Walmart's new service lets delivery staff enter your home and place grocery orders straight...

midian182

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Many people find that getting groceries delivered to their residences is often more convenient than traveling to the stores and battling other shoppers, but it does mean having to be home when they arrive. Walmart could potentially solve this problem with a new service that not only brings food into your home when it’s empty but also places the groceries inside your fridge or freezer.

The retail giant’s trial program will see it partner with delivery service Deliv and August Home, maker of IoT devices such as smart locks and security cameras. The idea is for a Deliv worker to enter a person’s home using a pre-authorized, one-time passcode that opens the August door lock. Once inside, they put the delivery into the customer’s fridge/freezer (if required) ready for when they return.

This naturally raises concerns about what a stranger might get up to when alone in one’s home, but by using August’s cameras, it’s possible to monitor the entire process from start to finish on your mobile device. Users receive a phone notification when the passcode is entered, and have the option to watch the delivery person as they unload the groceries.

"Think about that—someone else does the shopping for you AND puts it all away," Walmart VP Sloan Eddleston wrote in a blog post. "This may not be for everyone–and certainly not right away–but we want to offer customers the opportunity to participate in tests."

The tests are scheduled to begin for a limited number of residents within the Silicon Valley area. Should they prove successful, it’s possible that Walmart will ask other IoT companies to come onboard.

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Straight to my mailbox?

Sure.

Straight to my door?

Okay.

Straight to my fridge?

Best. Joke. Ever.
 
No way in hell. This is a bad idea that I'm sure won't end well. Or will end shortly anyway because of purchasers caution.
 
Im going to fill my fridge up beforehand, then sue because they left something out and it made my dog sick!

EDIT :

" Hey! Where are all my cans of ( almas beluga sturgeon caviar )! "
 
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So how does the shopping for fresh fruits & vegetables happen? For example, we usually buy our bananas on the green side, so unless we really need to have bananas in the house we'll pass on them when there are no green ones in the store. But would Wal-Mart even have a place to specify that, let alone track that the "shoppers" are picking it correctly? And sometimes (like if we're making banana bread), we want the bananas to be as ripe as possible (the riper the banana, the easier it is to mash it up to make the dough). With other fruits & vegetables, my wife is more of a "tactile/scent" shopper: it may look fresh, but if it doesn't feel right (I.e. bell peppers shouldn't be squishy) or smell right, she'll pass on it.

Meat purchases run into similar issues as well. She's particular about the way the meat has to look when she buys it, but I can easily see her returning meat because the Wal-Mart "shopper" didn't pick the one she wanted.

And then, of course, there're the security issues. I'm sorry, but I don't like my parents coming over when we're not home -- my in-laws are fine, but I can't stand the thought of my parents poking around -- let alone some stranger. And considering how people have been able to skim by background checks (not to mention that you never really know when someone that has no prior history of larceny is going to decide to help themselves to something in your house), I'm not that trusting of their ability to guarantee the reliability of these delivery people. Not to mention that you're talking about opening up the literal physical security of your house to the Internet. As a prior victim of identity theft, who plans on keeping his Lifelock subscription until a) the company decides to go out of business or b) I don't need it because I'm dead, I know that you can add another "certainty" to death & taxes: your information will be exposed via hacking (whether by someone personally hacking your accounts, or by someone hacking the corporation that stores your personal data).
 
So how does the shopping for fresh fruits & vegetables happen? For example, we usually buy our bananas on the green side, so unless we really need to have bananas in the house we'll pass on them when there are no green ones in the store. But would Wal-Mart even have a place to specify that, let alone track that the "shoppers" are picking it correctly? And sometimes (like if we're making banana bread), we want the bananas to be as ripe as possible (the riper the banana, the easier it is to mash it up to make the dough). With other fruits & vegetables, my wife is more of a "tactile/scent" shopper: it may look fresh, but if it doesn't feel right (I.e. bell peppers shouldn't be squishy) or smell right, she'll pass on it.

Meat purchases run into similar issues as well. She's particular about the way the meat has to look when she buys it, but I can easily see her returning meat because the Wal-Mart "shopper" didn't pick the one she wanted.

And then, of course, there're the security issues. I'm sorry, but I don't like my parents coming over when we're not home -- my in-laws are fine, but I can't stand the thought of my parents poking around -- let alone some stranger. And considering how people have been able to skim by background checks (not to mention that you never really know when someone that has no prior history of larceny is going to decide to help themselves to something in your house), I'm not that trusting of their ability to guarantee the reliability of these delivery people. Not to mention that you're talking about opening up the literal physical security of your house to the Internet. As a prior victim of identity theft, who plans on keeping his Lifelock subscription until a) the company decides to go out of business or b) I don't need it because I'm dead, I know that you can add another "certainty" to death & taxes: your information will be exposed via hacking (whether by someone personally hacking your accounts, or by someone hacking the corporation that stores your personal data).

All good and valid points, but your looking at this all wrong. You could leave whips, dog chains, opened condoms, needles, red paint, and pearl colored handsoap all over the place. Oh, and dont forget the tortured blow up doll.
 
Oh, I could see it now...potential house burglars...getting jobs or getting friends that have NO criminal
record to work there to case houses out, find out when people aren't home then break in.
NOPE, maybe 50 years ago, when people had MANNERS, and RESPECT I would, but not today!
 
The short-term, low-tech solution is to let the delivery person into the garage where you keep an old refrigerator. It's not that hard to carry a couple of delivered cardboard boxes (1.refrigerate and 2.freeze) into the house when you get home.
 
The short-term, low-tech solution is to let the delivery person into the garage where you keep an old refrigerator. It's not that hard to carry a couple of delivered cardboard boxes (1.refrigerate and 2.freeze) into the house when you get home.
That, or do the shopping yourself and donate the money saved to the NFL Player's Association.
 
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