[pelf]

Is it just me that finds the entire concept of the Dash ridiculous?

I mean, what's the idea, having a button for every single product we buy? And we need to set it up first. How is that any better than recurring ordering or just opening the website and ordering it? Are we expected to have an entire wall of dashes at our place?

I guess we'll need to sort them alphabetically or by color, so we don't waste time searching for the button we need.

[eli]

Sure, but just a few decades ago there were people dismissing all of e-commerce saying "why would I order online when I can just pick up the phone and call in my order?" I'm sure before that there were people saying, Why do I need phone ordering when I can just mail an order form to Sears? I think it's a mistake to bet against a more convenient form of consumerism.

[drzaiusapelord]

>Sure, but just a few decades ago there were people dismissing all of e-commerce

Were they? From what I recall people were saying, "Why isn't this catalog a webpage yet?"

I'm not sure if buying a bunch of little buttons and plastering them all over my house is necessarily convenient. Convenience is largely counter-intuitive. For example, you'd think everyone would get their groceries delivered at this point, but most of us drive to the grocery store. There's a larger convenience in having all these products at your fingertips, trying different brands, shopping for lower priced items, seeking deals, etc. You lose this flexibility with the Dash. Its also really ugly to have what look like ads plastered all over your home.

I'm surprised we all don't have a home robot with enough computer vision and fuzzy logic to figure out what we're low on and produce a list of items that need to be bought that week. I feel like some kind of robot revolution that was supposed to happen never did, so we're finding weird automation solutions that don't really work. I imagine this is what is was like when computers were rare and you could only use the ones at work because home computers weren't a thing yet. Smith-Corona kept making better and better typewriters but you really just want a word processor and printer.

[kbody]

The problem with Dash is that it doesn't really scale.

[hammock]

I believe it's not intended to be an actual product for very long. Its a stepping stone to get consumers to the point where they are making purchases in situ, via the Amazon Echo for example. It's a behavior grooming thing, a social test balloon.

[mason55]

> Is it just me that finds the entire concept of the Dash ridiculous?

I mean, what's the idea, having a button for every single product we buy?

In markets with Amazon Fresh they are also trialing a single-device Dash. It operates as a barcode scanner and microphone and adds things to your Dash List on Fresh. Then you can go in and edit them or actually confirm them to your cart.

I have one and it's very, very useful. It hangs from my fridge and whenever I finish something I scan it and when I think of something I need I just speak it into the mic. It made me an instant convert from FreshDiret.

[rickyc091]

Also a owner of the dash and I'll confirm it's pretty useful. You can also think of it as a registry tool. If you bring it into a store, you can scan a bunch of products and it'll sync up to the cloud when you connect back to wifi.

[userbinator]

It's the mindless-consumerism aspect of the idea that I find most disturbing: "press this button to feed yourself with product".

[soylentcola]

I'm tempted to start a conspiracy theory that these are just phase one of a plan to eventually have us all living in actual Skinner boxes.

[Goronmon]

How mindful does a task such as "Buy another tube of toothpaste" or "Buy more shampoo" need to be?

[swalsh]

I can't speak for Amazon, but I've cancelled every single recurring order I've ever setup.

I once had coffee on recurring order. Then I went on vacation, and I was always one tin ahead. Then I had a business trip, and I was 2 tins ahead, then I was sick for a week and didn't want to eat anything. it was too much.

I once set up a recurring order on wine, at first I drank a bottle every other day. What fun! but then I just wanted a glass with dinner every now and then. Bottles started piling up, and now I have a good $100 of wine that tastes like vinegar.

Recurring orders suck. If you have a huge house to store things if you aren't on a perfect schedule it might work. For normal people, it's not ideal.

[viggity]

we have diapers on recurring delivery (honest company, not amazon), but they send us an email asking us if we still want them or if we want to delay shipment by a week, two weeks, etc. Seems to work fine. Does Amazon not do the same thing?

[seanwilson]

I don't think the concept is so ridiculous: it's easier to press a single button that is placed in the area where you'd normally notice the product you're looking for is running out compared to getting out an mobile app or visiting a website. Ease of use is likely to lead to more sales.

Maybe the idea won't work but it sounds worth experimenting with to me.

[rtkwe]

I don't see this becoming a single button for ever item in the house. I see the Dash button riding the middle ground between objects that you have highly predictable usage patterns or have a proscribed life span like toothbrushes where recurring orders make sense and less predictable items like paper towels where usage is harder to predict.

I think the goal is also to make using the button easier than just opening the webpage and ordering it so that when you notice you're running low you can just press the button instead of doing what most people do and adding it to a grocery list. It's also far easier than figuring out how often to set up the recurring ordering.

Their aim is at the utility closet and bathroom consumables like soaps/detergents, paper towels, and maybe cleaning products. Things that are stored an some particular place in the house where when you're getting low on X you push the button and get more 2-3 days later.

[jacobr1]

Or have it built into the bottle, perhaps even measuring the current fill level.

[kubiiii]

I especially find the instant delivery order disturbing. Is that even close to necessary in 90% of the use cases? Putting the product in a shopping cart would be more than enough and would allow group shipping.

[mbesto]

> I mean, what's the idea, having a button for every single product we buy?

It's a button for every repeatable commodity buy you make. Most applicable use cases are: toilet paper, detergent, cleaning supplies, certain groceries. In other words, it eliminates pretty much all friction to ensuring that you're always stocked with those products. You're right to be skeptical, but even just reducing a small amount of friction to buying means better convenience for the consumer and more money for Amazon.

[madprops]

Or you know, why not a phone application that would order the same thing with a single tap.

[joezydeco]

I think the idea is that this is eventually built right into the products. The washer with the built-in Amazon button for detergent, etc.

[akhatri_aus]

It's also about the sense of seeming control, even if the result is a perfect weekly subscription.