Agree; Costco is far more palatable on a Tuesday at 7 PM than on a weekend.

I think of Go as a better self-checkout. Those machines are awful, and Go’s tech basically does the same thing but in a smoother, more scalable way.

>I think of Go as a better self-checkout.

Yeah, I don't think this type of thing is actually that big a deal for a supermarket where stuff needs to be bagged etc.

But it seems like a qualitatively different experience than self-checkout at a convenience store/small grocery store.

I also expect a lot of US readers tend to think in terms of either supermarkets or fairly junky 7-Eleven style convenience stores. But there are a lot of places in Europe where there are more intermediate options like the Marks and Spencer markets.

Amazon Go is much more akin to a 7-11 than to a Trader Joes or Costco. They have yet to show that this model even works on this tiny scale. The capability of this tech to scale up effectively to an actual grocery store much less to a warehouse type store is completely unknown. (I personally wouldn't count on it.)

> The self checkout doesn’t help, it actually takes longer than a good cashier.

Yep. Someone who scans and packs thousands of items a day is going to be much better at it than I am, given that I'd only scan a few dozen items a week.

Unless the lines are really too long, I'll always take a cashier over using the self-checkouts.