Journalist accidentally shoplifts from Amazon’s new cashier-free convenience store
Journalist Deirdre Bosa, a CNBC reporter, was tasked with testing out Amazon Go’s cashier-free “just walk out technology.”
She packed her shopping bag with cookies, snap peas, and Amazon branded drinkware but was apprehensive about Amazon’s technology correctly charging her for each individual item, and for good reason: Bosa accidentally stole a yogurt.
“Feels like I just stole all this stuff,” she tweeted. “Also way easier to buy more when you know you’re not gonna see a register. Still waiting for my receipt to be convinced I didn’t steal something.”
https://twitter.com/dee_bosa/status/955458412573114375
Unfortunately, when she received the receipt for her items, the charge for a single-serve Siggi’s yogurt cup was missing. “I think I just shoplifted??” Bosa tweeted of her experience. “#AmazonGo didn’t charge me for my Siggi’s yogurt.”
https://twitter.com/dee_bosa/status/955459507403997184
Bosa contacted Gianna Puerini, vice president of Amazon Go, to confess her small crime, but received a kindly response instead of any sort of legal retribution. “First and foremost, enjoy the yogurt on us,” CNBC reports Puerini wrote back.
“It happens so rarely that we didn’t even bother building in a feature for customers to tell us it happened. So thanks for being honest and telling us. I’ve been doing this a year and I have yet to get an error. So we’ve tried to make it super easy on the rare occasion that does happen either to remove it or enjoy breakfast on us.”
Puerini also told the news outlet that Amazon currently has no plans to introduce their cashier-less technology to Whole Foods and that Jeff Bezos, the creator of Amazon, has shopped the store and loves it. If the concept is good enough for one of America’s 50 most powerful people in food, then it’s alright by us!
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