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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 theluggage on Sunday September 24 2017, @03:55PM (4 children)
Which is perfectly safe because there has never, ever been a security breach at a major corporation causing customer data to leak.
Now that saves time - when the cop pulls you over for staring at your smartphone while driving, you can show them the video of the delivery guy helping themselves to your best scotch... because even though you're out of the house there's never a bad time to be a smartphone zombie...
uh, yes, they were called "taxis" and "Bed & Breakfast" respectively. But of course, doing something "on the internet" makes it a completely new (and patentable) thing and none of the old dangers, cautionary tales, lessons learned or even laws and regulations that applied to the old, offline version could possibly still be relevant.
Or, how about just using all this clever AI and tracking stuff to provide us customers with accurate delivery times and useful tracking information so we can arrange to be there when the delivery arrives?
I mean given that, when I'm standing at my door looking at the package in my hand and hearing the delivery van drive away, my phone reliably beeps with a text from Amazon telling me that the package has been delivered, would it really have been that hard to instead send me a text 30 minutes before the delivery so I knew when to hold off taking a shit and didn't need to be up and dressed at fuck-all-in-the-morning waiting for a package that was "out for delivery" at 5:30am but might not actually arrive until 9:30pm?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24 2017, @07:24PM (1 child)
> didn't need to be up and dressed
I'm perfectly happy to answer the door in pj pants, same for walking the 75 feet out to the mailbox.
Neil Cassidy (as reported by Jack Kerouac) answered the door in his birthday suit.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Sunday September 24 2017, @07:48PM
When I was young I answered the door in my black cowled robe, holding a sickle (I had been the Grim Reaper for Halloween and found the robe comfortable in the mountain climes). It worked best with Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons. Which, now that I think about it, also might explain why my cute Mormon neighbor would never give me the time of day.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @06:32PM (1 child)
Yes.
For notifying when delivery happens, the trigger is when the final scan is done. They see the trigger, and then send the notice.
What is a reliable trigger for when the delivery will be happening 30 minutes from now?
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Wednesday September 27 2017, @12:29PM
GPS location of van, number of drops to go, average time spent at drop by this driver for this area at this time of day (the system knows which packages are likely to fit through letter boxes)... sounds like a pretty modest job for modern machine learning/AI/data analysis... Google Maps does a pretty good job of estimating ETAs. Any improvement on "some time between 7am and 9pm" would be worthwhile.
Of course, that might mean that some of their big data experts might have to spend some time on improving the customer experience rather than targeting advertising...