[proee]

Has anyone used their go stores? I'm curious how the experience felt from a consumer standpoint. Do you feel welcomed or more like a thief?

I remember WAY back in the day when Arby's implemented touch screen ordering (on CRTs!) and it was a very quirky process. An Arby's employee would sit behind the counter and stare at you while you spent 5 minutes poking a CRT display. Very slow and very impersonal. They discontinued them in a short period of time.

[kube-system]

Every time I walk into a McDonalds I see people who will rather stand 5 minutes at the counter waiting for a human cashier than use one of the available kiosks. I'm sure some are paying cash but there are certainly people who are just not comfortable with technology.

The Go stores were a great experience but they would certainly be uncomfortable for anyone other than early-adopter or tech-forward types of people. I would just walk in with my own bag, and put items directly from the shelf into the bag, and walk out the door. It was extremely convenient and fast once you got over how weird it felt.

I think they could have done a lot more in giving social clues on both the way in and way out.

[bluedino]

McDonalds solved that problem by basically not having employees go up to the counter anymore.

[giraffe_lady]

A lot of people have trouble using those and it's not just tech discomfort or whatever. You have to be able to hold your arms up in front of you, touching specific points in space. The UI is not good and does not provide good moment-to-moment feedback about whether you've pressed a button or which one. You have to be moderately-to-strongly literate, you have to wrap your head around the menu organization, know what you're looking for by name and be able to guess where it is in this system.

I've watched so many people struggle to use these machines for so many different reasons. Pretty much anyone with a physical or cognitive disability will be better off with the cashier. Sucks they have to wait much longer for one now.

[semiquaver]

They’re fine and work as advertised. One weird thing is you don’t get the receipt for 10-20 minutes, presumably while humans are viewing the footage.

The main thing I use it for is convenient returns, which is why I’m disappointed in this news. I hardly ever buy things there other than things like gum or chips.

[dlcarrier]

The regular Fresh stores have a scanner and screen on the cart that you can use to track your purchases while shopping, then the cashier could pull up the contents in one go, without scanning scanning at the register. There's also some discounted products for Prime members that can be applied by pulling up your account on your phone and displaying a barcode.

I went there the first week they opened, and the whole store was a mess with shoppers standing still or walking slowly, completely unaware of their surrounds, while messing with the phone or their cart trying to figure it out.

I'm sure that with enough time, shoppers could figure out there system, but I was in a hurry so I just grabbed the few items I wanted and paid cash, which was just as fast as it is everywhere else.

I do want to stop by before it closes, and see if customers figured out their systems, in the year and a half the location has been open.

[mitaphane]

I use the one situated in Seattle, Amazon HQ. It's just like self-checkout at a grocery store with fewer steps. The entrance/payment mechanism is Amazon One (a palm scan associated with a payment wallet). At Whole Foods, it's used as an optional payment option at checkout.

It's convenient; I only ever remember one problem where it thought I had purchased an item that I picked up and decided on something else. I disputed it online and it was resolved in a day.

[PKop]

> I disputed it online

Oh man this is what consumers would love to do, have to constantly adjudicate false positives online which they'd have to track to make sure didn't happen. What nonsense.

[sheept]

our university has been rolling out just walk out markets across campus due to rampant stealing. shopping there doesn't feel like stealing, but the store design feels oppressive with racks of cameras and thick black shelves because it's designed for sensors first not humans

one minor downside (especially since I don't live on campus anymore) is that in order to walk around and peruse the shelves, I have to give them my payment info just to enter

[catgirlinspace]

Here they replaced all the markets that were staffed by people with these big vending machines that are 3 or 4 refrigerated cabinets (even chips are refrigerated). You pay, wait a bit for it to process it, and then it unlocks the doors and you grab whatever. And if it gets it wrong there’s no dispute process to tell it you didn’t pick something up (I think there is an email listed but I didn’t care enough the time it messed up to send an email). And half the time when you click the pay button to finish, it’ll complain about a door not locking.

[tshaddox]

I went to the first couple of Amazon Go stores in San Francisco several times. I've also been to our local Go store a few times in LA County. The experience has always been perfectly fine, and the invoices always correct. It's basically just a small junk food and liquor store similar to a 7-Eleven.

[thoughtpalette]

Loved the Go store in Chicago (Ogilvy), had some great lunch options and even a take home "dinner for two" bag of premade ingredients.

[dionian]

i didnt use their system, but the experience wasnt that great, it felt like a target grocery store in terms of product quality and selection. its a grocery store, but the regular grocery store is better.

[freedomben]

I'm probably not a typical case, but I felt like my privacy was massively invaded. The concept was cool, but I felt like every muscle twitch was being scrutinized and recorded forever. I was also in constant fear that the computer would charge me for things I didn't buy and getting it corrected would be a nightmare. I also felt like if there was a bug or malfunction in the system and it didn't charge me for something (which I wouldn't know about immediately) they would come after me as a shoplifter with the full force of a mega corporation with unlimited resources. It felt like there were a thousand high powered lawyers that I couldn't see, watching my every move waiting for some mess up (even though I have no intention whatsoever other than finding and paying for the product I wanted).

So no I didn't feel like I was a thief. But I felt like they assumed I was a thief. My guess is most stores are heavily surveilled nowadays, so it might be unreasonable for me to feel this way with Amazon but not Walmart or Target or Kroger, but that's how it felt.

[themaninthedark]

Walmart and Kroger near me now have one way metal cattle gates that you have to pass through when you enter. Makes me feel like cattle and that their assuming I am a thief. Trips to those locations have dropped.

The Home Depot cameras and screens that "BING BONG" loudly as you pass by to get you to notice them showing that they are recording you are also highly annoying.

I wish there was a greater variety of hardware stores near me...