Amazon Fresh, take 2

[storewanderer]

At some point Amazon will burn through enough people that it will not be able to function. I guess there are a lot of people and population keeps increasing so maybe they have a long road to burn.

This Fresh thing has been a huge problem and the Just Walk Out scam and the "automated technology" misrepresentation is just the icing on the cake.

I am wondering if the recent thing a few weeks ago where we saw odd sudden better execution at Whole Foods, some price cuts, in my case a store giving out little mini cloth Whole Foods bags with product samples/coupons during checkout at no charge as a "free gift" - was because they knew this news exposing the complete scam of Just Walk Out was about to come out.

It is clear now why they took so long to get you a receipt but my question is WHAT were they doing? Were they using the cameras to look down people's shirts instead of focusing on what was going into the carts or what? What a fiasco.

[marketreportblog]

A small-format Amazon Fresh in Seattle is closing:
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/a ... itol-hill/

[J-Man]

And it required strange pricing, such as salad bars priced by container instead of weight and produce/meat by the unit. I saw people cheating the system with salad containers overflowing and taking all the meat off the salad bar.

But doesn't that same issue persist in stores with the Smart Cart system? Everything is still priced by the unit, no? And in the AF stores near me, when they removed JWO (last year), they brought in Smart Carts.

No. The Smart Cart stores are scanning bar codes. They did not have weird pricing when they first opened.

Also what stores had the technology removed? Amazon has not acknowledged any removal of this technology other than saying now it will be removed in the future. It would have required extensive work to remove it, unless it was just turned off. My understanding is the stores that were remodeled last year never had the tech in the first place. Not all Amazon Fresh stores had Just Walk Out, another major problem for the chain as they were trying to introduce themselves to the customer as a new option but they had stores that operated in completely different manners. It was likely that if they went to store "A" it would be Dash Carts and traditional checkout lanes, but if they went to store "B" it would be regular carts, Just Walk Out gates, and unit pricing. This confusion was very bad for the brand.

Pasadena opened with JWO, and when they did their "grand reopening" a while back, JWO was gone. I'm sure they didn't actually "remove" anything, but the system was no longer in use.

As for the Dash carts -- my point was that everything is still pre-packaged and sold by the unit. There's no way to handle items that have to be weighed. So, no change from the JWO system there. And even the regular checkout does not handle items sold by weight.

Here's a list of CA stores showing which have JWO and which only have Dash carts.

They do have separate ads for the JWO stores, but they appear to be pretty much the same as the rest of the stores.

[ClownLoach]

But doesn't that same issue persist in stores with the Smart Cart system? Everything is still priced by the unit, no? And in the AF stores near me, when they removed JWO (last year), they brought in Smart Carts.

No. The Smart Cart stores are scanning bar codes. They did not have weird pricing when they first opened.

Also what stores had the technology removed? Amazon has not acknowledged any removal of this technology other than saying now it will be removed in the future. It would have required extensive work to remove it, unless it was just turned off. My understanding is the stores that were remodeled last year never had the tech in the first place. Not all Amazon Fresh stores had Just Walk Out, another major problem for the chain as they were trying to introduce themselves to the customer as a new option but they had stores that operated in completely different manners. It was likely that if they went to store "A" it would be Dash Carts and traditional checkout lanes, but if they went to store "B" it would be regular carts, Just Walk Out gates, and unit pricing. This confusion was very bad for the brand.

Pasadena opened with JWO, and when they did their "grand reopening" a while back, JWO was gone. I'm sure they didn't actually "remove" anything, but the system was no longer in use.

As for the Dash carts -- my point was that everything is still pre-packaged and sold by the unit. There's no way to handle items that have to be weighed. So, no change from the JWO system there. And even the regular checkout does not handle items sold by weight.

Here's a list of CA stores showing which have JWO and which only have Dash carts.

They do have separate ads for the JWO stores, but they appear to be pretty much the same as the rest of the stores.

Weight prices will return with JWO gone. The original dash carts weighed produce, not sure how the new ones work. They also had scales with label printers all over the produce department for the customer to weigh and label then put in the Dash Cart. They have probably lost a fortune due to not weighing everything that is normally sold by the point.

Looking at pictures of Pasadena, they did indeed remove the thousands of cameras hanging above. I guess they needed to do it in a real store to determine how difficult it is to do the work. I also see pictures from two weeks ago that the scales asking the customer to "weigh now" have been reinstalled in Pasadena with the new style graphics in preparation for eliminating unit pricing.

[Alpha8472]

I was listening to Amazon Music (the Free version), and an advertisement came on about how Dash Carts are an efficient way to shop. The commercial told us to go to Amazon.com to find stores with Dash Carts. There is one Whole Foods store in all of Northern California with Dash Carts.

I am not going out of my way to find that store. It is probably an hour and a half away from me. Why bother with these commercials as there are only a small number of stores scattered across the entire country with these carts?

[ClownLoach]

I was listening to Amazon Music (the Free version), and an advertisement came on about how Dash Carts are an efficient way to shop. The commercial told us to go to Amazon.com to find stores with Dash Carts. There is one Whole Foods store in all of Northern California with Dash Carts.

I am not going out of my way to find that store. It is probably an hour and a half away from me. Why bother with these commercials as there are only a small number of stores scattered across the entire country with these carts?

Your phone carrier probably gave bad geolocation data to them. Happens all the time and causes weird ads that don't make any sense, like a random small neighborhood sandwich shop in New Mexico shows up as a sponsored post while you're in SoCal and have no plans to visit there.

[Alpha8472]

This was my Echo Show device at home. I listen to music on my smart home devices. I set up my home address on it, so it knows.

[Alpha8472]

There is a competing technology to Just Walk Out called Grabango. A Chevron in San Ramon, California near to the corporate office of Chevron has it. There are overhead systems that monitor locations of all products. You have to have their app and a login.

You take items and before you leave the store you scan your phone with the app open on a machine on the counter. It does not use facial recognition. So this system supposedly is made for large format stores. It uses computer vision and machine learning similar to autonomous vehicles.

I wanted to try it out, but everything at Chevron Extra Mile is so expensive.

The system tracks a running tally of what you are holding. If your friend wants to pay, you hand your phone to your friend and it will charge your app.

[storewanderer]

There is a competing technology to Just Walk Out called Grabango. A Chevron in San Ramon, California near to the corporate office of Chevron has it. There are overhead systems that monitor locations of all products. You have to have their app and a login.

You take items and before you leave the store you scan your phone with the app open on a machine on the counter. It does not use facial recognition. So this system supposedly is made for large format stores. It uses computer vision and machine learning similar to autonomous vehicles.

I wanted to try it out, but everything at Chevron Extra Mile is so expensive.

The system tracks a running tally of what you are holding. If your friend wants to pay, you hand your phone to your friend and it will charge your app.

Do they not have promotions? I guess the ones here are still Jacksons Stores but the signs say Extra Mile. Today they had with the Jacksons loyalty program free candy bar no purchase needed either "share size" MM Caramel, Snickers, Twix, or Milky Way. They also have an ongoing promotion of free banana (0.39 value) with any dispenser drink purchase which has been running for years now. Their drink prices have gotten a bit high- 1.49 for 20oz? soda, 1.79 for 20oz icee, and 1.99 for the smallest coffee.

[Alpha8472]

I'm wondering if the Extra Mile Rewards work with it, or do you have to use a real cash register.

Extra Mile has few deals unless you use your phone number.