Your Next Amazon Order Could Arrive in Half an Hour
alphaspirit.it / Shutterstock
Toggle Dark Mode
If same-day delivery isn’t fast enough, you’ll be happy to know that Amazon appears to be working on ways to speed things up considerably.
On the heels of the Black Friday shopping season, Amazon has announced that it’s begun testing 30-minute deliveries in parts of Seattle and Philadelphia, allowing certain items to arrive at customers’ doorsteps in minutes, rather than hours.
Dubbed “Amazon Now” in what feels like a resurrection of the defunct Prime Now of yesterday, the new initiative is focused on household essentials, so even if you live in one of the two trial areas, you may not be able to scratch your itch for a new MacBook before the end of the day.
Building on our decades of delivery innovation, we’re now testing an ultra-fast delivery offering of the items customers want and need most urgently in parts of Seattle and Philadelphia. Amazon Now brings thousands of household essential items and groceries to customers’ doorsteps in about 30 minutes or less.
While Amazon offers same-day delivery to Prime members at no charge as long as the order is large enough, Amazon Now deliveries will cost you extra. Amazon says these start at $3.99 per order for Prime subscribers, while non-Prime customers will pay $13.99 for the same order. There’s also an additional $1.99 “small basket fee” if your order is below $15, making it cost-prohibitive to use the service for single items unless they’re truly essential.
The selection of eligible items is broad but confined to grocery and household essentials. According to Amazon, available categories include:
- Groceries: Milk, eggs, fresh produce, chips, and dips.
- Personal Care: Toothpaste, cosmetics, and over-the-counter medicines.
- Household: Diapers, paper products, and pet treats.
- Essentials: Seasonal items and small electronics.
Amazon customers in Philadelphia and Seattle can see if they’re in an eligible area by looking for a “30-Minute Delivery” option in the navigation bar of the Amazon app or website. This will be based on your delivery address, so even if Amazon Now can’t reach you at home, you might be able to get 30-minute deliveries at work or sent to a friend or family member. In what seems like a page borrowed from Uber or DoorDash, there will also be an option to tip your driver when placing a rapid-delivery order.
It’s unclear when Amazon plans to roll this out beyond these two markets, but it may take some time as the faster delivery service relies on a more sophisticated logistics chain. Amazon says it’s using smaller and more efficient facilities “strategically placed close to where Seattle- and Philadelphia-area customers live and work.” This ensures that delivery drivers can reach customers within 30 minutes without compromising safety, but it also means that Amazon will need to set up additional facilities to expand coverage even within these two cities.
Amazon Now is clearly an attempt by the retail giant to reclaim some of the market share that it’s lost to rivals like DoorDash and Instacart, which can already get groceries to your house much faster than Amazon’s same-day deliveries. However, it’s not the first time Amazon has dabbled in faster delivery services. As The Verge notes, it invested $60 million in a one-hour delivery service called Kozmo in 2000, and from 2014 until 2021, it offered “Prime Now,” which promised two-hour deliveries in select areas, although it later folded some of those into its main app.
