Amazon is attempting to make Prime membership even more alluring by promising free deliveries within two hours in Manhattan.
The move is the online retailer’s latest attempt to become the only place that consumers think of when buying almost anything on the internet. It offers groceries to residents of Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco and parts of New York City through Amazon Fresh.
The Prime Now offering is available initially to Manhattan residents and will be rolled out to additional cities next year. Two-hour deliveries are promised between 6am and midnight seven days a week. If two hours is simply too long to wait, customers can pay $7.99 to get their order in just 60 minutes.
Dave Clark, Amazon’s senior vice-president of worldwide operations, said: “There are times when you can’t make it to the store and other times when you simply don’t want to go. There are so many reasons to skip the trip. Prime members in Manhattan are going to love this service.”
Drones and taxis
Part of Amazon’s new building on 34th street in Manhattan will act as a hub for Prime Now deliveries. Orders can be tracked using Amazon’s smartphone app.
As well as its publicity-seeking experiments with delivering orders by drone, Amazon has been exploring a variety of ways to get goods to customers more quickly.
The company has experimented with using taxis in San Francisco and Los Angeles to make multiple deliveries bound for the same location, it was reported last month.
Last month, Amazon introduced its first same-day collection service for Prime customers in Britain using a network of 500 newsagents and convenience stores under the Pass My Parcel brand.
Prime membership costs £79 a year in Britain and $99 a year in the US, and includes access to Amazon’s Prime Instant Video service among its perks as well as free overnight delivery on many items.
Some Amazon customers in Britain are facing the prospect of orders failing to arrive in time for Christmas following the inability of courier companies such as Yodel to cope with a surge in online shopping.
In Germany, trade union Verdi has said it could not rule out delays to Amazon deliveries after it called strikes at warehouses this week, although the company has promised that orders would arrive in time for Christmas.
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