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Walmart wants to test "in-fridge delivery" for Silicon Valley customers with August Home "smart locks":
Here's how the test will work: I place an order on Walmart.com for several items, even groceries. When my order is ready, a Deliv driver will retrieve my items and bring them to my home. If no one answers the doorbell, he or she will have a one-time passcode that I've pre-authorized which will open my home's smart lock. As the homeowner, I'm in control of the experience the entire time – the moment the Deliv driver rings my doorbell, I receive a smartphone notification that the delivery is occurring and, if I choose, I can watch the delivery take place in real-time. The Deliv associate will drop off my packages in my foyer and then carry my groceries to the kitchen, unload them in my fridge and leave. I'm watching the entire process from start to finish from my home security cameras through the August app. As I watch the Deliv associate exit my front door, I even receive confirmation that my door has automatically been locked.
While some may find the idea creepy, others have downplayed the creepiness factor:
"Five years ago consumers wouldn't have assumed they'd let a stranger drive them from the airport, much less stay in their house," said Forrest Collier, the CEO of eMeals, a platform that offers shopping lists based on recipes and loads the items into online shopping carts at Walmart and Kroger (KR) . "Now both Uber and Airbnb are billion-dollar companies."
For now, the fridge restocking service will only be available to Silicon Valley users of August Home. Customers will get a notification through their August Home app every time a delivery person drops off their food.
[...] Even though this Walmart service sounds "creepy on the front end," said Collier of eMeals, "it's really not as creepy as letting a stranger sleep in your bedroom."
Also at LA Times, Reuters, SiliconBeat, and CNET.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Sunday September 24 2017, @03:44PM (5 children)
As the home owner you are in control? Being able to watch it on a camera isn't exactly being in control of the situation. Oh look the Walmarter (or whomever) is carrying off my flatscreen TV now ... Seeing is not being in control, it is just observing.
But lets just assume the Walmart fridge-restockers won't rob you blind, yet, for as as time pass by you'll be doing it, watching them, less and less since it becomes so common, it becomes the new normal for you to have delivery people going in and out of your apartment or house that you don't even notice or care anymore. First it's the stockboys for the fridge and then it becomes all other type of delivery people and craftsmen and service people. Actually that probably already happens from time to time that various handymen come and fix things that are broken etc. You just stop noticing them since what they are doing isn't really strange anymore. Which is eventually followed by that time when they carry off with all your loot. Once you get used to something strange it is no longer strange, it is the new normal.
But it is a bit odd how this seem almost cyclical. Stores used to deliver food and drink to your home, milk men etc. But that sort of went away over time and was replaced by markets and supermarkets etc. In stores you used to come in with a list of things you wanted and some stockboys ran around picking up all your things while you waited at a counter, then you got the "freedom" to do all the shopping yourself. A cashier tallied up your things before exit and you paid her and you went away. Now you can scan your own groceries as you go around the supermarket. Supermarkets are now offering you once again to collect all the groceries either for pickup in the store or to be delivered to your home, or in the case of the story to be even delivered straight into your fridge. What seems modern appears to just be repeating itself. While I'm not old enough to have experienced all these things my parents did and they find it funny how things are now sort of coming full circle again. As a personal preference I'm, at the moment, ok with some half-and-half method. I'm ok with them collecting and bagging things I can't do much with or actually do any kind of meaningful selection with -- things that are already in boxes or cans etc. I still like picking things I can see and touch in that regard be it fruit, vegetables and meat. I'm ok with them delivering to my front door but I wouldn't want them to restock my fridge for me when I'm not home.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday September 24 2017, @04:07PM (2 children)
Watching less and less - yes.
A couple decades ago, I had reason to put up a security camera. That camera never recorded the people that we INTENDED to catch committing a crime. In fact, the camera was eventually all but forgotten. Months went by, when I wouldn't even think of it. The wife observed her little ritual - rewind, then FFW the recording every other day or so, to see if anything had happened that we should be interested in.
Then, we came home one day to find a number of obviously obvious items missing. She went straight to the security camera, and in about three minutes, we knew PRECISELY who came into our home, and stole everything that he considered to be valuable.
Without even looking, I would imagine that the interface is going to "save" the video until you delete it. That should be standard procedure with any type of security application, shouldn't it?
You're perfectly correct that the camera doesn't enable me to exert any kind of control over the situation. But, it did enable me to recover our stuff, and exact some revenge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @07:20PM (1 child)
> we knew PRECISELY who came into our home, and stole everything ...
Relative? Disgruntled kid??
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @04:05PM
Obama
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Sunday September 24 2017, @09:16PM
I remember the milk woman coming *to our door*. To deliver gossip. And yoghurt, too. And take the washed-out empty bottles.
But if we weren't at home she'd leave it outside our locked door, and complain the next time and then we'd pay up immediately.
This was in a time where many women were housewives who could take the yoghurt, exchange the gossip, and put the yoghurt in the cellar (there weren't any fridges in common use yet).
What's the use of a "Deliv associate", when there's nobody at home to gossip with??
Does it mean, that the modern day posh people don't have enough money to afford servants who accept the delivered milk products?
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday September 25 2017, @02:47PM
I don't think they ever stopped fully. The C-Town store in my neighborhood has and still offers home delivery of groceries. They have a small roller bed next to the registers which leads to a small steel door on the side of the building. They line up cardboard boxes and the stock boys pick and load up the boxes. A van and deliveryman then loads the boxes from the door into a van and delivers them. I know of a few others who do the same for the local neighborhood.
I think the reason it dropped out of style was people like browsing and feeling in control. That leads to my next thought, a browsing customer is more likely to make impulse buys. An order has a set list of items. The stock picker isn't grabbing a box of cookies and a pack of oatmeal on sale on their way to checkout. Making people drive to the store also makes them buy more and waste more as they don't want to have to keep going back. Downplaying delivery makes the grocers more money.