
Amazon Delays Opening of Cashierless Store to Work Out Kinks - hbosch
https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-delays-convenience-store-opening-to-work-out-kinks-1490616133
======
beambot
All it takes is a loss factor of a few percent, and the entire model breaks
down.

This is the same reason that long-range RFID (UHF RFID) never worked for
cashierless checkout too. You couldn't ensure 100% coverage. Some tags just
couldn't be read -- either due to adversarial tactics (eg. shielding with your
body) or material properties (eg. metal) -- and the engineering
countermeasures to overcome these challenges made the tags too expensive for
low-margin goods.

~~~
zitterbewegung
I have seen supermarket chains do away with automated checkout (Jewel which
parent company is Albertsons) systems because they increased loss factors.

~~~
flashman
Here in Australia our two major chains just convinced the police to station
publicly-funded officers in the checkout area:
[http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/home/crackdown-of-self-
serv...](http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/home/crackdown-of-self-serve-
checkouts-by-coles-and-police-to-reduce-shoplifting-over-summer/news-
story/0c1753f4e3ed593db4cb47b8001afa53)

Cut staff numbers without having to pay for increased security! That's just
good business sense.

~~~
wwaiikpz
> without having to pay for increased security!

They don't pay for the police?

~~~
aanm1988
No, the police are paid for via taxes.

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rileymat2
It is not the same, but our local Sam's Club has an app that you can scan all
items as you go, and pay inside the app. Then as you leave an employee checks
the receipt like they do for everyone else anyway. It works great.

~~~
djhworld
How is that any better though? The receipt checking probably takes just as
long as scanning the items through the till.

Unless they just take a cursory glance and just say "well whatever you're
probably trustworthy"

~~~
ProblemFactory
At a shop I visit often, the receipt checking is random, triggered by some
prediction algorithm based on your history and current cart contents when you
swipe your membership card when you exit the store. You get selected once out
of perhaps 20 to 50 visits.

As a bonus, you get a small candy bar or similar "sorry we bothered you" gift
if the check does not find any errors.

~~~
ralfd
And if there is an error?

~~~
Dayshine
In the UK with Tesco's:

You have to scan every item in your shopping. There is no immediate penalty,
but who knows what the system does in the background. I guess you could get
banned from the system.

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downandout
Non-Paywalled direct link -
[https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Fa...](https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Famazon-
delays-convenience-store-opening-to-work-out-kinks-1490616133)

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taspeotis
I wish more companies would delay their products due to quality concerns. It
shouldn't be viewed as a bad thing.

~~~
johncolanduoni
To be fair, this quality concern mostly affects Amazon. I don't imagine too
many shoppers would complain about being undercharged. Though it is possible
the reverse could be a problem as well (and that would not be something Amazon
would highlight).

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josefdlange
Anecdotally I've heard that the store oftentimes works fine in high-traffic
situations. But if my memory of my time at Amazon serves right, the "P99
performance" of this store should be as good as the "mean performance", which
is probably where they're being cautious.

Funny how high-availability constraints can make for ominous headlines like
this.

~~~
notyourwork
I don't think the headline is ominous. It is not like Amazon is delivering a
regulatory project that has real deadlines. They set their own deadline and
made a decision to adjust it. They are also creating the first of its kind so
kinds are to be expected right?

I don't find the headline positive or negative, I find it to the point and
succinct.

~~~
josefdlange
You're right. I think I was thinking of The Verge's less tactful headline:

Headline: "Amazon’s cashier-free store reportedly breaks if more than 20
people are in it" Subtitle: "So it’s being delayed" Lead-in: "Amazon’s first
cashier-free convenience store was supposed to open to the public early this
year, but apparently some big technology issues have the launch on hold."

The Verge's article is a hot-take derivative of the WSJ article. My criticism
was misplaced.

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tribby
I wonder if these stores will suffer any more from shoplifting than regular
stores. I assume they will function roughly the same, i.e. an alarm goes off
as an unpaid high ticket item leaves the store, but what's the psychological
impact of having a human near the front door? will people feel they are
stealing from a robot rather than a person (in fact they are stealing from
neither), and will that lower the cognitive barrier to theft?

it comes with built-in plausible deniability for the guilty, too -- "sorry, I
guess your robo-store is broken, let me try signing in and out of my amazon
app"

~~~
johncolanduoni
It doesn't seem to function the same at all. If an item is detected leaving
the store, then the person who took the item (or the person the store _thinks_
took the item) is charged. And if they aren't detected, there's no way to have
an alarm.

~~~
tribby
how exactly is someone charged when they don't have an amazon account /
connected phone / whatever method of payment is being used here? are you
saying you need to swipe your card on the way in?

~~~
dangrossman
Yes. You need to have the Amazon Go app installed on your phone, and you scan
your phone at what looks like a turnstile to enter the store, from the store's
PR videos. Then the store keeps track of what you pick up using computer
vision, your phone and various sensors, and charges everything you walk out
with to your account.

Unless you can avoid the requirement to load an app and scan it to get into
the store, walking out of the store with goods stuffed in your jacket or bag
isn't shoplifting, because the store knows you picked those things up and is
charging them to your Amazon account.

~~~
Larrikin
So children are not allowed in the store? What's stopping someone from just
stuffing their kid full of high end goods and asking them to wait in the car?

~~~
harryh
The same thing that stops people from doing that in a regular store? Mostly
good morals backed up with cameras and the occasional security guard.

~~~
trome
Theft rates can get pretty high, look at the Tide theft phenomenon.

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nickpsecurity
People interested might also enjoy the first, automated store: SmartMart. Made
in the Windows NT days. We got one out here.

[http://www.smartmartinc.com](http://www.smartmartinc.com)

~~~
nkristoffersen
How is Smart Mart? Their website is quite sparse.

~~~
nickpsecurity
I haven't been there in a long time. The founder struggled to convince people
to deploy them as the upfront cost with robotics and tech was many times a
regular, convenience store. Basically what it is. The majority of store owners
would rather pay less money to exploit people with dead end jobs and deal with
the shrink from theft. Definitely not a growth business but he's been opening
more and more over time.

It was an old interface that wasn't as good as modern self-checkouts at
grocery stores. Predated them, though, automating the whole process. You drive
up to a fuel pump looking thing, tell it what you want, pay it, the equipment
gets the right stuff, and it brings it to you somehow. The only people
necessary are those that stock it. Probably just one or two doing a full shift
on busy days with a part time one on slower ones. Pretty amazing given big
companies were bragging about rolling out self-checkouts that just automated a
register when he had people automated a whole store many years before.

Note: Guy's name is Michael Rivalto. He's a VC that my brothers told me.
Family friend that used to occasionally take them to school in his supercars.
Lasting impression there haha.

~~~
Splines
I'm surprised that Amazon didn't go this route. With their warehouse logistics
expertise they could operate everything pretty much the same except that
instead of putting a bunch of stuff into a shipping van it goes in a
customer's car.

~~~
nickpsecurity
It blows my mind, too, that Mike is about the only person I've seen do it.
It's the kind of thing I'd think Amazon would find obvious. Dollar General and
Aldi each make a fortune with DG having several times the margin of much of
the industry. Convenience stores are all over the place with all kinds of
personnel-driven issues. I'd have thought they'd prove themselves out serving
the low end before aiming for the high.

I think maybe it's because they're a technology company aimed at solving _big_
problems for large numbers of consumers at once. They might have not thought
of the cumulative effect of a ton of small deployments that their big thinking
merely orchestrates and supplies. A weakness, perhaps?

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dawnerd
In a nutshell: Their tech can't track items if there's a lot of people or fast
movement.

~~~
SerLava
And once they hear Amazon can't track a lot of people moving quickly... A lot
of people will decide to start moving quickly.

~~~
crooked-v
I can already foresee a dozen people showing up in zebra-striped hoodies to
see what happens when they shop together.

~~~
notgood
They realize that amazon now measures the height of each customer, also has a
miniature drone following them around and each floor tile measure the weight
of the people for that extra data point, oh and some have employees disguised
as customers whom help the system when in doubt.

~~~
Neliquat
Weight belts, got it.

~~~
victor9000
and platform shoes.

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throwaway8712
Has anyone tried fooling the system as an experiment? Considering that
computer vision remains relatively non-robust, I imagine this shouldn't be too
hard.

On the lighter side,

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-RXDCEErWQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-RXDCEErWQ)

:D

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muninn_
Want that the point of the beta version of the store?

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sand500
Should beta test this where you can keep what ever you manage to get out of
the store without paying.

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giarc
[http://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazons-cashier-less-
conven...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazons-cashier-less-convenience-
store-delayed-to-work-out-technical-glitches-2017-03-27)

Here's a link to a non paywalled site.

