[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...