I shopped at Amazon’s till-free store and now I’m ready for a British robot revolution
DEAR Santa, we’ve been alright this year. Can Britain please have an Amazon Go, already?
The till-free, cashier-free convenience stores are the perfect way to escape endless queueing this festive season.
For the unaware, Amazon Go is a chain of hi-tech shops that launched in January last year.
Shoppers simply walk in, take what they want off the shelves, walk out – and needn’t speak to a single human…or machine. You’re billed minutes later.
It works using a combination of computer vision, sensors, artificial intelligence and presumably some kind of black magic to ensure your shoplifting isn’t actually theft.
There are 18 across the US – including one in downtown New York City, which I visited earlier this week.
The whole system is eerily simple.
In fact, I didn’t know I was going to an Amazon Go until about two minutes before I walked through the doors.
I saw the shop, downloaded the app, signed in and had an Amazon Go QR code in seconds.
You walk through a little barrier, scan the code, and that’s it.
I was free to roam around the shop, picking up chocolate bars, then considering my burgeoning waistline, and then promptly putting them back.
Every item is monitored by cameras and sensors, so you can’t get away with a five-finger discount.
Some items I kept: like a giant bag of Cheetos, and the aforementioned chocolate bar(s) of sin.
Items are added and removed from your basket as you pick them up and put them back.
Then once you walk out the shop, Amazon sends you a receipt roughly five minutes later.
It logs your time in store, the exact number of items you purchased, and the amount your Amazon account has been billed.
There were no queues, no grumpy cashiers, and certainly no stained conveyor belts that require hard-to-soft Tetris-spreading of booze, fruit and bread.
There are helpers in-store, of course. They probably mostly answer questions like “does this really work?” and “can I really just walk out now?”.
And they also monitor the booze aisle, asking for ID if baby-faced shoppers try to make off with some mulled wine.
The whole thing is bizarre but beautiful.
Even though my bank balance is lighter, I’m still not entirely convinced I didn’t commit a crime.
This criminal thrill lingers for a few hours, but eventually subsides.
But the desire for a similar sci-fi upgrade in the UK has only grown stronger.
Amazon Go is a stark contrast to the impenetrable mass of Oxford Street shoppers, endlessly shuffling from one queue to another.
The bad news? There’s no word on when Amazon's robot revolution will arrive in the UK.
Latest murmurs from February suggested that Amazon had secure some prime real space near Oxford Circus.
But months later and we’re still mulling around in queues across the capital.
Maybe if we all stick Amazon Go on our Christmas lists, we might just get one in 2020. Best behaviour, boys and girls!
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