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I like Amazon, but at some level I find it hard to believe that a company that can build a store that automatically tracks my purchases with ML and let’s me wal

I like Amazon, but at some level I find it hard to believe that a company that can build a store that automatically tracks my purchases with ML and let’s me walk out without a checkout can’t figure out how to flag some of the blatantly fake stuff being sold on their site. Sure given the scale there can always be a few bad apples but some of the stuff is clearly fake and stays up for ages.

realusername 7y ago
That's because they really don't care, I doubt there's significant resources dedicated to that. Their store is full of counterfeit products and they don't even remove the most obvious ones.
verst 7y ago
In the Amazon Grocery Store in the Capitol Hill Neighborhood of Seattle it takes them over an hour to charge you and send you a receipt. Doesn't seem like they perfected automated tracking yet. This screams manual human review of video footage -- seems like they are still collecting data for a future ML model.
- jlmorton 7y ago
  I doubt it. They send a push notification to your Amazon Go app immediately upon exiting the store. They then later send an email receipt, as you said, about an hour later. Because of the novelty of the store, and because it's on my way to work, I routinely go the store, and I've never noticed a discrepancy between the push notification and the emailed receipt. I have no specific knowledge why the receipt email is delayed, but I suspect a more mundane reason, like they're batching payments, in case of multiple trips in-and-out.
  - tehlike 7y ago
    They should know your location already, and can decide if you are coming back at all. I agree, it smells human review. Models probably produce a list and human gives the greenlight.
  - verst 7y ago
    Just to clarify again, this is at the Amazon Go Grocery store of which there is only one location in Seattle. I don't use the Amazon Go app. I use the Go option within the regular Amazon app. I get no email and no status change within the app for over 1 hour. Also, I'm really not that convinced that they have mastered picking up various fruit and vegetables and the bakery items I chose. Those things don't use RFID and from what I could tell their system must be vision-based online here. Edit: My friend was with me and used the Amazon Go app and also didn't receive any message or receipt until an hour later. This has been a frequent occurrence at this store.

realusername 7y ago

That's because they really don't care, I doubt there's significant resources dedicated to that. Their store is full of counterfeit products and they don't even remove the most obvious ones.

verst 7y ago

In the Amazon Grocery Store in the Capitol Hill Neighborhood of Seattle it takes them over an hour to charge you and send you a receipt. Doesn't seem like they perfected automated tracking yet. This screams manual human review of video footage -- seems like they are still collecting data for a future ML model.

jlmorton 7y ago
I doubt it. They send a push notification to your Amazon Go app immediately upon exiting the store. They then later send an email receipt, as you said, about an hour later. Because of the novelty of the store, and because it's on my way to work, I routinely go the store, and I've never noticed a discrepancy between the push notification and the emailed receipt. I have no specific knowledge why the receipt email is delayed, but I suspect a more mundane reason, like they're batching payments, in case of multiple trips in-and-out.
- tehlike 7y ago
  They should know your location already, and can decide if you are coming back at all. I agree, it smells human review. Models probably produce a list and human gives the greenlight.
- verst 7y ago
  Just to clarify again, this is at the Amazon Go Grocery store of which there is only one location in Seattle. I don't use the Amazon Go app. I use the Go option within the regular Amazon app. I get no email and no status change within the app for over 1 hour. Also, I'm really not that convinced that they have mastered picking up various fruit and vegetables and the bakery items I chose. Those things don't use RFID and from what I could tell their system must be vision-based online here. Edit: My friend was with me and used the Amazon Go app and also didn't receive any message or receipt until an hour later. This has been a frequent occurrence at this store.