Amazon expands US same-day delivery service
E-commerce giant Amazon has expanded its same-day delivery service to an additional six cities in the United States. The “Get it Today” service previously available in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Phoenix began yesterday in Baltimore, Dallas, Indianapolis, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington DC.
The service allows customers to order certain items by noon and receive the purchase later that same day. The service is available seven days per week.
The service is priced at $5.99 for customers who are members of the Amazon subscription plan, Prime, with the fee covering unlimited numbers of items in the single order. Other customers are charged $9.98 for the first item and $0.99 for each additional item in an order.
Amazon said as well as expanding the extent of its delivery service, it is also adding more product lines to the list of eligible items for the same-day service, such that one million items can be delivered same-day.
Same day delivery is available for items including health and beauty products, baby items, toys, movies and games, electronics, office supplies, sporting goods, apparel and home accessories.
Greg Greeley, the Amazon Prime vice president, said the same-day delivery option would save customers time when shopping for a wide range of items.
“New convenient pricing also allows Prime members to fill up their same-day shopping cart with everything they may need for one low price. With more than a million eligible items, we aim to offer the largest same-day selection at the lowest price,” he said.
The expansion in same day delivery in the US follows a recent introduction of Sunday deliveries for about 25% of the US population – in 20 US cities – and cross-border two-day delivery in Europe.
Who, what governmental authority, regulates all this ever-growing collection of drivers and their personally-owned vehicles that are, now apparently, often being used commercially to provide package and parcel delivery services. I doubt any many of those driver-owned operators and their vehicles are insured at or above the FMCSA-imposed vehicle liability insurance minimum, and under what “pretense” is Amazon, or others, engaging them to transport their delivery assignments?