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from the desperate-people-do-desperate-things dept.
People Are Making Bots to Snatch Whole Foods Delivery Order Time Slots:
Social distancing and stay-home orders have led to booming demand for grocery delivery services. In some big cities, people report not being able to find an open delivery time slot for days or weeks at a time. And now Motherboard has found a series of bots that automatically give some people an upper hand when limited delivery time slots are available on Amazon Fresh or Wholefoods.
A slew of developers have made bots and other tools that, in some cases, automatically hunt for a free delivery slot, grab it, and then complete the user's food order, making sure they have a much better chance of buying food before other people snatch up the slot. While some of the developers told Motherboard they designed their bots to help those in need, such as senior citizens who may need to stay inside as exposure to the coronavirus could be more serious for them, others are dealing with the ethical issue of releasing a tool that can clearly be abused, by allowing those who can figure out how to use a technical tool to buy food while others go without.
[...] Data scientist Pooja Ahuja publicly released her own bot a few weeks ago, which checks for a free delivery slot on Wholefoods or Amazon Fresh. Her tool goes a step further though, and can also checkout automatically.
"You just have to run the bot once, and as soon as there is a delivery slot available, it secures it for you, and completes the entire process through checkout," Ahuja told Motherboard in an email.
[...] "Yes, it's an unfair advantage over others who aren't tech-savvy but may still need to purchase items urgently."
"Me and my wife were trying to order stuff off Amazon Fresh but finding an available slot was near to impossible. This made me build the bot and share it with others so they can use it too," Bryan Gaikwad, who developed a script for finding delivery slots and released the tool publicly, told Motherboard in an email. Adrian Hertel told CNBC his own tool is designed for a similar purpose.
[...] In response to whether he believed his tool may put less tech-savvy people at a disadvantage, Gaikwad added in an email, "That was not my intention as I mentioned it was just a project I built to test the concept. I [am] willing to take my source code down if needed." After the publication of this piece, it appears Gaikwad removed the code from his Github page; the tool repository now returns an error.
Other developers don't appear to see the ethical quandary with releasing such tools, though. When asked if she was worried that people who aren't in serious need for her auto checkout bot may still use it just to get ahead of others, Ahuja told Motherboard, "What I've noticed with the rigorous testing is that, many delivery slots do open up over the day for same day delivery. Even if someone did use the bot to want to get ahead of people in need, more slots will open up for those who need it, and the bot can help out them as well. One way or the other we can help reducing the number of people stepping out."
Consider those who have limited access to transportation and who may live in a food desert. What if it were your parents or a loved one. As more bots come into play and make it even harder for others... where will this lead to? What happens in a month — or six?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2020, @01:00AM (1 child)
There are probably some that do, but most of those are businesses where they're getting their customers primarily walking in or calling in the order for pick up. They are most certainly not counting on a 3rd party that's not under contract for their business to remain viable.
For every one of those, there's also likely ones that don't want to have their food delivered by 3rd parties and to have to deal with the headaches associated with that. When things work as intended, there's little issue, but when there's a 3rd party delivering, there's no quality control by the restaurant after the meal leaves the building. If it takes longer than it should to deliver the food and it winds up cold, then they get the bad review, even if it was the drivers fault for trying to do too much in the trip or trying to deliver to an address that's too far away.
Plus, businesses that do want delivery service but don't/can't set one up are far better off getting a 3rd party under contract to handle that in some mutually agreeable fashion than to hope that a 3rd party doesn't screw up their reputation.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 24 2020, @01:35PM
So you claim. I view it rather as "any port in a storm".