THE ‘BLACK BOX’ CRISIS: How AI Shopping Bots are Creating a $132 Billion Retail Blind Spot

NewsBy Paula April 17, 2026 Leave a comment

LAS VEGAS TECH WATCH LOCAL BUSINESS | AI REVOLUTION | YOUR SAFETY | VETERAN OWNED THE ‘BLACK BOX’ CRISIS: How AI Shopping Bots are Creating a $132 Billion Retail Blind Spot By GCT NEWS STAFF Published: April 17, 2026 LAS VEGAS, NV — Artificial Intelligence is rapidly removing the “friction” from online shopping. Today, autonomous shopping agents…

Privacy Overview

Cookie Policy for Effective Phone Solutions Inc. (DBA Custom Technology Consultants)

This is the Cookie Policy for Effective Phone Solutions Inc. (DBA Custom Technology Consultants), accessible from www.getcustomtech.com. To view Effective Phone Solutions Inc. (DBA Custom Technology Consultants) privacy policy please click here: Privacy Policy.

What Are Cookies

As is common practice with almost all professional websites this site uses cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded to your computer, to improve your experience. This page describes what information they gather, how we use it and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or 'break' certain elements of the site’s functionality.

How We Use Cookies

We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately, in most cases there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to this site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case, they are used to provide a service that you use.

Disabling Cookies

You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browsers settings for help on how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit.

Disabling cookies will usually result in disabling certain functionality and features of this site.

Therefore, it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.

The Cookies We Set

Email newsletters related cookies: This site offers newsletter or email subscription services and cookies may be used to remember if you are already registered and whether to show certain notifications which might only be valid to subscribed/unsubscribed users.

Orders processing related cookies: This site offers e-commerce or payment facilities and some cookies are essential to ensure that your order is remembered between pages so that we can process it properly.

Surveys related cookies: From time to time we offer user surveys and questionnaires to provide you with interesting insights, helpful tools, or to understand our user base more accurately. These surveys may use cookies to remember who has already taken part in a survey or to provide you with accurate results after you change pages.

Forms related cookies: When you submit data to through a form such as those found on contact pages or exemption services forms, cookies may be set to remember your user details for future correspondence.

Third Party Cookies

In some special cases we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. The following section details which third party cookies you might encounter through this site.

This site uses Google Analytics which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solutions on the web for helping us to understand how you use the site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to produce engaging content. For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page.

Third party analytics are used to track and measure usage of this site so that we can continue to improve your browsing experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site or pages you visit which helps us to understand how we can improve the site for you.

From time to time we test new features and make subtle changes to the way that the site is delivered. When we are still testing new features, these cookies may be used to ensure that you receive a consistent experience whilst on the site ensuring we understand which optimizations our users appreciate the most.

As we sell products it's important for us to understand statistics about how many of the visitors to our site actually make a purchase and as such this is the kind of data that these cookies will track. This is important to you as it means that we can accurately make business predictions that allow us to monitor our advertising and product costs to ensure the best possible price.

Several partners advertise on our behalf and affiliate tracking cookies simply allow us to see if our customers have come to the site through one of our partner sites so that we can credit them appropriately and where applicable allow our affiliate partners to provide any bonus that they may provide you for making a purchase.

We also use social media buttons and/or plugins on this site that allow you to connect with your social network in various ways. For these to work the following social media sites including; Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, will set cookies throughout our site which may be used to enhance your profile on their site or contribute to the data they hold for various purposes outlined in their respective privacy policies.

More Information

If there is something that you aren't sure whether you need or not it's usually safer to leave cookies enabled in case it does interact with one of the features you use on our site.

However, if you are still looking for more information than you can contact us through one of our preferred contact us at: [email protected]

Necessary

Always Enabled

Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.

Cookie	Duration	Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional	11 months	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy	11 months	The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.

Functional

Performance

Analytics

Others

THE ‘BLACK BOX’ CRISIS: How AI Shopping Bots are Creating a $132 Billion Retail Blind Spot

We care about your privacy