Amazon UK success helped by Royal Mail's overnight delivery
It was fascinating to read Jeff Bezos explaining why Amazon.com was successful in Britain (How to turn over a new leaf, February 9). “In the UK the Royal Mail does a fantastic job of overnight delivery to something like 85% of UK addresses and that’s just standard shipping. Here you have to pay expensive UPS or Fedex shipping to get overnight service.”
Will someone explain to the government that overnight domestic delivery is not just something business needs for itself? In the world of e-commerce, it is business. Or are they just itching to get us to pay premium prices to get post delivered the next day?
From an interview with Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com in The Guardian:
Much of the growth is coming out of Europe where the combined German and British operations also moved into profitability during the fourth quarter, just three years after launch. “It will turn out in the end that the US was the hardest place to do e-commerce and the reason is that delivery is faster in Europe because population density is higher,” he says. “In the UK, the Royal Mail does a fantastic job of overnight delivery to something like 85% of UK addresses and that’s just standard shipping. Here, you have to pay very expensive UPS or Fedex shipping to get overnight service.
