6 Things That Definitely Sucked About Facebook's New Shopping Bot
Help, I am being bullied by a bot for not wanting to pay more than $100 for sneakers.
Yesterday, Facebook announced a new feature within the Messenger app: You can now shop right in the app, via a bot from the shopping site Spring.
During a demo at the F8 conference, a Facebook employee showed quite simply how he bought a pair of sneakers through Messenger.
Find the contact "ShopSpring" and message it the phrase "go shopping. Then answer a few initial questions (men or women's? Clothes, shoes or accessories? Price range?), and it'll spit out 5 suggestions for you.
It just so happens I need a new pair of gym sneakers, so this seemed perfect for me to try out.
Little did I know it would entail almost 2.5 hours, endless frustration, and near constant shaming by the bot over my budget. You know how when you go to a store, and you're dreading the salesperson will say, "can I help you find something?" It's like that, but ten times worse. Instead of creating a faster and better experience, it was like going into a fancy store and instead of browsing the racks, having a rude and pushy salesperson bring out items one by one to see if you liked them.
It couldn't remember my price range in the "see more like this" suggestions.
Price range is one of the first questions it asks you. For women's sneakers, the options were under $75, $75-250, and $250+.
I was expecting to pay around $70-$100 for a good pair of gym sneakers, so at first I went with the middle range. The 5 suggestions were all on the higher end of that, but ok.
For each of the 5 suggested options, you can choose to "see more like this". So I saw a shoe style I liked (but didn't like that particular shoe) and asked to more like it. But when it gave me 3 similar options, my budget range was thrown out the window. It was suggesting $500 sneakers.
Allow me to repeat: $500 sneakers. FIVE HUNDRED DOLLAR SNEAKERS.
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