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Comment by unnouinceput | Hacker News Reader

I wish them and amazon go all the best in the world but this will not fly at all to be the common situation. It will always remain a novelty used by a few locations in cities and that's all. And you wanna know why? Simple, who's stopping the theft? Once this will go mainstream the theft will eat the profit margins and they will revert to current situation.

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No one is stopping the thieves today. I regularly see people walking out with stolen items. Unless there is a security guard there, which an automated store could still hire. Also the amazon stores make you scan your phone on the way in, so they can prevent people who have shoplifted before from even entering.

In the US, stopping someone can be difficult when it comes to legal liability. There is a thin line between detaining someone and forcibly kidnapping someone.

E.g.: Theaters don’t allow entry without tickets.

The Amazon Go stores are controlled access, you need to swipe your app to get past the gate.

There is also (at least at the original one) plenty of staff, just they are helping people through the gates and restocking shelves.

You could still shoplift with a fake Amazon account, but this would be way above the effort level most shoplifters go to, especially to steal a sandwich.

So who is stopping one dude in the pack have the app, some credit in it, swipe to open the door of the store, and it's gonna be followed by his 20 henchmen to robe the store blind while 2 of them will just block the door altogether to stay open?. 1000 USD iPhone X multiplied by at least 20 for each of them multiplied by 20 dudes it will make a nice 400k USD dent in under a minute. Have this happening at a few of these stores and you can see how that profit margin is going down the drain real fast.

The entrance to Amazon Go stores use security portals similar to what you'd see at a more secure office building. If someone tailgates you an alarm sounds.

What stops a group of 20 people from robbing a normal store?

Interesting. Have you been to San Francisco supermarkets? Try the Safeways along Mission St. if you're there. People will walk in, grab liquor off the shelves, and walk out. It relies on people recognizing and stopping them. And that's something the Go store is capable of doing because it has staff at entry.

They want to get rid of staff altogether, that's their final goal with this style of stores. My point was this will never happen because once you remove humans from equation, theft will skyrocket

Cashiers != all staff. Regardless, it doesn’t matter if removing all staff is their final goal or not because even with their current amount of staffing they are cheaper and more convenient than other stores.

That solution is easy — they won’t put stores in areas where the shrink is too challenging. No Amazon Go in the hood.

Apple has done the same thing forever with mobile checkout. They make it work by crazy margins, plus a customer base and voluntary compliance.

Retail employees have limited ability to do anything about shrink other than increase friction anyway. I worked at a big electronics retailer in the 90s that would get robbed blind, and there was very little you could do. The only exception was when a gang of fake Asian tourists raided the place, and we “helped” by being interrogated by the police, because they suspected than an employee tipped the gang off about inventory.

Exactly my point. Stores do exists in the hood today, don't they? So this will stay a novelty only in few places throughout the cities, never gonna replace the existing style of stores.

They do, but usually of the bodega variety with high prices and poor products.

The danger is that these new outlets keep peeling off more of the mass-affluent and working class customers that keep the other stores profitable. Just as Sears and Macy's anchored the 250 other stores in a mall, the supermarket anchors alot of other business. So we went from 80% of goods sold by tens of thousands of retailers in 1970 to dozens/hundreds in 2000 to potentially 3-5 in 2030.

Agreed. Also why you don't see Tiffany's in the hood as well. High price merchandise will always be a novelty. Amazon go and the like are high price merchandise too.

Hundreds of cameras and sensors are stopping the theft.

Really? Currently humans are stopping theft. Try to catch a flock of thieves that can roam unstopped in your store and rob it blindly with masks on. Until the police will arrive they are gone and you're left with cameras recording masks of dead presidents eating your profit margins. A few of these incidents and you'll see humans popping back in those stores in no time.

A flock of thieves wouldn't be stopped by a convenience store clerk either. By requiring Amazon Go customers to be registered Amazon customers, Amazon have already significantly reduced the "shoplifting surface". If you're in a city that mandates that customers can use cash, they must interact with an employee in the store (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-go-store-how-to-pay-c...).

Since you have to "log in" to the store with your Amazon account when entering, it doesn't matter if you're masked. Whatever you carry out will be billed to your account.

There is no need to catch these people, they're customers, not thieves.

"Mr. policeman my phone got stolen from my hand". Then got used to open the door for the 20 flock that robbed the store blindly. Prove that he's lying.

There are a few reasons this is an unlikely scenario: 1) You need to unlock the phone to access the Amazon Go app QR code 2) There isn't just a door to the store, there are security portals that make it difficult to tailgate 3) If a thief is bold enough to steal a phone, they're not interested in petty convenience store theft, they're going to flip that phone for cash

Go stores have people watching, but it's much easier to have 1 to 2 people watching than it is to have a bunch of cashiers

You highly underestimate how easy it is to shoplift.

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