Huh. The Amazon Fresh near me was next to blocks and blocks full of retirement and low-income apartments. Most of the shoppers were oldsters who didn’t use the no-pay feature.
No paying? Now THERE’S a business model I could get behind!
I live in Olympia, so there never were any of them near me, and although I overnight in Seattle several times a year I never found myself near where any of the Amazon Gos were. There was one just down the block from my hotel when I went to Chicago in 2023 and 2024, but they were always closed when I passed by it.
I work in a grocery store. People ABSOLUTELY try to “defeat” us all the time. We just got our self-checkouts enhanced with AI that can tell if people are typing in the wrong codes for produce or bulk foods. We’ve got as many security cameras as a Vegas casino and they’re so high-res that they can read the text on your phone screen from a hundred feet away. We have uniformed security patrolling the store and watching cameras to catch shoplifters who are ABSOLUTELY allowed to get physical. We have our shopping carts geofenced so people can’t leave the lot with them. It’s a constant duel.
Dynamic pricing absolutely would NOT work at our scale, though.
Climate Pledge, now with 25% less GHG in every can!
I hated the name of Climate Pledge Arena at first, but I’ve gotten used to it and don’t mind it.
Usually we just call it “Climate Pledge” and folks know what you mean.
I call it Key Arena and people seem to know what I mean.
I think they at least kept part of the old roof…
(Aside)
Y’see, I could support an AI application that lets the checkout itself identify that what I just put on the scale is a head of lettuce, or if it’s Golden Delicious v. Granny Smith apples, and ring it up correctly.
Or, I could go to a staffed register where a trained human can look at it and recognize what it is, but they got rid of most of those.
(/Aside)
Given how often I catch grocery stores overcharging me (Oh oopsie! I guess we didn’t catch that!), I don’t trust this “just walk out” technology one little bit. I notice they rarely (never) undercharge me.
Sometimes a price gets changed in the system and the tag doesn’t get changed, or an item is stocked in the wrong spot on the shelf. I assure you it’s not a malicious conspiracy against you.
From my side of the counter, as the person who usually has to go and check the tags when a customer challenges a price, I’d say that about 4 times out of 5 the customer was looking at the wrong tag, or misunderstood the tag or didn’t read the details, or they grabbed a solitary item that another customer had abandoned in the wrong place.
Oh, not against me personally. It’s just that the “mistakes” are always in the direction of “oopsie we charged you more”. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
I mean, prices go up more often than they go down, so logically you should see more accidental overcharges. Inflation means that the price of most products will naturally increase over time. Price reductions, on the other hand, usually only happen when a product is on sale, and the store DEFINITELY wants you to know the price is discounted so you’ll buy more of it.
A likelier issue that I see with dynamic pricing is that if the price of a product were increased between when a customer selected an item and when they got to the register, it would be difficult if not impossible for them to dispute it. If stores can’t guarantee that the price you see when you pick an item up is what you’re going to pay for it, shoppers will take their business to stores (like the one I work for!) that don’t use digital tags.
Actual pricing mistakes where i shop are not common, and I’ve seen it go both ways. I think the stores are trying to be right.
What evidence do you have for this claim?
What does any of this have to do with the Washington Post (aside from the tenuous link to Bezos)?
Not perfect evidence, but Consumer Reports had an article about this not too long ago:
Why isn’t Washington Post covering this story, I ask you?!
Nice on-topic transition! 
The Post publishes a list of cost-saving tips that includes stealing from businesses and not flushing the toilet or using your turn signal.
No mention of saving money by not subscribing to the Post, of course.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/04/04/money-saving-hacks-tips/
It’s a syndicated column by financial writer Michelle Singletary. This one features tips that readers sent in.
I’m supposing that one is at least a bit tongue in cheek.
In our modern humorless era sometimes that can get past people.
I really don’t think so.