Yes, it’s April Fools’ Day, but this is no joke: Amazon is planning to fill your home with “Dash buttons” that you can press in order to ensure you never run out of paper towels, coffee and energy bars.
The buttons, which are available to Prime members for free, are intended to be placed near the items you frequently need replenishing. For instance, you can stick the branded Maxwell House button to your coffee machine, while the Bounty button can be placed in your cupboard. When you run out of an item, you press one of these buttons and it instantly purchases them through your Amazon account.
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It’s certainly a clever little idea, but surely it’s rectifying a “problem” that no one really had an issue with in the first place? It’s not exactly difficult to simply open up the Amazon app on your smartphone and order your items from there. There’s also a few problems the Dash buttons could present, especially in households with children. If you have a kid and decide to incorporate these buttons into your home, then you should perhaps prepare for a day when you’ll come home from work and find 250 rolls of paper towels in your porch.
Fortunately, Amazon has incorporated a little solution to this potential threat to your bank account. When you order an item using the button, a notification will be sent to your smartphone confirming that the order has been made. If a button has been pressed accidentally, you can cancel your order via the notification.
Check out the commercial introducing the Amazon Dash button below. My personal highlight is around the 18-second mark, when a woman finds herself in a state of sheer distress after discovering that the coffee has run out. We’ve all been there.
