I shop at Amazon Fresh at least once a week because I get a lot of packages delivered there when my local lockbox is full.
There are several ways of shopping there. You can shop the old-fashioned way and get rung up per usual, paying with cash or credit card, whatever. You can instead use the walk-out option. You don’t scan as you go, you just toss the items into your bags. In addition, you can also let them scan your palm once and from then on use your palm to enter/exit instead of scanning the app or card (for allowing them to do this they give you a $10 credit).
Nobody follows you or watches you. It’s all done via camera. If your receipt, which usually comes 2 - 3 hours later, is incorrect, you simply click on the wrong item and it tell it to remove it, no questions asked. I’ve never have a problem with getting it removed. There are errors about 1/5 times I shop. Often in my favor. If it’s in my favor, there’s no way to correct it on my end (not that I stay up at night feeling guilty).
The cameras know where every item is located on every shelf, so they know what to charge - there aren’t special electronic tags on anything.
Some of the hot deli bar dishes are excellent. Unfortunately the store is in a terrible area and there aren’t a lot of customers, so the hot deli’s been cut way back - it’s had the same main 2 items (butter chicken meatballs and chicken tikka masala) every day for months now; they used to alternate between Indian and Mexican. They used to have a carving station with brisket and roasted pork and roasted vegetables, but that’s all gone now. There’s still a hot pizza bar, for now.
At least 75% of the shoppers are Amazon shoppers, packing up orders for delivery or pickup.
Yes, you most definitely can shop on a cash basis and with no Amazon account. My store is next to a low-income senior project, and these folks shop there all the time. They just use the regular register lanes.
In Europe you can have any business delete your personal data as per the Data Protection Act. Can you do this in the USA too? American firms must comply when they do business in Europe, including a net presence, if not the fines can be very high (up to 4% of the yearly turnover, if I remember right. Turnover, not profit). You could get your 10$ again and again: I mean, deleting your data means deleting everything they have on you, including that they have deleted your data.
The scanners are watching you remove product from the shelf and electronically add it to your cart. if you put it back, it takes it off.
We were in one of the smaller stores in San Francisco during the summer. We entered - four of us on my credit card - and took and returned a few things. Ultimately we were charged for the two or three items we actually removed from the store.
There are NO cashiers at the small stores, so no opportunity to pay with cash.
Thanks I was wondering about that other thing at the gate. There were a couple of employees standing around there and one of them started to walk over towards us but I figured out the phone app thing before she got to us so she just turned around, otherwise I probably would have asked her a ton of questions.
Oh, I didn’t realize that. My local store is a medium-size grocery store with maybe 5 checkout lanes and 5 or so walkout lanes. There’s another one nearby that’s smaller and only does pickup orders.
Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, which is sponsored by Amazon, uses the same system on a smaller scale for their concession stands. I was able to run my debit card, walk in, grab a hot dog and a bottle of water, and walk out with no errors or mischarges for stuff I picked up and then put back down. Easiest $15 I’ve ever spent at a major arena.
That’s a good question that I don’t know the answer to.
I’ll indicate my data collection preferences when visiting a new website online. Usually declining everything I’m able to.
So I wonder can I opt out of some the biometric data collection going on at Amazon markets. The idea of having my height weight race face shoe size and my purse contents visually pickpocketed by AI for Amazon to store and analyze gives me the creeps.
They built one of these down the road from us, displacing a perfectly good and well-patronized supermarket. It’s been ready to go for months, but they still haven’t opened the damned thing, so it’s just taking up space. It’s less than a mile away from the Amazon Books store that they opened, then closed only about a year or two later. And only a few miles from the local movie complex that they took over and turned into an Amazon Distribution Center.
OP was in a store with no cashiers. But no matter, one can opt out of store analytics and still use Just Walk Out.
What happens if I opt out?
If you prefer that we do not use your shopping data for Store Analytics, you can opt out below, and we will not include your data in Store Analytics for future shopping trips. You can still continue to enjoy the benefits of shopping in stores enabled with Just Walk Out and Amazon Dash Cart technology. If you opt out, you may still receive personalized recommendations or deals from Amazon based on your purchase history or engagement with other Amazon programs.