[nck4222]

My biggest problem with this is that from what I can tell, the only way to know how much you're going to be automatically charged (as well as what items the tech thinks you're purchasing), is to go to a kiosk in the store and get a receipt. Which seems to completely defeat the convenience of just walking out in the first place.

I wouldn't feel comfortable just walking out without knowing how much I'm going to be charged, so this tech is essentially useless to me.

[lstamour]

Having used Amazon Go once as a tourist, it was frictionless only because of the Amazon app. You can scan the app instead of a credit card (your card is already linked to Amazon for payment), and when you leave the app tells you what you bought. In my case it thought I bought a drink when all I did was browse the options, so when I saw this in the app, I deleted the drink from the receipt by saying I didn’t get one, and it corrected the receipt without any human interaction that I could see. The app was essential for me to go back, otherwise I’d assume the system was inaccurate and not worth the trouble.

[danShumway]

But, and I know I'm apparently in a minority here...

I don't want an app for my grocery store.

I do my shopping spread between 4 different grocery stores depending where in the area I'm closest to, what specifically I need, etc.. and I don't want an app for any of them. I already get pestered about loyalty cards, now I'm going to get pestered about installing my local Rite-Aid's mobile app?

[filoleg]

It doesn't even need to be a special app, it could just be another Apple Wallet/Android Wallet card. If you tried the Amazon Go app, it is literally just an app that displays a QR code that you use to scan when entering the store. That's literally it, no notifications, no other extra functionality, nothing. As soon as Apple Wallet/Android Wallet integrate it, it will become even more seamless.

A good example for people familiar with electric car charing is the ChargePoint integration. I have the app, but I never open it, and I don't even really need it (as I only use it for rare circumstances where I am in an unknown area and need to find a charging spot asap). Whenever I want to charge my car at a ChargePoint station, I just open up the ChargePoint card in Apple Wallet, NFC scan it, and that's it. It already knows that the ChargePoint card is associated with my account, so I can later open the app and see how charged my car is, what's the charging rate at the moment, my billing history, etc. If I don't have the app, I can check it on the web just as well.

[mikem170]

A QR code can be displayed as a saved image. The Amazon Go app on Android requires the following permissions:

  Identity
      find accounts on the device
      add or remove accounts

  Contacts
      find accounts on the device

  Location
      approximate location (network-based)
      precise location (GPS and network-based)

  Wi-Fi connection information
      view Wi-Fi connections

  Other
      receive data from Internet
      view network connections
      create accounts and set passwords
      full network access
      run at startup
      use accounts on the device
      control vibration
      prevent device from sleeping

That's actually not as bad as some other apps, but horribly insecure from my perspective. I avoid all such apps myself, and will do so as long as I can. I'll never know what an app like that is doing, and that is unacceptable on MY phone.

[danShumway]

I notice it's also labeled as displaying ads. And this is Amazon's debut offering. It's not going to get better from here as they get more adoption. I do not want this app on my phone.

Everything I know about about the mobile ecosystem tells me that if an app/card/integration is required for an unrelated service, it's going to go downhill over time. Everything I know about Amazon means that they are definitely going to eventually be advertising to me and pushing notifications and 'reminders' and whatever -- because they already do with the online store.

Even the charging example getting brought up as proof of this working: I can't imagine signing up for a special credit card that was required to fill up my car at a gas station. That's not innovative. The current system is I can use any credit card, or cash, or (increasingly) mobile pay at any gas station without any account with no decrease in quality of service. And with the current system, someone else can borrow my car without also needing to borrow my credit card or phone.

I'll stick my neck out and predict that over the next 3-5 years, ChargePoint's app and web interface are going to get progressively worse, and progressively more invasive. This is based purely on the knowledge that they require an online account and special credit card just to refill a car. I don't think there's any reason to have that business model other than a plan to eventually leverage the card/account in invasive ways.

[filoleg]

They require a special credit card? I connected my usual credit card from my bank to the account half a year ago and have been using it successfully with Apple Wallet just fine.

[filoleg]

I just checked the iOS version, and it requires none of those permissions. The only ones I have noticed were access to use cellular data + background app refresh. No contacts access, no location access, nothing. I guess the devs must have just went all out on the Android version.

[tialaramex]

The closest I have to this today is the grocery store nearest me - I walk in, I pick up a scanner (you can use an app on your phone but I use their scanner because my phone locks immediately with a passphrase when unused so it's ghastly for this purpose) and I just wander about scanning items and putting them into bags. The scanner shows its estimate of the price paid, which in my experience is always 100% accurate but I guess "estimate" is needed because legally the shop is not promising to sell at this price yet. I walk to the exit and scan the exit and give back the scanner, it tells me the final price which is the same as that estimate and then I pay with my card and walk out.

This is still extra steps compared to "Just walk out" but it's close. There is no interaction with store employees (which suits some friends who struggle to do human interaction on "bad" days) for example, this store would seem to work just fine without any employees although of course it's a huge grocery store so it has dozens doing various things and couldn't in fact function without some.

The really nice optimisation of course is to get rid of the money. If you stop caring about trying to make the numbers add up and just rely on people going "Huh, I only need two cabbages, why would I take sixty cabbages? What am I going to do with sixty cabbages?" then this is all much simpler. But I think even Amazon doesn't expect to deploy this to a culture where that's realistic.

[ascagnel_]

When I last used one of those systems, I found it to be reliable, as you said. And to keep people honest, they'd randomly pick shoppers to go through a regular checkout, which is both understandable and annoying.

It also made it super easy to bag groceries.

[wojciii]

I used something like this deployed to Coop stores in Denmark. It's a nightmare to use and the random check pissed me off enough so I deleted the app and decided never to use it again.

Try shopping with a little kid and using one hand on your phone and being randomly checked when there are 20 people waiting before you. This is not working in the current version of the technology.

[wingworks]

We used to have that in some of our supermarkets years ago, but they've all disappeared over the years. It's all a mix of self-help checkouts/human checkouts now. Not sure why.

[moosamus]

One of my local grocery stores has these mobile scanners and I strongly prefer it. I’ll go slightly out of my way to hit this store instead. While I am loathe to give Amazon more data/consumer insight and see this as massive consolidation play, I suspect people will, once accustomed to it, totally normalize this and not look back.

[mithr]

As long as the process for getting refunds is frictionless and well-implemented (perhaps similar to Prime Now), then if you can afford holding the charge on your credit card for a few days, this doesn't really seem like a problem. The process becomes: go to the store, pick up what you want, and then at some later point take a quick look at the "receipt" for verification, quickly flagging anything that seems off.

With Prime Now, you get your groceries delivered and pay for them in advance. Once in a while, you don't get an item, get the wrong item, a rotten piece of fruit, or an expired bottle of milk. When this happens, you simply go to the app where every item is listed, and follow the quick prompts to get a refund. You can optionally give a reason for asking, but in my experience they don't actually seem to care; in fact, whenever I've left a comment that, for example, one of the ten oranges I ordered was bad, they've always refunded me for _all_ the oranges on my order. I assume this is because the number of refunds is low enough relative to the number of purchases that they can afford to just always refund, keeping the customer happy enough.

If this is how it ends up working, then I'd gladly trade standing in long lines at the store for just walking out and reviewing my purchases later. The tracking part is still a bit creepy, though.

[bonoboTP]

> quickly flagging anything that seems off

Do you memorize all the time whether you grabbed two or three bags of chips or exactly how many cans of beer etc?

How do you prove you didn't buy something? Or will they just accept your word? If anyone can just say whatever, then people will just ask for refunds of stuff. Will they check the footage in each case? But maybe it can work in the US. It sure as hell won't work in many other countries, where people look for loopholes all the time.

[balls187]

> How do you prove you didn't buy something? Or will they just accept your word? I

I'd imagine it's similar to the heuristic Amazon uses today with their A-Z Customer Guarantee.

If you request a lot of refunds for a single trip, or have a history of requesting refunds, your individual risk score goes up, and the hoops you jump through to get a refund increase.

Also for retail grocery stores now, loss prevention is already an issue.

Right now, a person can take an item off the shelve and hide it, leaving only security cameras and human personnel to watch for theft.

Adding in amazon's technology would be additional layers of defense.

[asdff]

How does amazons tech add defense? You still need human personnel to do anything about theft. People shoplifting don't care if the door is beeping while they walk out and disappear.

[balls187]

Without amazon tech, you take an item off the shelf, hide it, and leave. There are cameras with loss prevention staff monitoring the feeds, and in some stores, sensors that trigger an alarm upon leaving.

With amazon tech, in addition to manually monitored cameras, you add AI monitored cameras, and sensors on shelves to detect an item has been taken.

Without Amazon's tech stores rely on staff members witnessing the item being hidden.

With Amazon's tech, the item is taken and marked for payment as soon as it's removed.

[Talanes]

>Do you memorize all the time whether you grabbed two or three bags of chips or exactly how many cans of beer etc?

Honestly, yes. What I worry more about is how well the names of items on the receipt actually match up to the products. From the summer I worked as a grocery cashier, I can tell you that people often end up confused at items on the receipt that they actually bought.

Combine that with mistaken items on the receipt and some number of more trusting people will just assume it's just a weird labeling of something they did buy and move on.

[balaksakrionon]

They'll extend you a varying degree of trust based on your burgeoning Amazon social credit score (taking into account your actual credit score as well I'm sure)

[emiliobumachar]

If there are enough kiosks to avoid a line, always getting the receipt is still a huge improvement over scanning, even if it falsifies the "just walk out" bit.

Another potential alternative for the anxious (and I definitely include myself) is an app showing up-to-the-second billing state on the smartphone screen. At a glance, usability issues seem hard but doable.

[deanCommie]

This is the "lame - no wireless, less space than a nomad" take.

Are the prices not listed on the individual items?

Purchasers make decisions on a product by product basis, not based on the total.

How often are you at the checkout and say "Wait, HOW MUCH is my bill? never mind then, going to go put some things back."

Sure, it happens, but it's a 0.0001% use case.

edit: OK, fair play to everyone who responded and said this is a common use case if you're poor. Not sure how relevant the food stamps argument is here, since this is an automatic pay and checkout system.

But, remember - this requires a credit card and an app. As you put things in your basket, your app shopping cart is also updated, and you can track your running tally.

[sykick]

I was a cashier in college for several years. Your scenario happens far more than 0.0001% of the case. It's fairly common amongst poor people. Then there are items that aren't acceptable for use by food stamps and must be paid for separately. Then there is WIK and trying return WIK items for cash refunds. You also have people who misread the labels. Then there are items that aren't in the right place and the label says a price different than what the register says. For instance, "Cambell's Tomato Soup" can is misplaced in the "Cambell's Healthy Alternative Tomato Soup" location. Most people don't carefully read labels of the items on the shelf. They just assume that the label under the item is correct.

[mason55]

Then this solution sounds like a huge improvement. Instead of getting to the register and finding out you grabbed the wrong thing or overspent, which is a huge inconvenience to you and the other people in line, you can now track everything as you go.

Put a can of soup in your basket. Oops! The alert I set up for items that aren't covered by Food Stamps just fired. Let me see what the issue is. Oh! I just got an alert because I went over my budget, let me review my items and figure it right away.

And even if you don't have a smartphone/app, the process of going to a kiosk to review your order will be much faster than at a register. Walk up to the kiosk and it instantly shows what's in your basket, with a total and flags for non-Food Stamp items. Now you can go swap things out or put things back and the whole interaction only took a second and was must less of a commitment than going through a checkout lane.

[sykick]

What you say seems plausible and I agree with it. I was responding only to the belief that not having enough money at checkout is 0.0001% of the cases.

[mc32]

To add. When I was poor and in college I definitely had a few instances where I had to put something back because the total was more than I could afford.

[LeifCarrotson]

Hopefully the same tech used to measure when someone takes or replaces something on the shelf can be used to monitor when stuff is in the wrong spot, making stocking easier.

[chrisseaton]

> It's fairly common amongst poor people.

Are these people shopping at Amazon boutiques?

[rtkwe]

Amazon wants to spread this to more than just their stores. It's a mild problem now but most things are when new tech is introduced. Accessibility doesn't matter when only a few sites are on the web but becomes critical when the web is the default way to access information.

[uselesstech]

Amazon Go is a convenience store...if convenience stores pick this up then yes, they will shop there.

[bigiain]

But sadly, will no longer be able to get a job there...

[joezydeco]

The Amazon Go I used to visit was maybe 200 square feet in size but had 4-5 people stocking and moving things around. And apparently there are others in the back assisting the cameras and making sandwiches and whatnot.

[Cyph0n]

The whole point of this post is that Amazon is opening up the tech to other grocery chains...

[bradlys]

Yeah - actually, it does happen often enough... I'd say it's much higher.

I know a lot of HN is full of people who don't pay attention to prices (for whatever reason - probably the inordinate amount of obscenely high incomes) - but it's really common outside of this crowd.

When I was poor - I thoroughly examined prices and only bought things that were on sale. If it rang up and wasn't the price that it said it was - I put it back. An example in my mind would be something like a block of cheese being $12 instead of $10. It's only $2 but it's also $2 that I was not willing to pay. Sometimes the staff at the store were not removing the old sale tags - thus it looked like it was on sale but it wasn't.

[daveFNbuck]

If it rings up for $12 when it's labeled as $10, you can usually get it for $10 if you tell someone it rang up wrong.

[smeyer]

In MA it's even better: if a grocery store item was labeled as $10 and rang up as $12, you'd just pay $2. The rule is that the item is free if it's less than $10 and $10 off if it's more than $10 (although this only applies to one item; you can't just go grab 20 of them).

[njarboe]

Stores have problem with pricing all the time. If you don't look at your receipt when buying things at the grocery store, you are going to be overcharged sometimes. Especially at stores that don't have a "Over charged and you get it free" policy. Pricing problems are even more common when a new store opens. This tech is going to make mistakes all the time for quite awhile. I would definitely want to see a list of the items and prices the system charged me for before I left the store.

[sincerely]

>How often are you at the checkout and say "Wait, HOW MUCH is my bill? never mind then, going to go put some things back."

That's a pretty common occurence for poor people. If you only have $70 and your bill comes to $72 because you did the mental math wrong you're gonna have to put something back.

[thewebcount]

Are you in the US? Because in the US it happens more often than elsewhere because you can't actually know the full price until you check out due to taxes not being included in the price on the box/shelf. Plus, especially with groceries, some items are taxed and some aren't in some states.

[pjmorris]

I'm more concerned about whether the store system gets my order right than whether I do. What if it, e.g., mistakes a can of soda for a 12-pack? Three hundred times on the order?

[ayberk]

FWIW, I've been using Amazon Go stores regularly for a while and have never had any issues.

There's a link to dispute the receipt should something happen, right on the receipt itself. Now this is specifically Amazon Go app, but I would expect it to be same for other retailers.

Edit: I see that this is a little bit different than Go stores. It's far less convenient, but you can still get the receipt in your email by visiting a kiosk it seems.

[noahtallen]

I wonder if Amazon can offer some kind of good-will insurance here. Like “if our system mistakenly looses a customer money, we’ll cover it for you.”

[sixothree]

Agreed. I feel like the point of this is to separate the buyer from the notion of total price. They may as well change the unit from dollars to "credits".

[miguelrochefort]

This is unlikely to happen. Shelves act as scales, and there is a big weight difference between 1 can and 12 cans.

[mentat]

That would be very unlikely and easily reversed based on video data.

[thfuran]

>That would be very unlikely

Would it?

>easily reversed based on video data

That suggests a level of effort from multiple parties well in excess of the typical "look at item; look at receipt"

[miguelrochefort]

Given that the exact timestamp of when the system thinks an item is picked up is known, it should be trivial to review a 5-second clip and flag it as correct or not, training the ML model at the same time.

[totalZero]

You've gotta be kidding me. The vast majority of Americans are constantly managing a battle between their means and their desires. The total bill matters immensely.

[obmelvin]

> Not sure how relevant the food stamps argument is here, since this is an automatic pay and checkout system.

Not sure why you feel the need to say that anyone who is conscious of their grocery budget is irrelevant to an automatic system? You don't say this, but that basically implies that anyone who does so is 'beneath' this tech/convenience.

[gmadsen]

just an observation, but it is pretty obvious you have never been poor or interact with poor people. That situation is a lot more common than you would think.

[arkades]

> Sure, it happens, but it's a 0.0001% use case.

Apparently I can guess an awful lot about how you grow up based on your estimate of how infrequently that happens.

I'm betting you can guess something about how I grow up that I know you're off by quite a few orders of magnitude.

[noja]

> How often are you at the checkout and say "Wait, HOW MUCH is my bill? never mind then, going to go put some things back."

Not often, because I can look at the prices of things as I buy them. Unlike here.

[noahtallen]

In the Amazon Go stores, there are still price labels on the shelves, if I recall correctly. Nothing stopping a retailer from doing that.

[ben174]

And how often do you stop your checkout clerk and tell them to stop scanning because you've exceeded N number of dollars? Once you've pulled your cart up to the checkout line, I'm betting you've most likely settled on what you want to buy.

[TeMPOraL]

I've seen people do just that often enough. They'll sometimes sort their items in order of descending importance, and ask to stop when the total exceeds some amount.

[x0]

I don't want to say the "p" word and spark a huge social justice flame war, but a lot of comments in this thread are so obviously speaking from a place of financial advantage.

In response to your comment in particular, yes, I have done that. Not often, but it has happened often enough, and only a few dollars each time. Do you think people whip out Excel and keep a running tally of every item in their carts?

[jshevek]

"A place of financial advantage" is a more specific and useful characterization, anyway.

[x0]

Agreed.

[callmeal]

>Are the prices not listed on the individual items?

This is not aimed at deanCommie, but I just want to comment on the massive cognitive dissonance in effect when the issue of listing tax-included prices on individual items in America is raised.

Do none of those arguments hold anymore? Why? Because it isn't European tourists asking the question?

[samatman]

European VATs are routinely much higher than any state sales tax in the US.

I can't prove it, but I suspect this is directly related to the fact that in the US system, we see the tax on every purchase.

I admit it's annoying to not have a single number to work with, having to juggle sticker price and real price sucks (the same argument applies to tipping).

But sales taxes are regressive and I don't want them to creep upwards indefinitely. A compromise would be to always display both prices, and make the price-at-register larger.

[Aeolun]

While I agree with listing tax inclusive prices. Is it really that much of a mental effort to add 7%?

[samatman]

Absolutely, large swaths of the population can't do simple mental arithmetic like this at all.

The US system discriminates against those people, no denying it. That said, I'm sure our European friends are absolutely drooling at the thought of a 7% VAT...

[disgruntledphd2]

It's just part of the price, you don't really notice.

Like I do sometimes, but then I consider VAT policy somewhat interesting, in that it specifies the "essentials" (VAT is not charged on these) of what a tax authority thinks one should have.

But most Europeans tend not to think about it on a daily basis, because it's baked into the price.

[tialaramex]

Legally VAT isn't about essentials, although luxury taxes which pre-dated VAT were often specified this way.

VAT is just a tax on Value Added like it says, and the exclusions targeting items you see as essential aren't focused on somebody's idea of what's essential but are the result of various lobbying. That is, it was not the goal of the tax system to encourage petite women to buy clothes intended for children nor to punish the largest children (or their parents) with more expensive clothes that's just the consequence of a lobbied-for exemption for kid sizes.

So "But it's an essential" is a useful emotional tactic but has no legal implications for VAT.

[Aeolun]

I’m not sure that’s unfair, because they ostensibly all learned it in elementary school.

If they willfully forget/ignore something as basic at that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[samatman]

No, you misunderstand, they can't. It's not for lack of trying.

[callmeal]

If you live in the San Francisco Bay area, sales taxes in SF are 8.5% Tax rates in Oakland are 9.25%. South San Francisco: 9.75% Mountain View: 9% Humboldt County: 7.75% Sonoma: 8.75%

The mental effort is not in the calculation but in figuring out what the tax rate is where you are. There really is no excuse for retailers not listing "tax-included" prices.

[bogomipz]

>"This is the "lame - no wireless, less space than a nomad" take."

Can you elaborate? What does this mean exactly?

[deanCommie]

https://www.google.com/search?q=no+wireless+less+space+than+...

[grandmczeb]

Unfortunately the current system doesn’t exactly work in real time (sometimes it can take a while for a receipt to appear in the app) but I don’t think that’s a fundamental limitation. I also don’t think this is a major concern though; so long as there’s still price tags (which there are) and it’s easy to dispute mistakes in the app I don’t think most people will really have a problem with it.

[withinboredom]

I think the price tag only makes sense when tax is included on them. Things are taxed differently in different places, and sometimes people are tax exempt (in the US). But without the tax on the price tag, it’s literally impossible to know how much you’re going to pay (this is why I love living in the EU).

[grandmczeb]

1) “literally impossible” is obviously untrue. 2) Sales tax is <10% basically everywhere. Unless you’re paying in cash, this isn’t a real problem.

[jschwartzi]

If my experience with Amazon hubs is anything to go by, the store employees will not be empowered to make any decisions or help you with anything and will direct you to call the customer-service number, and the customer-service people will not be empowered to fix any pricing errors on the spot.

[grandmczeb]

That hasn’t been my experience actually going to one of these stores.

[thinkling]

When I've used to Amazon Go store, it has usually taken a while for the app to update with a receipt. Last time I went to the new, bigger store it was about an hour before they had the receipt available.

[throwaway3157]

> When I've used to Amazon Go store,

My receipt was in the app shortly after (I walked about two blocks and checked). I think it took longer for an email to show up, but can't recall exactly

[grandmczeb]

My experience had been that it can vary quite a bit. Most of the time it’s pretty quick, but occasionally it can be over an hour.

[sgc]

Maybe that is a person verifying because the software flagged something as uncertain.

[dodobirdlord]

More likely, there's a work queue and sometimes it gets a bit backed up or falls a little behind while autoscaling resources kick in. Having fully dedicated capacity for something that's handled asynchronously, fluctuates with time, and can tolerate many minutes of processing delay would be a waste of money.

[sgc]

It's Amazon, to me it seems more likely they are tuning their ML with human input than they somehow need an hour to spin up AWS for their shiny new baby.

[grandmczeb]

Very possible.

[hamandcheese]

Maybe they use spot instances for all the compute.

[roel_v]

You'll do that the first 5 times, then start to feel OK with it, and not do it any more. I felt the same about ordering fruit & veg for home delivery. Nowadays I don't even think about it any more, except when people who don't get groceries delivered say they don't trust they won't get the wilted ones.

[Dunedan]

> My biggest problem with this is that from what I can tell, the only way to know how much you're going to be automatically charged (as well as what items the tech thinks you're purchasing), is to go to a kiosk in the store and get a receipt.

You only need to use the kiosk once per credit card (to enter your e-mail address). From the page:

> If shoppers need a receipt, they can visit a kiosk in the store and enter their email address. A receipt will be emailed to them for this trip. If they use the same credit card to enter this or any other Just Walk Out-enabled store in the future, a receipt will be emailed to them automatically.

[nimblegorilla]

> I wouldn't feel comfortable just walking out without knowing how much I'm going to be charged, so this tech is essentially useless to me.

I'm sure they can make an app for that.

[maest]

I am not sure they can make an app for that.

For one, there's usually a delay before you get your receipt.

[zaidf]

I’d expect amazon to email you a receipt with an easy way to dispute payments. I realize this is not the same as seeing the aggregate cost at the time of purchase but I’m skeptical this alone will create lots of friction in ppl adopting this.

To me, the biggest thing that has kept me from trying it is that I need to open my app and scan a QR code. Looks like they’re addressing this by left you swipe your card.

[julienb_sea]

I mean, you do it a single time and your email is registered. Just like square. This is standard practice at this point and the inconvenience factor is eliminated pretty much immediately.

[bytematic]

No way does that completely defeat the convenience. To just walk up and put your email in, is even much easier than ordering at kiosks at something like mcdonalds

[takeda]

That's the point of this technology - to increase impulse buying.

Credit cards purpose is that it hides from you how much money you have left. If you were paying in cash and see how much money you have left in your wallet, you're more likely end up not purchasing a given item.

This is one step further, since you now don't know how much you're paying (unless you calculating the cost in your head, which most people don't do) and typically you'll know once you get a CC statement.

Note that the kiosk doesn't print the receipt, it e-mails it, which makes it even harder to instantly see what you've paid.

[ajkjk]

Well, that's one of the points. Another point is to not pay for cashiers or have checkout lines.

[asdff]

You won't have to pay for cashiers but you will have to still pay for people stocking, security when people inevitably try and beat this system, customer service for when old people without cellphones get confused, etc. Maybe you shave off one minimum wage worker off your payroll, for the cost of however much amazon licenses this tech to you.

[hamandcheese]

Not to mention all the data to be mined.

[miguelrochefort]

Already mined by all stores.

[Aeolun]

I think that is only problematic the first 5 times or so? After that you’ll likely trust the tech.

I’m sure they have a ‘you charged me incorrectly’ resolution service as well.

[machiaweliczny]

They could probably add app that displays your cart live.

[miguelrochefort]

They could easily put a screen next to the exit that shows you what you purchased when you walk to it.

[ramon]

If I was the owner of the Store I would put a security guy to validate that it was paíd, if not then don’t let them put of the Store. I’m a tech guy but if it was my store I would like to double check somehow. From a security perspective it’s great to only let people in with credit and also I would be able to somehow track who was trying to do something wrong.

[stronglikedan]

I'm sure the items have posted prices, so it would really be simple math that could be done in one's head.

[nck4222]

I don't think it's a lot to ask that I'm informed how much I'm going to be charged before I pay for something, which is the process for every sale I make currently works.

What if the item is marked as on sale but the database hasn't been updated so I don't get the sale price?

What if the price on the item is correct but someone fat fingered the price in the database?

What if a different customer moved an item from one shelf to another so the price on the shelf is for a different product?

What if I want to know the total with tax?

What if a camera sees me pick up a $500 item to look at but doesn't see me put it back on the shelf?

I don't want to go home, wait an hour+, see I've been mischarged, and then have to spend a week waiting for a refund to process.

[spunker540]

I bet people said the same thing about credit cards — “how do I know there won’t be an error that causes my credit card bill to be wrong at the end of the month? I’ll stick with cash thank you very much”

[nck4222]

I mean, until the technology had been proven, I think that's a valid question to ask.

Plus, when credit cards were introduced, you were still given the opportunity to agree upon the total on which you'd be charged, before you were charged. That's all I'm asking for with this.

[RandallBrown]

I have to imagine that all of those will be rare enough situations that you don't really need to worry about it.

Many of them happen when you're checking out in person too. You can simply go to the receipt kiosk every time if you're worried about being charged incorrectly.

[SamuelAdams]

In the United States taxes are not included on the sticker price. As a result adding up the total price of a purchase can be tricky.

However, I don't think this technology will be used extensively by people who purchase a large quantity of products at a time. Instead, this will be catered to the times when someone needs to pick up 5 or less things at a store. In this instance, these customers are not typically price-sensitive about what they need.

[donarb]

In certain places, tax is not added for certain goods. For example, in Seattle food is not taxed, unless it is prepared, like fast food or deli counters.

[tialaramex]

This is also routine in Europe where tax is included in the advertised price. Here for example the price shown for your hilarious Xmas sweater is inclusive of tax, the price shown for your toddler's equally hilarious sweater is not, because it's tax exempt (clothing for kids isn't taxed) and so in both cases the displayed price is the price you'll pay.

We added a sugar tax, so the sticker price for beverages like original Coke went up, but similar zero sugar products (Coke Zero, Pepsi Max) did not. Of course some stores just raised the before-tax price to capture the difference as profit, and others just eliminated sugary drinks. So... a mixed result.

The EU's focus is that consumers always pay what the sticker price says. So, no "plus tax", no "shipping fees not included" on items that unavoidably have to be shipped to you, no "service fees" no "card fees" nothing like that. I think even if you don't actively like this, you can see the point of this approach.

Would it be easier to get consumers angry about taxes if the tax wasn't "baked in" ? Maybe. But it's not as though it has proved impossible to campaign against, for example, tax on tampons or even toilet paper.

[bluGill]

$2.99 at 6.5% tax is $3.18 (after rounding). Buy two and your total cost is $3.37. The government don't not want to be cheated out of that penny. (it adds up over all the people buying stuff)

[bloodorange]

I genuinely can't tell if you are being serious. If you are being serious, then how do you account for the behaviour of the customer possibly changing based on how the price is displayed (i.e including or excluding taxes etc.)

[njarboe]

The cash registers at a normal store has to calculate the tax on items, so I don't see why this would be very hard for other computer systems to do. It will know where you are.

[egdod]

Grabbing a receipt at a kiosk is a lot quicker than manually scanning your items.

My main problem with this is how invasively creepy it all is.

[njarboe]

Yes. Amazon will know every item you buy, how much, and when. But not much different than grocery store discount cards already used by most everyone for decades. I'm sure that info is sold, traded around, and aggregated.

[bonoboTP]

They will have data on how people walk around the stores, in what order, what shelves they look at, what items they take off and put back. What they put back and rather take as an alternative instead. How long they ponder before picking an item. Etc. etc. so much data to mine for advertisers and marketers to manipulate people into spending more.

[egdod]

Yeah, and I don't use grocery discount cards either. But doing it via camera gives a ton of data beyond just what I buy and when.

[njarboe]

Grocery stores also use cameras to see how customers behave. I have not heard of them connecting them to face recognition systems, but I would not be surprised if they do.

I agree that this is another increase in the invasion of privacy that will probably end in a bad place. We need laws to prevent these systems, not just a few people holding on to scraps of privacy with desperate measures, like not buying a new car.