He was trying to return a package, not shop at the store. You can return Amazon packages at WholeFoods, Kohl’s and the UPS Store using the Amazon website on your phone — app not needed. I do it all the time because I refuse to use their app.

> He was trying to return a package, not shop at the store.

So then it sounds like he’s not in very a strong position to declare the stores as an unmitigated failure…

After re-reading, I think their point may have been to describe that one experience as a total failure, not the cashierless store concept in general.

But it definitely can be read either way, so that's confusing.

And yet the app _is_ needed at these stores. Perhaps he was confused and thought he was at a Kohl’s, a store that doesn’t need the app.

I have returned items at all three and I always show the return instructions from my email, because it is easier to navigate than the app.

Thanks for confirming you need to login into Amazon in some form to do this

You need to login to Amazon to purchase things from Amazon.

you don't necessarily. you just need a barcode photo

Never been that way for me. If I need to return something, they email me a QR code. The cashier at the UPS store scans that and takes my item, gives me a receipt, and I leave. I don't log into Amazon to get it.

It’s listed as a drop-off location when you’re returning a traditional web order. There’s no warning about it being an innavigable dystopia in the return flow. I had the same experience.

Is that an issue with the store concept, or an issue with not making it clear to users that it’s a non standard drop off location? I don’t see the lack of a warning reflecting on the actual store itself very strongly.

Also- why even bother with Amazon and trying to return packages etc if you have no easy way of getting your password? If this is too much of a hassle just use in person stores..

I’ve had drop off at mail shops locations be unexpectedly closed which is objectively worse than having a bad but possible return experience…..and never once claimed that “mail shops are an unmitigated failure”

It's definitely an Amazon failure, as Amazon controls all sides of this return.

It can be a failure on Amazons part without it being a failure of the cashierless store concept.

Well it's definitely a failure of the Amazon cashier less store concept if they railroad you into doing your returns there but then it doesn't even work.

Sounds more like a failure on the returns drop off location listing. It seems that improving the filters and visibility of what you'll need to have to drop off returns in each location is a far less drastic solution than dropping some stores because otherwise it messes the website lists.

Amazon gives you very few choices on how to return items, oftentimes just 1 (and it'll be something bad like UPS pickup or Kohl's dropoff). They would need to change this too. The problem really is with the overall experience.

That's the experience with the Amazon website though, not the cashierless store. That's the point.

I personally don't like the website too much. Full of fakes, bad quality items everywhere. I only use it for cheap stuff I wouldn't return anyway. I do get that. Amazon go and whole foods are good though. Amazon go is very convenient and whole foods often have brands which I like and I don't easily find elsewhere. I also enjoy their fruit.

I mean, I agree with you; it’s incomprehensible to me someone would go there without an app or at least their device logged into the Amazon website.

…but, let’s be charitable and say some has lost their phone or whatever; it’s not totally unreasonable to expect some kind of special process for it.

…turns out, there was a special process for it. Without a receipt. Oh well…

/shrug

Some people are just weird about it. Live and let live I say.

Lesson learnt I hope: next time, I hope they go somewhere else and let other people get on with their perfectly mundane shopping.

Just wait until they have facial recognition stores, and you’ll find people complaining they couldn’t get in while wearing high powered IR leds all over their heads. You just can’t win in some of these arguments.

This is literally the modern version of the old person who refuses to use anything but cash and won't use the internet or get an email account. People who elect to be luddites even of small degree will always have an suboptimal experience to people who adopt change.

"if you don't give up all your privacy to mega corp then you deserve to be blacklisted by society"

Thank you, I was feeling like I was very far outside of this thread until your comment.

It's somewhat unclear to me what you have to lose here. You're going to their retail store that is littered with cameras as a feature they heavily advertise. You're returning a package with your name and address on it. If typing your password into the turnstile is the last straw, that just seems weird to me.

But even that wasn't required. OP did their return successfully.

The loss of privacy comes not from actions taken at the Amazon store, but from having the app installed on the phone 24/7, including when you’re not at the Amazon store.

A somewhat similar example would be using Facebook purely through its Tor onion address, while simultaneously blocking facebook.com on your home network. The point is not to keep Meta from having any information about you, but to limit Meta to information it can acquire from your direct interactions, as opposed to the piles of unrelated browsing history it normally acquires through IP address correlation and Like buttons.

OK, I'll bite: what could possibly be the issue with keeping an app installed?

If you quit it it's not running, and if you don't give it location permissions it's not tracking your location.

Is there something I'm missing?

The situation has gotten better over time as the OS manufacturers have locked down permissions and made background operations more visible. But many privacy leaks have been only recently fixed or remain unfixed—for instance, it was only in 2021 that Android removed the ability for apps to collect the full list of installed apps. And there have been some real stinkers in the past, like when Facebook used its app to modify people’s contacts lists to make @facebook.com email addresses the primary. Companies that make money from aggregating data will always be on the cutting edge of these techniques compared to ordinary people. The app that’s not installed leaks no data at all, and I don’t blame anyone for avoiding apps that aren’t absolutely necessary.

The whole point of the go stores was to do retail in a different way, where you had to conform to their way or it wouldn't work. Yes, it was limiting for people that didn't have a phone with them or account info. Do all of these people befuddled by the phone/app requirement for go stores struggle when they go to pick up something at an amazon locker? It's basically the same thing, you can't "talk to someone" to get your locker opened that is on the back wall of the drugstore.

You can access an Amazon locker with a barcode printed from the Amazon website, or even from your confirmation email. The app is not required.

good point - I forgot about that. I added my son's account once to access a locker for pickup too.

What's the problem with cash? Counting change make you feel like a dummy?

> Is that an issue with the store concept, or an issue with not making it clear to users that it’s a non standard drop off location?

It's a flaw with how Amazon communicated drop off locations for returns.

You would say, "I want to return this." And they would respond with, "Take it here!" no additional information about having to have an app.

If you take a return to The UPS Store, for example, you just bring the item you're returning and a little QR / UPC code they scan and you're done.

If you take a return to the Amazon store... they won't even let you get to the point where you can return without having an app on your phone. It was annoying.

Especially if you were taking someone else's package back with your own. Or... more accurately, returning something for your girlfriend since she bought 3 tops with the intent of only keeping one and had to do a return like every 3 days because of her shopping habits. And she just assumed it worked the same as returns at The UPS Store... and then when you got there to drop off the package you couldn't even sign in as her. Ha.

I feel the original posters frustration around this. For a company that has always said, "It's all about the customer experience..." it was REALLY BAD customer experience. And, because it wasn't me setting up the original returns, I got sent to the dumb little "make you log in before you can enter" store a few times by mistake.

You get a whole class of issues like this making stuff rely on a phone app.

Classic HN user behavior.

It's different because there's a long-standing precedent that you don't need to install a smartphone app to use a store.

Sure, but Amazon Go is, as the comment you replied to states, a store which literally is built to require an app to use. This argument is thrown out the window when you shop at a store which explicitly and from its inception has required this.

As the commenter stated,

> So then why attempt to go to a store that’s entirely based on using the app?

Because it wasn't clear I needed to use an app (and therefore would require access to my password which I didn't have on my phone) since I was just trying to return a product.

Amazon lists lockers in buildings with controlled access as drop off points as well. It’s up to you to confirm you have access to the locker.

If you need an app to enter that store and you need to enter the store to return an item, then it’s pretty clear you need an app to return an item at that store.

They didn't say I needed it.

It’s as if you didn’t read my comment at all.

> If you need an app to enter that store and you need to enter the store to return an item, then it’s pretty clear you need an app to return an item at that store.

You don't need an app to enter the store. You need an app to shop at the store. Presumably many classes of person enter the store for various non-shopping reasons without needing the app. It's not beyond the bounds of reason to imagine that for the non-shopping purpose of returning an unrelated item you may not need the shopping app to enter the store -- or, indeed, to imagine that for the product return flow the shoppers' entrance may not factor into the equation at all.

(I don't have a horse in this race, I just don't think you can usually apply the transitive property to the real world.)

> Amazon lists lockers in buildings with controlled access as drop off points as well. It’s up to you to confirm you have access to the locker.

I don’t think this makes the point you think it makes.

> If you need an app to enter that store and you need to enter the store to return an item, then it’s pretty clear you need an app to return an item at that store.

“Excuse me, you need to install the app on your phone to enter the store”, the store manager said to the paramedic responding to a call of an unconscious senior citizen on the floor of the Amazon Go store.

I think a big problem is that it shouldn't require an app to use.

There are plenty of cashierless stores which work just like any other store. They aren't exactly doing anything groundbreaking when it comes to that. They could also just put a regular payment terminal at the exit - the whole magic camera stuff would work just fine with it.

The end result is that they created an artificially cumbersome store concept, which does not provide a real benefit to the user. No wonder it isn't popular.

> I think a big problem is that it shouldn't require an app to use.

That’s not the issue that’s being discussed though. It’s a fair criticism, but that’s still irrelevant to the topic of Amazon Go stores requiring them and that you should therefore expect to need one if you want to enter a store.

> No wonder it isn't popular.

I wouldn’t deduce popularity from the closure of the stores. In Seattle at least, the stores had already been “temporarily” closed for a while and are in a fairly high-crime area of the city. [0] At the same time, they’re actively building larger suburban stores [1] which indicates a pivot, but that the format itself is still popular.

They’ve also added it to other venues like Climate Pledge Arena and Lumen Field in Seattle in the form of “Just Walk Out” [2]. You still need an Amazon One account to use it.

[0]: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon-shutters-some-c...

[1]: https://www.winsightgrocerybusiness.com/amp/topics/amazon-go...

[2]: https://justwalkout.com/

So let's say I don't shop at Amazon Go because I just never cared and had no idea what it was. But I am a frequent Amazon.com shopper. I return an Item and it tells me a list of places I can take it. I see Amazon Go listed just like the UPS store. Or just like any other drop location. So I go to the Amazon Go store just assuming it's like every other store in the entire world. Only to find it's closed to me because I didn't bring the app with me. Does that make any sense to people? Why is this so hard to figure out why someone might be confused when they get there to just drop off a goddamn box?

Why don't the people in the store have some flexibility to let you in? God forbid someone besides a computer has to make a decision.

Because if they do they'll probably get in trouble. There are cameras everywhere being monitored by computers and the incident will definitely be flagged somehow. If you steal something, then it's even worse. Why would they risk that? I think that's a minor issue with their drop off listings, which I suspect they will eventually fix.

At Kroger and Albertsons stores, you might be paying a lot more if you do not use the coupons that are only available in the app.

The coupons, at least for Kroger, are loadable from the website.

It's a "member's only" club. This is how they restrict access and dodged the NYC requirement to accept cash payment.

There's a longstanding precedent that you don't need a membership to shop at stores either, but Costco is still highly successful.

To just do a drop off requires all of that? That is quite simply dumb to the nth degree. I get not having the app would make a shopping experience difficult, but that's not what the op was attempting to do. So your whataboutism is just tone deaf