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Comment by whoisjuan | Hacker News Reader

I have one that I use to re-order Soylent and I love it. It's a super simple experience that ties two micro-moments. The realization that I run out of something and the intention to restock that item.

That being said, I can see why they stop selling them. An Echo Device can do the same. But I still think nothing beats the simplicity of just pressing a button. It's seamless. I hope they keep supporting them.

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It's funny because I had one of these I put in my bathroom above the toilet paper to resupply bulk orders of cottonelle and wet wipes. I took it down after 2 months.

I like that it was smart enough to dedupe multiple presses. I didn't like that guests were compelled to push the button. I realized it was time to kill the experiment when I had a year's supply of toiletry.

That's actually hilarious.

The first paragraph is one of the most SF things I've read in a while. Most Americans have to check their bank balance (if they have a bank) to see if they can afford to get more essential things like toilet paper and laundry detergent - it's absolutely not a micro-moment for them. Only a small subset of the population can hit "re-order" without thinking about it.

I love the way European grocery stores are set up, especially the ones I've been to in Munich, where most people stop by on their way back from work to get food just for that night's dinner and tomorrow's breakfast. Super fresh produce every day without needing to make it a multi-hour chore one day a week.

Agree 100% with this comment.

Agreed. I feel we are spending enormous resources optimizing things that don't need optimization at all, like ordering laundry detergent. It would be nice if we spent a fraction of these resources optimizing more important/irritating items, like waiting times at government offices for example - I've been to a handful in my lifetime, and every single time it has been a terrible experience. Meaningless paperwork, paper based systems, clueless/disinterested employees...

And the one place worse than gov offices are the hospitals :(

It is hilarious that we save a few minutes here and there using fancy stuff like dash buttons, only to waste all that time at the doctor's office, DMV, immigration, permits...

> Most Americans have to check their bank balance (if they have a bank) to see if they can afford to get more essential things like toilet paper and laundry detergent

Is that really true? I am not American and have never been there, and I don't know, but I wouldn't have imagined things were like that. I'm interested to know.

There are a bunch of excellent articles exploring the concept of "it's expensive to be poor" but here's my favorite: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/0...

I'm aware of that. I'm asking whether the "Most Americans..." claim (in relation to essentials like toilet paper) is true.

The closest that article gets to that is "More than 40 percent of Americans say they struggle even to make ends meet each month and would be unable to cover an unexpected $400 expense without real hardship" but to me that's not really answering the question

I'm completely the inverse, the ordering is the most convenience part of shopping already, the hardest bit is taking delivery.

Me. I order my Queal (powdered soylent) in massive quantities. I've actually got a year ordered already, which ships quarterly. Before I tried to order a month or two at a time, not only as it's easier to manage delivery, but you get good bulk discount deals.

So for anything I order a lot of, I'm already trying to make it easier than a button press, or I want something that fits into my schedule easier than taking delivery (EU, we don't really leave things on porches).

> Existing Dash buttons will continue to function “so long as the public keeps using them,” CNET says.

via https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/28/18245315/amazon-dash-butt...

I think another reason they are stopping is that in Germany, they lost a court battle and the court forbid them from selling the dash button to order products unless significant changes were made.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-germany-court/...

Wonder if they'd have been okay with it if you had to select the item at the pricepoint - or if whatever speaker had Alexa asking you if $2.XX is an okay price?

Price alone wasn't the only issue IIRC they also lacked information such as final checkout price (including how much tax paid) as well as Terms of Service information. The consumer group also claimed it wasn't evident that you would be ordering something for money by pressing the button, though I'm unsure if the court also waved that through.

In my understanding, the final price (including tax and transport fee) should be the only mandatory indication. Tax, terms of service are on the receipt (that you should still get when using dash buttons).

However the buttons also chose the product, the buyer not only does not know the price, he is not sure which exact product he's going to get at checkout.

If that were the case, it seems like the right solution would be to just stop selling them in this small market.

It might not be the only cause but I can't imagine it didn't contribute in some way.

Well I suppose if you subsist off of one product, that would work ok.

I'd need one for milk, eggs, bread, pasta, rice, cous cous, onions, peppers, etc, etc, etc.

So currently I just have a piece of paper hanging on the back of the kitchen door, that things get added to.

I definitely overthink purchases but it's also interesting to consider. I think you make a great point that the dash buttons are a terrible fit for many things. Food feels like a challenge since I have ever-changing dietary needs and desires. I also hate the markup game that Instacart and Amazon play and not seeing a price gives me anxiety.

I immediately think of clothes detergent, toilet paper, shampoo, cleaning supplies with dash buttons--although I move frequently so I did not buy for these instances and I wonder if many people say they would buy them for those and then do not.

But to me, they fit the perfect use case: static location inside a cupboard, there is a fixed amount sent, the demand is inelastic and not seasonal, and the product itself doesn't change much (I don't need to compare when I buy, ever). That sounds perfect to me! I don't want to waste time and energy shopping for these 8 things.

I really wonder why this is the case and I'd love to understand why it couldn't work. Perhaps it was marketed to a more innovative audience and not to the people who do laundry, wash their dishes, etc? I hope I'm not generalizing.

That was definitely the use case for me, specifically for products that I know I can buy in bulk, but don't know exactly how frequently I'm going to need to restock. When my son was younger we had one for baby wipes, and another for nappies. When we got down to the last pack we'd hit the button to have some more delivered, and they'd arrive the next day.

For a while I also used one for cat food, but that's got a regular enough consumption rate that the button was replaced by a regularly scheduled order to ensure that we'd have more just before it ran out without having to think about it.

I have a 2 person household, and I probably buy those above mentioned things like 2 times a year at most, so an order button for a single product would be wasteful.

For people who use a lot of laundry detergent, I would imagine those people would be shopping a lot anyways for everything else they use a lot of, so it wouldn't be inconvenient to manual reorder online or at the store when they're already doing a mass order, and it might be confusing to have a mix of things on auto-reorder, buttons, and manual order.

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