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Amazon Stops Selling Press-to-Order Dash Buttons (cnet.com) 64

Posted by msmash from the end-of-road dept.
Amazon's physical Dash buttons are no more. The e-commerce giant has stopped selling its tap-to-order Dash buttons as of February 28th. From a report: If you still proudly use a Dash button (or a few dozen), don't worry: Amazon plans to continue supporting new orders through existing Dash buttons so long as the public keeps using them. So what killed the Dash button's future? Well, by Amazon's telling, the device was a victim of its own success, since it helped nudge forward the concept of the connected home to what it is today. Daniel Rausch, an Amazon vice president who helped grow the Dash program from its start, said that back in early 2015, when the Dash button first came out, there were far fewer options for connected home gadgets. Amazon workers were trying to figure out a way "to make shopping disappear" for grocery list items like paper towels and printer ink and whatever else is pretty not-fun to go out and buy, Rausch said.
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Amazon Stops Selling Press-to-Order Dash Buttons More

Amazon Stops Selling Press-to-Order Dash Buttons

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  • Not-fun-to-buy? (Score:3)

    by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Friday March 01, 2019 @11:23AM (#58199720)

    WTF

  • What a stupid idea that was (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ReneR ( 1057034 ) on Friday March 01, 2019 @11:30AM (#58199766)
    Who freaking brought / used this sh1t anyway? The only useful thing I could think about is a dash button for toilet paper, but otherwise, coffee beans?

    • Re:What a stupid idea that was (Score:4, Insightful)

      by aicrules ( 819392 ) on Friday March 01, 2019 @11:42AM (#58199844)
      Why is toilet paper a meaningful use case for you and not anything else you buy regularly? It is equivalent to writing something on your shopping list, but instead of having to remember to do that and then wait till you're actually at the store, you just push a button and it ends up on your doorstep a couple days later. Toilet paper, laundry detergent, toothpaste, trash bags, dish soap, just go through your place of residence and think about all the things you buy repeatedly and it could be used for that. Doesn't mean it was a great method, but if you see it useful for one item, you probably would have found use for it on many items.
      • OK, let's say I use these buttons. If I do this for a lot of my consumables, where do I put all those buttons? I can see soft-buttons on the amazon page, but actual physical buttons? IMHO, no wonder they quit.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Exactly, a better solution is a house wide voice assistant.

          Hey Alexa/Google/whatever, reminder me to get . The next time you are at the store your phone gives you a notification to get . I did this years ago with Google Now why are we pushing buttons like in some game for babies.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Exactly, a better solution is a house wide voice assistant.

            Hey Alexa/Google/whatever, reminder me to get . The next time you are at the store your phone gives you a notification to get . I did this years ago with Google Now why are we pushing buttons like in some game for babies.

            Because the button doesn't require me to bug my own house.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Anonymous Coward

              Ha ha, oh wow, did you just suggest an overlap exists between dashbutton users and privacy enthusiasts?

              Please, go on, my Friday is dragging on and I could use the laughs: Describe in your words what you think incognito mode accomplishes.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I buy dozens, maybe hundreds of different items on a regular basis. Really, separate buttons for all of them? I think not.

      • The better way to do this, is to create a list of household consumables. Every couple weeks when you happen to be shopping on Amazon, you go down the list and buy any items you're running short of. No need to write down a new list, or remember to add an item to your list, or get a button to push (which your kid starts pushing over and over when he finds it and thinks it's a toy). If the list is smart, it'll auto-sort itself so recently-ordered items automatically get moved to the bottom of the list.

        Un

      • But there seem to be so few items that one typically goes though so much faster than other items that makes it worth having such a silly device. Add to that the tendency of Amazon to separate orders into as many shipments as possible resulting in immense waste. It would be better perhaps for a monthly shipment that you could easily tweak (overloaded on toothpaste so uncheck the box).

        Overall though it would be much better if people would just head to the store. The idea of there being only a single retaile

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mccalli ( 323026 )
      I did. I used it for razors and for dog dental sticks. I would always forget I needed them, so I placed the buttons right next to the slot I stored razors, and right above where I stored the dental sticks. In both cases buying online was cheaper than the shops*, in part because I always bought the largest pack of dog dental sticks available which many local shops didn't carry.

      They were, and are still, handy.

      * I'm aware of the holy wars it's possible to get into over razor blade choice. Suffice it to s

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The only way I see a button for toilet paper being useful is if pressing the button got some delivered to the door of your bathroom in the next 5 minutes.

      But I've never really had the issue of completely running out of toilet paper.

    • The Dash buttons were a good idea, leave them near the items you want to replenish and just hit the button when you notice you're running low.

      Unfortunately the button places an order immediately and doesn't handle multiple presses gracefully. There was no way to configure the thing with a maximum quantity to order, no way to hold orders for manual review and no way to specify what day you wanted your items to be delivered. The lack of features greatly limited the usefulness of the device.

    • They made an IoT button as well, which was quite a bit more flexible.

  • Never understood those (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Friday March 01, 2019 @11:41AM (#58199830) Journal

    At least with a subscription, you get a chance to review prices and see if you want to go through with it.

    Seriously, press a button and get it sent to you at some random current price?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      These are not for the type of people who care about prices. Seems to be more and more, since many are also happy to pay a premium for someone else to pick up their Taco Bell for them.

      • I actually think there are a lot of twenty-somethings who think that as long as there's some money leftover in the paychecks that it should be spent. And I think this has been true for several generations. Amazon and Uber are just the modern ways to be naive about finances.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by pz ( 113803 )

      At least with a subscription, you get a chance to review prices and see if you want to go through with it.

      Seriously, press a button and get it sent to you at some random current price?

      Not just that, but suppose I see we're low on toilet paper. I push the button. Later in the day, my wife also sees we're low. Push the button. Then the next morning, my oldest child sees we're low. Push the button. Then my youngest child, watching everyone push the button wants to do the same. So now we have four orders for the same thing before the first delivery arrives?

      I've not acquired a Dash button, so I have to think that the engineers at Amazon figured out how to prevent this scenario that woul

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by RLaager ( 200280 )

        I don't have one, but when I looked at them before, Amazon said it won't place a second order until the first order is delivered. Also, you get a notification of the order, so you also have the option to cancel it.

    • Or have a kid walk up and press the button multiple times.

      I know they said they had protections to prevent a child from ordering 100 cases of toilet paper, but how robust were they? Would they allow an order of toilet paper to be sent every week just because the child pushed the button?

      At least, I can prevent my kids from accessing Amazon on my smartphone/tablet/computer and can order whatever I need there.

    • So instead of the cat merely playing with the toilet paper roll and leaving it all through the house, the cat figures out how to order a hundred rolls of the stuff to be delivered the next day.

  • Dash, meet Alexa (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday March 01, 2019 @11:51AM (#58199884)

    The real problem here is simply that a Dash button gives you one less reason to consider an Alexa device.

    So, goodby Dash.

    • Yeah, why have one general purpose IoT device rather than two dozen single-purpose IoT devices? Heaven forbid I change the WPA2 key.

      • Yeah, why have one general purpose IoT device rather than two dozen single-purpose IoT devices?

        Wy indeed, I guess you'd rather have one internet connected microphone than ten dumb button-only units...

  • The Dash button needed an e-Ink display... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ctilsie242 ( 4841247 ) on Friday March 01, 2019 @12:04PM (#58199958)

    The Dash button desperately needed an E-ink display. That way, it would be easy to tell what product the button is used for, and Amazon wouldn't be stuck with Dash buttons which people were not buying. Plus, it would give the advantage of being able to be used with products people did want to buy.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pz ( 113803 )

      ... and could be used to show the current price of the thing you're going to order to correct its biggest shortcoming.

  • This wuz all planned! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by the_skywise ( 189793 ) on Friday March 01, 2019 @12:19PM (#58200006)
    Riight - it has nothing to do with them being ruled illegal in Germany (and then inevitably by the EU...)
    https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]

    • The button itself is not illegal. The headline is wrong.
      The praxis to exchange the "programmed product" by a similar one is illegal. E.g. you have set it up to give you toilet paper of brand A and they send you some of brand B ... that is illegal.

  • Wait... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Friday March 01, 2019 @12:52PM (#58200232)

    My Dash button is set up to order more Dash buttons.

    Now I'm going to be stuck with a useless brick.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jwhyche ( 6192 )

      Well obviously the public stopped using them. All you can order is cheese, laundry detergent, trash bags, and the like. Someone in marketing needs to be fired because they missed the market for this. The need dash buttons for beer, pizza, weed, Cheetos, hookers and blow. Network them, push three buttons and hooker shows up with a pizza, and a bag of weed. That is where the market is. The might need to make the buttons bigger for the beer and weed ones.

  • Single Item Per Button (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Only Time Will Tell ( 5213883 ) on Friday March 01, 2019 @01:42PM (#58200564)
    I liked the idea of simply being able to reorder as needed, but the fact they were like $10/button and only served 1 product always put me off. Before they came out I thought of a similar product, like barcode reader, that could sit in closets or pantries where you could scan the barcode from the item you were out of and it would add it to your shopping list. These buttons removed the list idea and conveniently ordered it right away, but were locked into the brand, size of packaging (24 count vs 36 count), and variety (e.g. no other scents or colors) for the button you bought. If it had a reader and screen, you could scan the item, pick amongst what Amazon is currently offering, and then buy it. That way if you wanted a smaller size, or were brand-agnostic and wanted a cheaper price, it would allow it.

    • That functionality is built into the "Amazon Shopping" app for your cell phone.

      • Yeah, the advent of the smartphone and its apps largely makes the idea irrelevant today. When I was thinking about such a device it was pre-smartphone adoption, but now is pretty quaint with all the things apps can do.
  • I'm sure being banned by regulators in Germany a couple of months or so ago had absolutely no influence on this decision.

  • The fact these buttons can be hacked to serve a different purpose makes it a moot point for Amazon. So killing it stops the $$ bleeding for Amazon and push for Alexa.

  • To maximize the power of your product listing [urtasker.com] , ensure that the negative reviews or the complete lack of reviews is taken care of on your listing page. Both are equally lethal!

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