I visited the Amazon Go store on Market St. in SF. I really enjoyed the convenience of not waiting in line.
With that said, the Richard Stallman in me still regrets giving Amazon the opportunity to capture HD video of me in meatspace that is linked to my customer profile.
My local supermarket has recently rolled out scan-and-go (is that the proper name?), where you carry a scanner around the store with you and at the checkout just return it and pay. It's funny because at peak times there is a queue of people at the self-service checkouts (which were supposed to make shopping quicker), but with this you can walk straight past them and pay. I just pick something off the shelf (and weigh loose produce), scan it, and put it straight in my bag.
I'm surprised it has taken this long to roll out, as I remember in the mid 90s one supermarket trialed it, but then they abandoned it, and twenty years later it's back.
IMO this gives most of the benefits (admittedly theft may be easier, but it's no different than regular shopping), but non of the they-are-tracking-everything-I-look-at privacy issues.
> "self-service checkouts (which were supposed to make shopping quicker),"
I don't see how that could ever have been the case. Self-service replaces skilled labor (employee cashier) with unskilled labor (customer cashier.) Why would that ever be more efficient? When you throw in matters like needing to wait for an employee every time somebody buys liquor or cough syrup, it's clear self-service is doomed to be much slower.
It seems to me, self-service is actually designed to reduce labor costs for the store.
Well when they first came out very few people used them, so it was usually quicker to go there :D Plus you can fit more self service checkouts in the same area (3x - 6x), so maybe it's not quicker for the individual but the overall rate is.
Self service checkout does not speed up the time it takes you to check out, but it can (and usually does IME) dramatically reduce the amount of time you wait in line to begin checking out.
When a store has a single full-service line staffed and four self-service lines open, the presence of those self-service lines certainly seems to improve the situation, vs a single full-service line. But what if it were instead compared to five full-service lines? The five full-service lines would doubtlessly be the fastest.
Sure, but the supermarket would have to pay to staff those other four lines, and they've decided they'd rather pay to maintain self-service machines instead.
I'd consider using those machines if they gave me a discount. But as it is, they're slower, exploit my labor, and are used to suppress the wages stores pay out to members of the community (making regional wealth extraction more efficient.) And worse than any of that, the machines are pedantic and finicky.
I see no conceivable upside. I totally get why companies are installing them; it's plain old greed. There is nothing complicated about that. But knowing that doesn't make me want to use them.
A little easier? Seems to me it would make theft a lot easier; it removes the requirement that everything you're buying has to come out of the bag and in front of a cashier.
Self-checkout still requires things to come out of your bag, so the person who's there for when a self-checkout machine inevitably needs cashier assistance can be keeping an eye on several stations at a time.
With scan-and-go, those eyes need to be moved to the shelves, which is a much larger area and won't all be in one person's line-of-sight at once (and the person can easily obscure vision of the shelf).
Also makes accidental theft much easier. I grocery shop with my kids, and I pretty regularly end up handing something weird or an unexpected bag of candy back to the checkout person.
That's how they lure you in. convenience. Instant gratification. Sort of like a drug. Little by little people exchange some convenience for a form of corporate bondage.
The idea behind the GDPR is that you should be able to enjoy that service without giving Amazon any exploitation rights to that footage for purposes beyond your checkout. And yes, I know, there is a wide gap between theory and practice.
With that said, the Richard Stallman in me still regrets giving Amazon the opportunity to capture HD video of me in meatspace that is linked to my customer profile.