Argos trialling same day home delivery for online shoppers

Friday, August 6, 2010 - 15:59 by David Aiken

High street retailer Argos has announced that it will be partnering with courier delivery service Shutl in order to provide customers who buy products online the opportunity to get them delivered to their homes within 90 minutes of finalising their order.

Shutl is a small scale firm that started life within the last year and it allows retailers to get in contact with local courier services in order to provide very quick delivery times, even when items have been ordered online.

Argos will offer the 90 minute delivery service for visitors to its website who are located in and around London throughout the trial and there will be over 14,000 items available for delivery. It will cost around £5 in delivery charges, but since this is only slightly more expensive than the delivery within the three days option offered by the firm, it is certainly attractive.

Rival online retailer Amazon has a same day delivery service which offers customers the chance of getting goods delivered that evening provided they make their purchase before half past twelve in the afternoon, although at almost £15 this is considerably more expensive than the offer hammered out between Argos and Shutl.

A Shutl spokesperson explained that the firm would pass on most of the delivery costs to the individual courier services and that it hoped consumers would come to learn that safe shopping online could be delivered in the same amount of time that it would take them to actually go out to the shops and buy items themselves.

The spokesperson said that e-commerce had evolved more quickly than the delivery methods available and as such it was necessary to make a change for the better without increasing costs.

Allegedly there are many mainstream online retailers interested in the concept of a unified courier delivery service, as it will inevitably make safe shopping online even more convenient for the consumer.