go to car -> Take all items of out cart

You could even set up your bags in the cart so that when you pay everything's already bagged up.

Cutting out the repeated loading/unloading saves a decent amount of time and there's usually very little wait when you need to pay. Some stores in my country support using your phone as the barcode scanning device, it's very quick. I can imagine that at some point the phone could be used to handle the payment as well, at which point it'd be very close to the Amazon pick up and go model.

Only problem is that this relies on a loyalty card, at least for the ones I've seen, which makes it a non-starter for many people.

Why is a loyalty card a non-starter?

Privacy concerns?

Not being snarky, I'm genuinely asking. What are the privacy concerns here? That your name is associated with the store you shop at? Wouldn't one also get that from their debit or credit card that most people use to pay for things nowadays?

At least in Europe, you need a suitable legal basis for processing under the GDPR, at least in theory (we do know however that GDPR enforcement is significantly lacking so this might be just a false sense of security as there are no consequences to breaching the regulation).

Signing up for a loyalty card would give them that legal basis, where as merely using your payment card wouldn't, so they theoretically shouldn't be stalking you. In practice, not giving them your name/contact details also means there's no chance of spam arriving from them. There's was never a moment I said "I wish my supermarket would contact me out of the blue for any reason" and I'd like to keep it that way.

There is exactly one reason why I wish a supermarket would contact me out of the blue: a recall, since they would in theory know what I purchased if I used the card, so no need to first hopefully hear about the recall, then try to figure out if it applies to me.

That said, I've never heard about that as a benefit from a market in the US, just discounts on food items (or put differently, upcharges if you don't use a card).

Not that we have GDPR-level protections here either.

Personally I was too stingy for the initial 25€ fee, and then forgot about it, because in the meantime self-service proliferated and lines were much shorter there.

EDIT: also my experience with telecom companies in Italy made me distrustful of any sort of subscription program.

This is perhaps an Italian problem? In the UK loyalty cards are generally free, even if you were required to have one for the scan-as-you-shop systems. This used to be only Waitrose before the other supermarkets (Sainsburys, Tesco, etc) adopted them.

Same goes for Switzerland. Both Migros and Coop offer this, and both require a loyalty card (and also a payment method, obviously), but those are free too.

Hmm, while I've never bothered to use it (I'm happy with the self-checkouts) I'm 99% sure that the one at my local big Tesco doesn't require you to have the loyalty card; you just bring the scanner gadget to a special automatic checkout.

> What are other experiences?

For a number of years now our local grocery/everything store has operated a cashierless option. When you enter, you grab a handheld scanner, and scan as you go. It's pretty cool.

But it seems like nobody really uses it. And the two locations closest to me seem to have dropped it altogether. People are apparently more comfortable with just using old school self-checkout. Those have continued to proliferate, and account for way more than half the available checkout options.

> old school self-checkout

Man, the old ones were better than the new ones my local Kroger has.

The new ones are like they took an old checkout stand and just put a self checkout kiosk in it, so you place your items on a belt...that moves them 5 feet away after you scan them.

So the flow is scan everything, checkout, then bag everything while people stare at you figuring out how to avoid doing what you're doing (and are angry at you for "wasting their time"), only for them to do the exact same thing.

I think it might be an issue of people not being used to the availability. They tend to only be available in bigger stores and you need to remember to pick them up when you start your shop.

At least one major supermarket where I am has started allowing you to use their app on your phone rather than the pick up scanners. I found it to be much more responsive than the handhelds and easier to interact with. I'm hoping they enhance it further in future by allowing payment via the phone as well.

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