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Amazon Launches One-Hour Delivery Service In Baltimore and Miami

Posted by samzenpus on from the but-I-want-it-now dept.

schwit1 writes Amazon.com announced the launch Thursday of its one-hour delivery service, Prime Now, in select zip codes in Baltimore and Miami. It initially launched in Manhattan in December. The one-hour service, available to Amazon Prime subscribers through the Prime Now mobile app, costs $7.99. Two-hour delivery is free. From the article: "Amazon Prime's success has blown away the company's projections and 'petrified' local and national retailers, said Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, a national retail consulting and investment banking firm headquartered in New York City. 'If you're a retailer and you're not scared of Amazon ... you should be,' he said. 'They are the change agent. They are leading the change in retail.'"

11 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. The death of delayed gratification by amalcolm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And the birth of the ultimate impulse buy

    --
    Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
  2. Big difference by Roodvlees · · Score: 4, Insightful

    8 dollar to not wait one hour extra? Wow, that's a huge difference.

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    Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
    1. Re:Big difference by Thanshin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It depends on the PoV. It's also $8 to cut the waiting time in half.

    2. Re:Big difference by N1AK · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It can be for some items and some buyers. I don't see why people who can't immediately see a use for something are so quick to jump to the conclusion that their isn't one. One random example might be someone working at home who needs to do a disproportionate amount of printing and runs out of ink. $8 to have it solved in an hour or less might be a bargain for them. I can think of a few dozen more, although they aren't likely to be reasons why I'd pay to upgrade personally. But then, I don't know if I've ever paid for next day, and that service seems to be pretty useful and popular.

    3. Re:Big difference by Rei · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, I can think of a ton. You're hosting a party and you discover you're out of something. You're a company who just had a critical item break and you lose money until you can get another. Your flight leaves soon and you discover that you forgot to pick up something. You're cooking a big dinner and discover that you don't have a key ingredient. And on and on, there's no end to the list.

      This "it's not my typical usage needs" attitude that many here are displaying is also the problem I see with many attitudes about electric cars. "Well, I drive 300 miles every day and only have enough money to buy a used jalopy and live in an urban apartment with no electricity". Fine - then don't get a freaking EV yourself.. It doesn't mean that everyone in the world's needs are the same as yours.

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  3. What's more interesting to me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...is not that Amazon are offering same-day courier delivery - that concept is centuries old - but that the high street fails to provide an in-demand version of what used to make it unique: trained staff providing demonstrations and support on custom products and services, from meat to electronics.

    I don't (didn't) go into local shops because they're cheaper, but because they are (were) better. Mind you, the local independent greengrocer - who is so resourceful with purchasing that they even pay local gardeners such as ourselves for the fruit of the dozen redcurrant bushes we have - also happens to be cheaper, as well as offering the rich flavours of fresh produce.

    There was once a local independent electronics store run by someone who could fix any TV or telephone - and a short walk beyond that, a ham radio outlet full of half a century of gadgets, and he'd understand anything about anything at HF. A local computer store used to have an engineer who would build and sell co-processor cards in the back room. Going to any of these places was an education.

    The hardware stores weren't staffed by snotty kids who just pointed at some Chinese junk on the shelf and shrugged if you asked them what was the best option, but people who were involved in building or carpentry or plumbing themselves, and who took joy in explaining how to operate some piece of kit - and, of course, if you weren't sure, you could pay them to do the work.

    A retail job at places like this was a respectable career, not something you did because you failed at education or wanted something to get you through your undergrad studies. A customer wasn't someone you tried to fleece and then he'd fuck off disappointed but out of pocket, but someone who'd come back year after year.

    So, I say it's not that Amazon has displaced the high street, but that the high street no longer delivers what it used to deliver. Is this because consumers have become lazy, compulsive and throwaway in their purchasing decisions? Probably partly. But the high street tried to chase the sell-quick-and-high starting in the '80s, and they've suffered terribly for it.

    1. Re: What's more interesting to me... by BlueTrin · · Score: 4, Informative

      If you have retail experience you will see that many people will come to the shop to try and then buy online. One counter is to sell your own products but that does not work in every sector.

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  4. I'd rather by rossdee · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'd rather live in a state where Amazon wasn't, have 2 day free shipping, and not have to pay sales tax.

  5. delivery in one hour??? by ks9208661 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Do they sell pizza? They'd be quicker than our local Domino's!

  6. Opportunity cost by sjbe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    8 dollar to not wait one hour extra? Wow, that's a huge difference.

    Might be but I can see cases where it might be worth it to some folks. Honestly pretty much anything I would get in my car to go get would take at least 30-60 minutes of my time + gasoline. In a place like Manhattan I could easily see it taking much longer than in the midwest suburbs where I live. My hourly wages are significantly higher than $8 and the opportunity cost to me and my company if I have to leave for an hour to go buy something could easily justify an $8 delivery charge if we needed it right away.

    I buy a lot of stuff through Amazon (and other online vendors) precisely because of the opportunity cost to shop in person. Sometimes shopping is fun but most of the time it's just a chore plus it puts wear and tear on my car and takes up time I could put to better use.

  7. Batching and operations research by sjbe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If I place seven orders a day, I alone have monopolized a driver and his vehicle for an entire work shift if the distribution center is 30 minutes away from me.

    Probably not true because the delivery person would probably batch several deliveries into a single run. In fact it would be seem to be economically insane to do otherwise. This only works in high population density locations (presumably) so you aren't likely to be the only person ordering stuff at a given time near your location. It would take some clever software and planning but it's doable. My undergrad degree is in industrial engineering and this is a pretty nifty operations research problem.

    Even if there were distribution centers where every Walmart has a store in the US and they had a fleet the size of FedEx themselves (FedEx even just does a daily route), can they really keep the kind of items everywhere that I would order?

    Of course not. It will necessarily be a limited menu so to speak. Same reason Walmart doesn't stock everything in their stores that you can buy through their website.

    Amazon are single-item-only things from marketplace sellers, very few of whom ship their entire inventory to Amazon for safe-keeping.

    I shop a lot through Amazon and only about 20% of what I buy comes from marketplace sellers and maybe 5-10% is stuff Amazon doesn't stock themselves. 90% of the time Prime delivery is an option. In any case this rapid delivery service will almost certainly be for stuff you buy from Amazon themselves only.

    It's actually kind of a brilliant idea for the same reason that Walmart opening big stores in small towns is a great idea. If they can get there first and be the first to make it work at scale, it (potentially) takes a lot of the oxygen out of the room for competitors. The biggest threat to Amazon right now is companies like Walmart realizing that their stores can also serve as warehouses and getting their IT up to snuff. Amazon has been building warehouses all over the place to get ahead of this competitive threat. Amazon will have a hard time matching Walmart in small towns but with this Walmart might have a hard time matching Amazon in big cities.