Amazon trials one hour delivery service

Thursday, July 2, 2015 - 10:11 by Simon Crisp

Consumers based in the capital can now take advantage of Amazon’s one hour delivery service, meaning that the products they order online can be with them in just 60 minutes, according to the Mirror.

The Prime Now delivery option is available for subscribers to Amazon Prime, although an additional £6.99 charge for each one hour delivery is applicable on top of the standard annual fee.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, only orders worth over £20 will be eligible for this service, although there is not much of a limit on the items that can be purchased as it includes more than 10,000 products.

So far, only people in the US have been able to benefit from Prime Now, but Amazon’s ambitions to make safe shopping online a more immediate experience are spreading to London, before anywhere else in the UK.

This makes sense given the maturity of the British e-commerce market. And with courier services already immensely popular in the capital, it seems likely that Amazon’s scheme will be a success.

Interestingly, the Prime Now scheme does allow for free delivery to subscribers, but you may have to wait up to two hours if you want to take advantage of this. Furthermore, the delivery window extends from 8 in the morning to 12 midnight, giving plenty of leeway for early morning orders or late night impulse buys to be delivered by Amazon.

Whether any of its rivals will be able to offer a similar service remains to be seen. Amazon’s spending power and existing infrastructure puts it in a good position to offer one hour deliveries in London, to the point that other online retailers may not be able to consider competing.

High street chains could follow in its footsteps, although they are finding success with click and collect, so may not need to add yet another delivery option.