E Unit

So this rolled out in a few cities, including here in Austin. You can now order and have most things delivered within 1-2 hours. 2 hours, no charge, but 1 hour a $7.99 charge. I guess I can tempt fate and start ordering toilet paper when I really need it. This service is now available in:

• Atlanta
• Austin
• Baltimore
• Dallas
• Manhattan and Brooklyn
• Miami

http://www.amazon.com/b/?node=10481056011

Service is available from 8am until midnight right now.

auto

That's nuts.

PhantomStranger

You are supposed to tip the driver $5 from what I've heard about this service. I really wonder how popular something like this service will be in the long run. It smells like a gimmick to me.

zyzzle

The fact that there are no cities west of the Rockies on that list is most curious. I'm all for the service. It would be used in a sort of emergency situation where rapid delivery is paramount. Probably it will be a gimmick, and not enough people will care to use it, however. We'll see. I've been expecting to see something like this from Amazon for years. Drones or no drones, they've finally launched the service.

dvd-4-life

Who makes the deliveries?

onebyone

A courier does it in our area. They add a tip into the price, and it seems more than fair to me...all things considered. 2 hour delivery is pretty sweet.

Josh-da-man

Instead of finding ways to ship stuff faster, I wish Amazon would put some effort into packaging things so they don't get damaged during shipping. I really hate it when I get a package and find out my blu-ray hoxed set has crushed corners because they just dropped it into a flimsy box, or that hardcover book I ordered is all dented up because they just stuck it in a cardboard wrap.

I return-exchange so much stuff for damages that they're probably going to ban me.

zyzzle

Right. I can't tell you how many books I've received damaged from Amazon. For awhile, I returned the goods as "damaged", as I was paying good money for NEW and pristine items, not damaged goods. This got tiring after awhile, and I was losing patience and time even though Amazon was good about making the return process easy.

Then, I started getting worried that Amazon would drop the ban hammer on me, so I kept damaged items (ie, Amazon's fright tactics worked on me for awhile). Bullshit. Punishing me for their lousy packaging.

Now, I just don't care, and haven't ordered anything from those greedy bastards for awhile now because I still have a sizable gift card credit that I don't want to lose if I ever do get banned. Catch 22?

E Unit

Odd, in the time I've bought from Amazon, I can count on one hand the damaged items I've received, all from 3rd party sellers only. Never had a damage issue from Amazon, knock on wood.

Trevor

Same here pretty much. I must have well over 1000 orders from Amazon and have received a damaged product maybe three times. And at least one of those was just a broken DVD case. Books are almost always packaged extremely well plastic tight wrapped to cardboard.

PhantomStranger

I get damaged stuff from Amazon fairly often and I've made far more orders from them over the past decade than even Trevor. I've actually stopped ordering items from them that I know Amazon won't package very well: limited edition stuff, trade paperbacks, fragile products. On things like Blu-rays, I actually get better packaging from the riff-raff on eBay than Amazon.

The Valeyard

I received more damaged items from Amazon than from third-party sellers. Banged up box sets usually. The worse was when I spent $65 on Alan Moore's Lost Girls (1st Printing) and they just dropped it in a LARGE box without anything to protect it from bouncing around. One of the sides ended up completely crushed - All three books inside too. When they sent the replacement, I insisted they properly pack it.

zyzzle

Most of my damaged books resulted from Amazon using an improperly sized, loose-fitting box. Too big = bad, especially for hardcover books. I wrote them numerous times about this issue and it seemed to lessen for awhile, but then got worse and worse. The lemmings packaging their books must be on a quota system (more packages mailed per hour = higher "bonuses", like the same incentive program Amazon uses for their email resolving people).

They need to focus less on SPEED and get back to focusing on QUALITY. Then, they *might* get me back as a customer.

The same thing could be said about 100 companies these days, including Apple.

Boba Fett

Just tried this today; ordered two Blu-Rays, a graphic novel, SD card, and Star Wars figure. Got $20 off for my first try since the order was over $50.

It took 24 minutes from the time the order was processed until the guy pulled up with the delivery. My one worry is I saw on the map where the shipping facility was and knowing local traffic, I know the drive was at least 15 minutes if everything was perfectly, so the guy was hauling major ass, when he still had 36 minutes to spare.

I really hope Amazon is being realistic in the one hour delivery window (there's an $8 charge for it) and this isn't going to be a repeat of the Dominos 30-minutes or less fiasco where drivers were getting into accidents for fear of losing their jobs.

EDIT: Also for those interested, this apparently has rolled out in Portland (where I'm at) and Seattle.

GuessWho

Now in Chicago! Haven't tried it yet.

Josh-da-man

The same company that puts trackers on their warehouse workers so they can monitor how quickly they move and how long their bathroom breaks are? Perish the thought!