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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, @01:09AM (4 children)
Yes, and that's why chains that offer the service have been scaling their capacity to try and help meet demand. I can't be too specific as it's a trade secret, but any chain that's offering pickup or delivery service right now is doing what they can to scale it up. Whether that means adding additional equipment and personnel, streamlining the process or expanding to other locations, businesses know that this is a problem, we're acutely aware and it's getting better.
Having 3rd party shoppers isn't easily scalable and there's going to be a limit in terms of how efficiently they can shop and which hours they shop. With in house order fulfillment,the process can be done virtually 24 hours a day if need be, subject to having people willing to do the work and items being in stock.
Probably the biggest problem is that as food processing facilities open and close due to outbreaks, we're seeing significant shortage of certain items. When this is handled in house, there's flexibility in how that's handled, whether the order gets substituted or not and how the substitution is handled is up the the chain, the app services have extremely limited options compared with in house fulfillment.
Lastly, and this is a big deal to people ordering, there's often times no tipping involved and what you pay is often a flat rate based entirely on the cost of the items + a fixed service fee. When you place the order, you know that it won't cost more than X amount of money. Whether service is good or bad, you're not on the hook for a tip.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 24 2020, @01:31AM (3 children)
The key word in that salad being "trying".
To who? There presently seems to be some limits to how many people can be in a store or waiting outside a restaurant, but it's pretty high. After all, there was more than adequate capacity before covid. And the gig providers have a much weaker scaling problem than individual groceries and restaurants do.
And most of those substitutions won't be accepted by customers anyway without direct approval.
Sure, that is an advantage, when you can get through. But when you place the order, you already know that it won't cost more than a certain amount for good service, nor less than a certain amount for bad service, and that tipping for service was more important to you than predictability of pricing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2020, @01:58AM (2 children)
There's no word salad there. Scaling these things is not as easy as flipping on a switch. It takes time to locate enough people to allow for the systems to scale.
3rd party shoppers is just not something that scales very well. The way those businesses have been run, counts on having people that are willing to work for peanuts. Right now, unemployment is paying $15 an hour in stimulus money on top of the normal unemployment money. Taking a gig like this, potentially messes with unemployment benefits and requires a car on top of being willing/able to take the risk of exposure. In other words, People would be potentially giving up the better part of $20 an hour in order to take these jobs. Plus the people who were working these jobs as a side hussle in many cases don't have the income from their regular job, which makes it likely that even the pool of workers they had, is going to be tough to retain.
As far as the approval goes, obviously, approval is necessary. But, relying on untrained shoppers makes it less likely that a suitable substitution will be offered and they may not have the time or inclination to do things like have the meat department package the desired amount of meat to more closely fill the requested order.
Obviously, getting through is important, but as I've said, pretty much all the major chains are working to scale the service to meet demand. It's like all the toilet paper shortages, if you don't like the shortage, there are businesses currently working to address the problem, it's just not as simple as flipping a switch. You need more personnel and equipment. And those 3rd party services aren't the kind of easy solution that you're suggesting. They have a much harder time scaling as they can really only do it by getting more employees, there's little they can do to improve efficiency and they're a lot more expensive. Some of the chains around here are advertising free pickup service.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday April 24 2020, @06:26AM
Large Australian supermarkets offer online shopping, with pick up or delivery.
Delivery is picked at the warehouse, not the local store, so there (in non-Covid-19 times), is more likelihood that the requested item will be available.
Both Woolworths [woolworths.com.au] and Coles [coles.com.au] allow shoppers to permit substitutions on a per-item basis.
The pickers and delivery drivers all work for the company. Any availability issues are communicated prior to delivery. Also, you can select your delivery time before you start your order, and it remains available for a few hours, to allow you to complete your shop (So you don't find it has 'gone' before your finish and pay)
Also, the delivery driver doesn't get a tip, they just get paid for doing their job.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 24 2020, @11:52AM