A new service from global giant Amazon UK is predicting which products customers might want, based on their last six months’ internet searches and comments overheard in the home by smart speakers such as the Amazon Echo. Goods are then shipped without the iconvenience of placing an order.
The company’s totally autonomous ‘Predictive Purchasing ®’ system claims widespread acceptance amongst its customers.
We spoke to city investment banker Roddy Faulke-Smythe, who had nothing but praise for the Amazon service.
‘Hey, look, I’m a really busy guy so I love it,’ he said. ‘I mean, did I know I’d need an £1,800 North Juice Kite? But that little bad boy turned up Saturday morning, just two days after I’d mentioned maybe going kiteboarding to my partner over dinner. Brilliant.’
Other customers have not been so thrilled. Sales Consultant Sarah Denton, 34, from Bristol arrived home from work last Thursday evening to find her driveway blocked by a delivery of over 2,000 ‘Viva Shaped Incontinence Pads’.
‘I couldn’t even get the car off the road,’ she complained. ‘Why are they even here? I didn’t order the bloody things.’
Sarah contacted Amazon to demand their removal and received an apology, a £13,450 account refund but no explanation.
After scouring her web history, she called us back with a possible link. ‘Well, a couple of weeks ago my friend Gabby and me did search for “2020 holiday pads in the continent”. Do you think that might have done it?’
STOP PRESS NEWS.
Amazon has had to pull the stops on their amazing Predictive Purchasing system when police were called to the sleepy hamlet of Saltdean. A group of confused old ladies were reported wandering in Longridge Avenue.
A reporter from the Evening Argus interviewed the landlady from the Spanish Lady and she said. “I was just talking to my hubby about getting some nice eating apples for the grandchildren when they come for half term and we had a crowd of old ladies fighting in the snug. We called the rozzers and slung them out”.
Police took the old ladies back to Brighton Police Station in the back of the hurry up wagon where they were charged with causing an afray and locked up for the night to calm down. They were collected by a Eastern European gentleman in a white van and taken back to the Amazon goods return depot in Tunbridge Wells.
An Amazon representative refused to comment on the matter but went on to say that the operative in charge of dispatch had only started that morning after a stressful journey from Calais by boat.
It has been reported today by the Metropolitan police that the old ladies were all part of the infamous Smith family who have been terrorising the east end of London for years. They have been known to carry knitting needles honed to a very sharp point, bricks in their hand bags and have been known to have sharpened bus passes with poisonous edges.