 Okay, so picture this. Your SO's got a feminine hygiene emergency and cannot leave the house to get her own bio-waste management products. So, it's on you. But you do not feel like going to the local grocery store and listening to the cashier making that stale joke about your aunt Flo. So what's the solution? Well, for us, it was to get in the car, drive two and a half hours down to Seattle, and visit the Amazon Go Pilot location, the world's only retail store where you do not have to have any human interaction whatsoever. You just grab what you want, put it in your bag, and leave. But what's the experience like? Well, we're gonna tell you. After we tell you about TunnelBear, the easy to use VPN that makes the internet a more open place, giving everyone access to the same content. Check them out at tunnelbear.com slash LTT. We'll have that linked below. Okay, so step one is to get the Amazon Go app. Once you're signed into your account, you don't need Prime. This QR code right here allows you to scan in any guests that are with you, though do note that anything they take will be charged to your account, and then enter the store. You can't get in without your phone, but Amazon says that handy-dandy Amazon staff members will be on hand with charging banks if for whatever reason you need to juice up before you go in. So let's try it. Whoo! I'm in. Okay, we're inside, so... It kind of looks like a regular grocery store. So how does it work? Amazon isn't being too specific about the details, but we do know a few things. One is that the place is absolutely peppered with cameras. See those black boxes up there? There are literally hundreds of cameras inside what is only an 1800 square foot store. According to one article I read, they are designed to read camera-friendly codes that are printed out on each of the items, but these just look like regular UPC codes, so I'm actually not sure about that. What we do know is that while it was present in the original patent filing, RFID technology is not being used, and we also know that they are using computer vision algorithms in order to understand what you're picking up, and they're also assisting this technology with additional sensors, like for example weight sensors in the shelves themselves, pressure sensors, and load cells. Each of those components together increases Amazon's confidence in what exactly it is that you have picked up and put in your bag or your pocket or whatever the case may be. So in terms of product mix and pricing, it's not like a giant grocery store, like you can't even buy a full gallon of milk or anything like that, but I mean it's pretty competitive with what you'd expect from like a neighborhood grocer or like a corner store, like this curry chicken wrap is six bucks. Whoa, this is interesting. So these food items, these are marked with those camera recognizable codes that I was talking about before, because I guess, you know, if it doesn't come in a package, it's a lot harder to tell the difference between curry chicken wrap and tuna wrap. Ooh, BKLT wrap. Does this have kale in it? You guys are killing me here. Bacon kale lettuce tomato wrap. I mean if I'm going to have like the trendy Seattle experience, I got to have the wrap with the kale in it. What do you want Dennis? Rice. Well, I don't know man, I don't know what to tell you. They have barbecue chicken with I don't think so. No, I don't think so. Sorry, you're going to have to have the only like 98% Amazon experience here. Harmless coconut water. Do you want the harmful one or the harmless one? You want the harmful one? Well, this one's harmless. I don't just. I feel like someone's going to come tackle me. Okay, so we got all our snacks. Now we've got to get what we actually came here for. We can choose between the always infinity and the 10 packs pearl. Let's go with the always right here. But with a twist, I have a challenge for their system. I want to see how it handles me putting this down in the wrong place and then picking it back up. All right. Thank you. Yeah, cool. Let's say I'm shopping for some alcohol and I kind of go, do I really want this? Not sure. I want to see how it handles it. Uh huh. Yep. Yep. Okay. You know what? I actually don't want some alcohol after all. But if I come back without these, I'm going to get in all sorts of trouble. So let's head for the exit. Like my reflex as I'm walking towards the exit is like, okay, I got to get ready to take off my bag and take my stuff out and put it on the thing. So theoretically now, as I walk through what they're calling the transition area, Amazon is going to do a small transaction on my credit card, a dollar just to validate that it's working. Then they're going to build a balance of it once they've totaled up everything that I took. Bear in mind, guys, that if you overdraw your credit card, that's on you to deal with any kind of penalties or fees that are associated with that. So here it is. Hey, there we go. There we go. Nice. Get up and go. Your trip time was 26 minutes and 27 seconds. Your receipt is ready. Check this out. So Amazon is actually so confident in their system that they've built in a feature where if for whatever reason you're charged for something that you didn't take, you can actually just remove it. And crazily enough, they're using the honor system, which if you think about it actually isn't that crazy because it's tied into your prime account, which is tied into your credit card. Amazon can use machine learning, not to mention just common sense in order to figure out if people are abusing the system. OK, so let's see how we did. Boom. Got it. Berry, however that's pronounced. Got it. Bacon, kale, lettuce and tomato wrap. Diet, Snapple Ice Tea, raspberry. Oh, diet and coconut water. Nailed it. OK, so it got everything. But how does the system handle an item that was accidentally not charged? Because I mean, nothing's perfect. Well, Amazon's so confident in their system and seemingly rightly so that they have actually apparently told another news outlet that managed to walk out with a yogurt they didn't pay for. You know what? Go ahead. Keep it. The yogurt's on us because they seem to believe that the system is so accurate that even with those occasional misfires, they're still going to make up for the cost of cashiers, playing clothes, loss prevention, security people and well, just the normal shoplifting that retailers refer to as shrink. Not bad considering it's got kale in it. Actually, that's really good. Maybe the craziest thing about this whole experience. Is that let's say I decided this, you know, kale sucked or you know what? I don't need these pads after all. If I wanted to return them at this time, there is literally no mechanism to take this back. You'd have to talk to an associate and give it to them. But the way that the refund would be processed would be identical. You would just go into your receipt. You would select an item and you would remove it. I don't need it or whatever. And no questions asked. They will give you a refund. Not only do you not have to return it, there is no mechanism to return it. You're going to have to find a solution to that in the long term. OK, so in summary, that was really freaking cool. But as some of you may have noticed, it is now go for a walk in the rain time because there are definitely still some issues and some concerns that I have about this technology. So issue number one is that before Amazon, as they are undoubtedly going to do in the next year or two, rolls this out in Whole Foods locations. They acquired them, must have been about a year ago now. They're going to have to figure out how to address the limit on the number of customers that can be in the store at one time. Right now, you just make a line outside the store. But if your whole pitch is line up with shopping, that's obviously a dumb long term solution. Issue number two is that a traditional grocery stores loyalty program actually tells them a lot more about you than just what you bought with data, especially if you're a regular shopper like what you buy, how much of it and how often they can extrapolate a lot about not just you, but also your family. And Amazon hasn't talked a ton about what data they're collecting, how long they're keeping it for. There's nothing go specific in their privacy policy. But if I was a betting man, I would put good money on Amazon collecting all kinds of extra data like your movement patterns around the store, how long you looked at a particular item before buying it or not buying it, which advertising kiosks or end caps you found the most attractive. And they're going to use that combined with what they already know about you from your online profile to build an incredibly detailed picture of who you are and what you're about. And this ignores some of the less obvious societal issues that we're going to be facing as technology like this becomes more prevalent. So it's estimated that in America right now, there are three and a half million cashiers. But Amazon's side of this story is that, yeah, we don't have any cashiers, but we're still going to need humans for food prep, restocking the shelves, checking ID in the alcoholic beverages section. They say they're still going to need humans for that for the foreseeable future. But I'm kind of looking at this going, well, yeah, but regular grocery stores also need people for food prep and stocking shelves. I'm not sure if this math is going to add up. And, you know, if I were to be sitting here with a crystal ball, figuring out what I think the future is going to be, I see no reason why those jobs couldn't eventually be replaced as well. So that's something that we are going to have to figure out as people over the next. Yeah, we don't have as long to deal with this as we might have hoped. Speaking of not having a long time to deal with something, have you ever called your mobile carrier and been stuck on hold for like 10 minutes, 20 minutes, trying to deal with something? Well, not with Ting. Ting is the mobile carrier that's focused on customer service and customer satisfaction, and they are sponsoring this episode today. With Ting, you only pay for the airtime and data that you use, and they've got lower mobile data rates than ever before at just $10 a gig beyond the first gig. The best part of Ting is that you don't have to go into it blind. You can use their savings calculator, which we have linked below. That's linus.ting.com to enter your last few bills and how much you paid and find out if you would save money with Ting. So go check it out. If you switch, they'll pay 25% of your contract cancellation fee with your other carrier up to $75. And if you use our link, you'll get another $25 towards a new device or your first bill. So thanks for watching, guys. If you disliked this video, you can hit that button. But if you liked it, hit like, get subscribed, maybe consider checking out where to see the store that we featured at the link in the video description. Also down there is our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one, as well as our community forum, which you should totally join. All right, let's get out of the rain. This stuff tastes like ****. Sorry, I bought it.