We Stole Tampons from the Cashier-less Amazon Go Store

okay so picture this your SOS got a feminine-hygiene emergency and cannot leave the house to get her own bio waste management products so it's on you but you do not feel like going to the local grocery store and listening to the cashier making that stale joke about your own flow so what's the solution well for us it was to get in the car drive two-and-a-half hours down to Seattle and visit the Amazon go pilot location the world's only retail store where you do not have to have any human interaction whatsoever you just grab what you want put it in your bag and leave but what's the experience like well we're gonna tell you after we tell you about Tunnel Bear be easy to use VPN that makes the internet a more open place giving everyone access to the same content check them out at Tunnel Bear comm /l TT will have that linked below [Music] okay so step one is to get the Amazon Go app once you're signed into your account you don't need Prime this QR code right here allows you to scan in any guests that are with you though do note that anything they take will be charged to your account and then enter the store you can't get in without your phone but Amazon says that handy-dandy Amazon staff members will be on hand with charging banks if for whatever reason you need to juice up before you go in so let's try it I mean okay we're inside so it kind of looks like a regular grocery store so how does it work Amazon isn't being too specific about the details but we do know a few things one is that the place is absolutely peppered with cameras see those black boxes up there there are literally hundreds of cameras inside what is only an 1,800 square foot store according to one article I read they are designed to read camera friendly codes that are printed out on each of the items but these just look like regular UPC codes so I'm actually not sure about that what we do know is that while it was present in the original patent filing RFID technology is not being used and we also know that they are using computer vision algorithms in order to understand what you're picking up and they are also assisting this technology with additional sensors like for example weight sensors in the shelves themselves pressure sensors and load cells each of those components together increases Amazon's confidence in what exactly it is that you have picked up and put in your bag or your pocket or whatever the case may be so in terms of product mix and pricing it's not like a giant grocery store like you can't even buy a full gallon of milk or anything like that but I mean it's pretty competitive with what you'd expect from like a neighborhood grocer or like like a corner store like this curried chicken wrap is six bucks whoa what this is interesting so these food items these are marked with those camera recognizable codes that I was talking about before because I guess you know if it doesn't come in a package it's a lot harder to tell the difference between curried chicken wrap and tuna wrap Oh BK b kelly b k LT wrap does this have kale in it you guys are you guys are killing me here bacon kale lettuce tomato wrap I mean if I'm gonna have like the trendy Seattle experience I gotta have the wrap with the kale in it would you want Dennis well I don't know man I don't know what to tell you okay then just get it I tell you man this is like weird stuff cuz like normally sitting in a store putting stuff in your backpack like here let's get something to drink - Dennis what you want one Snapple I'm getting snappy and the sunburn drinks I don't think so no I don't think so sorry you're gonna have to have the only like 98% Amazon experience here harmless coconut water do you want the harmful one or the harmless one you want the harmful one well this one's harmless I don't like I feel like someone's gonna come tackle me okay so we got all our snacks now we've got to get what we actually came here for you can choose between the always infinity and the Tampax pearl let's let's go with the let's go see always right here but with a twist I have a challenge for their system I want to see how it handles me putting this down in the wrong place and then picking it back up all right thank you yeah cool let's say I'm shopping first an alcohol and I kind of go do I really want this not sure I want to see how it handles it aha yep yep okay you know what I actually don't want some alcohol after all but if I come back without these I'm gonna get in all sorts of trouble so let's head for the exit like my reflex as I'm walking towards the exit is like okay I gotta get ready to take off my bag and take my stuff out and put it on the thing so theoretically now as I walk through what they're calling the transition area Amazon is going to do a small transaction on my credit card $1.00 just to validate that it's working then they're gonna build a balance of it once they've totaled up everything that I took bear in mind guys that if you over draw your credit card that's on you to deal with any kind of penalties or fees that are associated with that so here it is [Music] there we go there we go nice get up and go your trip time was 26 minutes and 27 seconds your receipt is ready check this out so Amazon is actually so confident in their system that they've built in a feature where if for whatever reason you're charged for something that you didn't take you can actually just remove it and crazily enough they're using the honor system which if you think about it actually isn't that crazy because it's tied into your Prime account which is tied into your credit card Amazon can use machine learning not to mention just common sense in order to figure out if people are abusing the system okay so let's see how we did boom got it very a however that's pronounced got it bacon tail lettuce and tomato wrap diet Snapple iced tea raspberry diet and coconut water nailed it okay so it got everything but how does the system handle an item that was accidentally not charged cuz I mean nothing's perfect well Amazon so confident in their system and seemingly rightly so that they have actually apparently told another news outlet that managed to walk out with a yogurt they didn't pay for you know what go ahead keep it the yogurts on us because they seem to believe that the system is so accurate that even with those occasional misfires they're still going to make up for the cost of cashiers plain clothes loss prevention security people and well just the normal shock lifting that retailers refer to as shrink not bad considering it's got kale in it actually I was really good maybe the craziest thing about this whole experience is that let's say I decided this you know kale sucked or uh you know what I don't need these pads after all if I wanted to return them at this time there is literally no mechanism to take this back you you'd have to talk to an associate and give it to them but the way that the refund would be processed would be identical you would just go into your receipt you would select an item and you would remove it I don't need it or whatever and no questions asked they will give you a refund not only do you not have to return it there is no mechanism to return it they're gonna have to find a solution to that in the long term okay so in summary that was really freaking cool but as some of you may have noticed it is now go for a walk in the rain time because there are definitely still some issues and some concerns that I have about this technology so issue number one is that before Amazon as they are undoubtedly gonna do in the next year or two rolls this out in Whole Foods locations they acquired them less than about a year ago now they're gonna have to figure out how to address the limit on the number of customers that can be in the store at one time right now you just make a line outside the store but if your whole pitch is line up with shopping that's obviously a dumb long-term solution issue number two is that a tree additional grocery stores loyalty program actually tells them a lot more about you than just what you bought with data especially if you're a regular shopper like what you buy how much of it and how often they can extrapolate a lot about not just you but also your family and Amazon hasn't talked a ton about what data they're collecting how long they're keeping it for there's nothing go specific in their privacy policy but if I was a betting man I would put good money on Amazon collecting all kinds of extra data like your movement patterns around the store how long you looked at a particular item before buying it or not buying it which advertising kiosks were endcaps you found the most attractive and they're gonna use that combined with what they already know about you from your online profile to build an incredibly detailed picture of who you are and what you're about and this ignores some of the less obvious societal issues that we're gonna be facing as technology like this becomes more prevalent so it's estimated that in America right now there are three and a half million cashiers and you know Amazon side of this story is that you know yeah we don't have any cashiers but we're still gonna need humans for food prep restocking the shelves checking ID in the alcoholic beverages section they say they're still going to need humans for that for the foreseeable future but you know I'm kind of looking at this going well yeah but regular grocery stores also need people for food prep and stocking shelves I'm not sure if this math is gonna add up and you know if I were to be sitting here with a crystal ball figuring out what I think the future is gonna be I see no reason why those jobs couldn't eventually be replaced as well so that's something that we are going to have to figure out as people over the next yeah we don't have as long to deal with as we might have hoped speaking of not having a long time to deal with something have you ever called your mobile carrier and been stuck on hold for like 10 minutes 20 minutes trying to deal with something well not with ting ting is the mobile carrier that's focused on customer service and customer satisfaction and they are sponsoring this episode today with ting you only pay for the airtime and data that you use and they've got lower mobile data rates than ever before at just $10 a gig beyond the first gig the best part of ting is that you don't have to go into a blind you can use their savings calculator which we have linked below that's Linus ting calm to enter your last few bills and how much you paid and find out if you would save money with King so go check it out if you switch they'll pay 25% of your contract cancellation fee with your other carrier up to $75 and if you use our link you'll get another $25 towards a new device or your first bill so thanks for watching guys did you dislike this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribe maybe consider checking out where to see the store that we featured at the link in the video description also down there is our merch store test cool shirts like this one as well as our community forum which you should totally join alright let's get out of the rain this stuff tastes like sorry I bought it

Channel: Linus Tech Tips

Views: 6,650,593

Rating: 4.5055332 out of 5

Keywords: amazon, go, store, cashier, no cashier, food, grocery, new, innovation, camera, security, staff

Id: vorkmWa7He8

Length: 13min 8sec (788 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 27 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Schwa142]

Yes, Amazon is obviously stupid and don't know what they're doing. /s

RFID in grocery stores has been experimented with for decades by companies like Sun/Oracle and IBM. There's a reason it's not being used.