Amazon Prime Now promises deliveries in one hour
As long as you live in Manhattan
Tired of having to wait an entire day for your Amazon deliveries to reach your door? Well, if you live in the borough of Manhattan, rejoice! The online giant has unveiled Amazon Prime Now: a service for its $99-per-year Prime service that promises to deliver your order in just one hour.
Using the Prime Now app on iOS and Android, customers can purchase items between 6 a.m. and midnight, seven days a week, and have it delivered in one or two hours. Two-hour delivery is free for Prime users, but if you have to have it now (or as close to now as possible), one-hour deliveries will cost $7.99.
If you don’t have a Prime subscription, which brings free two-day shopping, streaming TV and films, Prime Music and Prime Photos, you can still download and browse the products available for super-quick delivery, but you’ll need to fork out the $99 for Prime membership before you can place an order. Once you do, though, the app allows buyers to track their delivery from Amazon’s hub at its 34th Street offices.
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Why offer the new service, though, when Amazon already offers same-day delivery for groceries and a “Get it Today” delivery service for a range of appliances which promise same-day delivery? Well, according to Amazon’s senior VP of worldwide operations, it’s because we’re all too damned busy or too damned lazy. “There are times when you can’t make it to the store and other times when you simply don’t want to go,” Dave Clark said in a press release. “There are so many reasons to skip the trip and now Prime members in Manhattan can get the items they need delivered in an hour or less.”
That’s all well and good, but what if you don’t live in Manhattan? For our readers in D.C., you still have access to Amazon’s other delivery services, including its Get it Today same-day service. Of course, you could always try another service, such as Google Express. In October this year, the search giant brought its same-day delivery service to a number of East Coast cities, including D.C. Google Express, which offers goods from Walgreens, Costco, Staples, Giant Food, Barnes & Nobles, L’Occitane, Guitar Center and Babies “R” Us, promises same-day delivery with products purchasable from your computer, smartphone or tablet. The service is free for the first three months, but after that you’ll have to cough up either $10 per month to subscribe, or $99 for a year’s membership. If you’d rather not sign-up, you can pay $4.99 for each order, provided the goods are worth more than $99.
If the Manhattan trail is a success, we can expect to see Amazon’s Prime Now service rolling out to other major cities in due course, and ushering in glorious new levels of laziness in our already obese population.
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