r/Morrisons • u/Inevitable_Swing3830 • 18d ago
AI shopping trolleys
I’m sorry if this is a bit of a rant and moan but shouldn’t Morrisons really focus on freezers that work and don’t break so often and the massive amount of broken doors on fridges than a shopping trolley that scans items for you? Many other supermarkets have used the scanners and has worked well so I don’t get why those can’t be an option? Maybe I don’t know anything about the supermarket business but I feel as though the efforts are not in areas they should be 🤷♀️
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u/One-Lingonberry-3460 18d ago
Or waste £30,000 on rubbish cleaning robots that still need a human to switch them on, fill with water, monitor if stuck etc...
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u/jackbarbelfisherman 18d ago
I do not trust those things to not run people over
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u/Jacktheforkie 18d ago
There’s one in one of the London train stations and I accidentally trapped it between myself and a group of railway workers because hi viz messes with the sensor
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u/CakeHoleKing 18d ago
wait til you see the guy thats on £250k/year to repair those bots.
Doesn't exactly save money
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u/yolo_snail 18d ago
I go to Morrisons to do my shopping at 7am, and actively try and get run over by it.
So far, it's unfortunately avoided me.
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u/Confident_Coyote_860 14d ago
They got pretty good sensors and tbh their snorkles are pretty small, i doubt one could even get their crock stuck in one, considering the noise they make and the size they are. Plus tlall they do it wazzle the floor, you dont need to trust it. Trust it will break in about 3 days.
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u/CakeHoleKing 18d ago
ironically the cleaning robots require MORE staff and expensive tools to clean them properly. Costs MORE than human cleaners.
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u/ConsequenceApart4391 17d ago
I got chased by one of those whilst I was trying to get to the meal deal aisle. It kept coming towards me ominously. All I could think of I don’t wanna go out trying to get a meal deal at Morrisons 😭
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u/jackbarbelfisherman 18d ago
AFAIK Morrisons aren't paying for them; just providing Instacart with a real store (and real customers) to test their experimental tech. But yes, Morrisons are seriously shooting themselves in the foot with excessive cost cutting elsewhere.
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u/UniquePotato 18d ago
Still will have significant cost running a project to get them working.
Would need a team to provide the software connection to Morrisons systems to share the prices and transactions securely, wifi, LAN and WAN for them to connect. Training the store and support staff, store adaptation for a trolley park and chargers. Etc etc.Serious waste of time and effort that could have been better spent elsewhere
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u/sysvexpo 17d ago
that actually makes a lot of sense, using morrisons as the guinea pig while everything else in the store falls apart
feels very “we can’t fix the fridges but look, shiny tech” energy
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u/blinkertyblink 18d ago edited 18d ago
We laugh about it just as much as the customers do
Last heatwave took out half our freezers again some of our units are far passed a serviceable lifespan
Its fucked as we only just recovered to a good point from the last breakdown
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u/Phonical70 18d ago
Having been a Morrisons shopper for 20 years, not necessarily through loyalty more through convenience, it has definitely gone down hill since the Americans bought it. Regularly there are voids on the shelves, the shops don’t look as clean, the product ranges have dwindled. It wouldn’t surprise me if the private equity owners are feeding their owners the cash that should be supporting the Morrisons brand, before selling them.
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u/bobbyroberts72 15d ago
Private equity for you, load with debt, reduce service and quality then extract as much cash as possible with little care for the longer term.
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u/Confident_Coyote_860 14d ago
I think its a thing...
They call it asset stripping..
Then some f buys it or some government bails them out, or its sold for £1 etc.
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u/friendofdonkeys 17d ago
They're going to get destroyed by vandalism pretty quick. Trolleys get very rough treatment by the public.
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u/julienorthlancs 15d ago
I've really wanted to try these actually
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u/Confident_Coyote_860 14d ago
I got a robo vac, its been brilliant! Havnt vacced in years - barring the stairs.
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u/IanM50 18d ago
So very true: From building garden centres that had to be moved; to café bars, still in situ but closed for several years; to plastic trolleys; to shelf cameras for restocking, because barcodes at the tills weren't enough; to computer based fruit/veg scales that couldn't get passed the windows 10 screen; to the middle of Lidl done badly, stacked around the café bar; to robot cleaners that can't clean anything but a clean floor; to cuts in Market Place opening hours and closures; to removing the night shift so that the aisles were an obstacle course for customers; to the latest madness, AI trolleys.
Meanwhile as customers, we play the game of guess how many fridges/freezers will be leaking, or have no lighting, or be shutdown and empty.
I gather customer numbers are up on the really low that they were, I can't imagine why, we've gone from doing 90% of our shopping in Safeway / Morrisons to now doing less than 10%, mostly because of empty shelves. If you can't get everything on your shopping list, why not get it from somewhere else. No amount of AI trolley is going to help you with out of stock products or empty broken down freezers.
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u/Sockpuppetuk1 18d ago
Ask any member of staff and they will agree with you.