Amazon Finds It’s Hard to Run a Real Sweepstakes in the Robocall Era

A sign alerts Amazon.com Inc. Prime members of a special deal on shrimp a Whole Foods Market Inc. location in Burbank, California, U.S., on Wednesday, June 20, 2018. Customer traffic was up 2.4 percent at Whole Foods stores during the first five months of 2018, a sign that Amazon has managed to draw in new shoppers with ballyhooed price cuts on a handful of items.Photographer: Dania Maxwell/Bloomberg

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By Brad Stone

April 15, 2019 at 11:00 AM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

Early this month, while I was waiting in line for coffee at the San Francisco International Airport, I got a strange call on my cell phone from someone claiming to work at the very company I was about to visit in Seattle. “Hi, this is Max from Amazon Whole Foods,” said the cheerful voice.

I was immediately skeptical. We all get a lot of spam and robocalls. Also, in the two years since the e-commerce giant acquired the grocery chain, I’d never heard anyone refer to it as “Amazon Whole Foods.”