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I think it would behoove Amazon to have a network of "customer pickup centers" where you can order something on Amazon, it gets shipped by Amazon itself to a cu

I think it would behoove Amazon to have a network of "customer pickup centers" where you can order something on Amazon, it gets shipped by Amazon itself to a customer pickup center via air, and the customer drives to close off the figurative "last mile". Alternate idea: Amazon builds a central warehouse in each major metro that contains the most-ordered items for that area, has trucks that run out to UPS Stores and drop off every hour, and the customer completes the last mile and goes to pick up his package at the designated UPS Store within 2-4 hours from the time he placed the order. I'm sure they've already considered all this kind of navel-gazing, but if customers were able to pick up within 3-4 hours of placing an order under this type of system, it'd be awesome, and I think a big win for Amazon. One of the worst things about ordering on Amazon, even as a Prime member who lives in a place where free same-day is often available, is having to wait around with no control over when the product will arrive. This would beat free same-day, which for us rarely arrives before 8:30pm no matter how early you get the order in after midnight. Really Wal-Mart and Amazon are not so different. The difference is that Wal-Mart keeps quantities of the product within driving distance of 90% of the population, so they can have the product a half-hour after deciding they need/want it. The ability to close this gap has got to be one of the most important milestones for online retail. Ad-hoc delivery networks like UberEats are kind of already doing this. Sure would be a crazy turn of events if someone started to knock down Amazon's retail business by leveraging the latent bandwidth in the city's existing retail and crowd-sourced driver networks.

Cymen 11y ago
They kind of have that with Amazon Locker but I found in practice, it was kind of annoying as not everything fits in the locker. If it's a smaller item (or items), it works great.
__david__ 11y ago
> I think it would behoove Amazon to have a network of "customer pickup centers" where you can order something on Amazon, it gets shipped by Amazon itself to a customer pickup center via air, and the customer drives to close off the figurative "last mile". http://www.amazon.com/locker http://www.amazon.com/locker
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  Ah, pretty cool. Didn't know they had this -- it's not available in my area yet.
  - yomly 11y ago
    Booking slots will probably come, its something they've always wanted to do and it becomes easier to implement as things like Amazon Fresh get rolled out. Re buying Uber - that would have been way too expensive, I think in this case it would be cheaper to slowly organically expand the logistics operation
tracker1 11y ago
I think that Amazon, may in the end be better off starting their own shipping company. It may sound weird, but I'm half surprised they didn't buy Uber or Lyft, not for the ride service, but for the drivers and the logistics in place. Large trucks from warehouses, to meet drivers in individual vehicles at drop spots, for final deliveries.
- SatoshiRoberts 11y ago
  Brilliant, though I think they are investing more time in the drones
- TorKlingberg 11y ago
  At least in the UK, Amazon already does that. Most things are delivered by Amazon's own drivers. The vehicles are not branded, so it may be an Uber-like model where the driver uses their own car, or they just rent white vans.
  - wrboyce 11y ago
    I think of it more as a Yodel-like model. The drivers mostly don't care, and a lot of my parcels get delivered into my bin.
  - samwillis 11y ago
    Amazon logistics here in the uk is utter rubbish. It seems completely random as to wether you shipment will arrive the day they suggest or not and half the time it get lost. With prime getting more expensive (we don't was the video stuff), the new "add on items and the rubbish delivery service we have given up on Amazon and very rarely use it.
- bestnameever 11y ago
  It's already going that way
- ascagnel_ 11y ago
  Amazon has their own shipping company, although I've found it to be subpar compared to passing the shipments off to the USPS or FedEx (largely because their deliveries don't have access to existing maildrops or mailboxes). The recently rolled-out same-day delivery uses their shipping service without a handoff.
sokoloff 11y ago
For me, and I suspect a lot of others, one of the best things about ordering from Amazon is that the amount of time I am personally tied up on the transaction after selecting the item is 1-5 minutes online, 1-2 minutes opening the outer box, and 1-2 minutes disposing of the cardboard. Asking me to drive and park at a UPS store or locker location doesn't work for me. There are several Amazon lockers near me and I can't conceive of a reason that I'd personally choose to use one. (Single family residence, so drivers just drop the package on the porch. In a multi-unit building, I can see some security reason.)
- jschwartzi 11y ago
  I use them because my apartment is in a secure building and the office closes before I finish work. If lockers didn't exist I would order less stuff from Amazon and just drive around looking for the locally-available version. Now I can place an order and stop by 7-11 on the way home a couple days later.
mbreese 11y ago
> I think it would behoove Amazon to have a network of "customer pickup centers" where you can order something on Amazon, it gets shipped by Amazon itself to a customer pickup center via air, and the customer drives to close off the figurative "last mile". They have these. Or at least, they are trying them out. In addition to the Lockers (which are scattered around at other stores), at least in Cincinnati, there is an honest to goodness Amazon pickup location. IN addition to normal shipping, you can get same-day pickups from anything that is at their local warehouse (maybe from their Indianapolis warehouse too?). I think this is more like an Amazon branded, dedicated locker site than a store front. But, at this point, that's all they need. http://www.amazon.com/gp/campus?campusId=CAMPUS_CIN http://www.amazon.com/gp/campus?campusId=CAMPUS_CIN
jlgaddis 11y ago
NewEgg only has a couple of warehouses / distribution centers in the USA but one of them is about an hour away from me. Recently, I needed a new SSD as quickly as possible and placed my order around 23:30 local time. Before noon the next day, I got an e-mail letting me know that it was ready to be picked up. Minus the drive, picking up the package was basically a five minute deal (i.e. out of my vehicle, going in and getting the package, and back into my truck took less than five minutes). From now on, I'll only order from NewEgg when I need items urgently and am willing to make the two-hour (roundtrip) trek to pick them up, having been burnt by their shipping policy once before. (Since someone will inevitably ask, I paid out the ass for one-day shipping only to receive my package three days later. Apparently, "one-day" only applies to actual shipping time. The two days my order was being "processed" didn't count.) Just today, though, I found myself wishing both NewEgg and Amazon (who has their own distribution center very near to NewEgg's) had a walk-in retail storefront nearby. There is a Fry's about 90 minutes away but sometimes I just want to go in and browse and find things I wasn't really looking for or expecting.

Cymen 11y ago

They kind of have that with Amazon Locker but I found in practice, it was kind of annoying as not everything fits in the locker. If it's a smaller item (or items), it works great.

__david__ 11y ago

cookiecaper 11y ago
Ah, pretty cool. Didn't know they had this -- it's not available in my area yet.
- yomly 11y ago
  Booking slots will probably come, its something they've always wanted to do and it becomes easier to implement as things like Amazon Fresh get rolled out. Re buying Uber - that would have been way too expensive, I think in this case it would be cheaper to slowly organically expand the logistics operation

tracker1 11y ago

I think that Amazon, may in the end be better off starting their own shipping company. It may sound weird, but I'm half surprised they didn't buy Uber or Lyft, not for the ride service, but for the drivers and the logistics in place. Large trucks from warehouses, to meet drivers in individual vehicles at drop spots, for final deliveries.

SatoshiRoberts 11y ago
Brilliant, though I think they are investing more time in the drones
TorKlingberg 11y ago
At least in the UK, Amazon already does that. Most things are delivered by Amazon's own drivers. The vehicles are not branded, so it may be an Uber-like model where the driver uses their own car, or they just rent white vans.
- wrboyce 11y ago
  I think of it more as a Yodel-like model. The drivers mostly don't care, and a lot of my parcels get delivered into my bin.
- samwillis 11y ago
  Amazon logistics here in the uk is utter rubbish. It seems completely random as to wether you shipment will arrive the day they suggest or not and half the time it get lost. With prime getting more expensive (we don't was the video stuff), the new "add on items and the rubbish delivery service we have given up on Amazon and very rarely use it.
bestnameever 11y ago
It's already going that way
ascagnel_ 11y ago
Amazon has their own shipping company, although I've found it to be subpar compared to passing the shipments off to the USPS or FedEx (largely because their deliveries don't have access to existing maildrops or mailboxes). The recently rolled-out same-day delivery uses their shipping service without a handoff.

sokoloff 11y ago

For me, and I suspect a lot of others, one of the best things about ordering from Amazon is that the amount of time I am personally tied up on the transaction after selecting the item is 1-5 minutes online, 1-2 minutes opening the outer box, and 1-2 minutes disposing of the cardboard. Asking me to drive and park at a UPS store or locker location doesn't work for me. There are several Amazon lockers near me and I can't conceive of a reason that I'd personally choose to use one. (Single family residence, so drivers just drop the package on the porch. In a multi-unit building, I can see some security reason.)

jschwartzi 11y ago
I use them because my apartment is in a secure building and the office closes before I finish work. If lockers didn't exist I would order less stuff from Amazon and just drive around looking for the locally-available version. Now I can place an order and stop by 7-11 on the way home a couple days later.

mbreese 11y ago

> I think it would behoove Amazon to have a network of "customer pickup centers" where you can order something on Amazon, it gets shipped by Amazon itself to a customer pickup center via air, and the customer drives to close off the figurative "last mile". They have these. Or at least, they are trying them out. In addition to the Lockers (which are scattered around at other stores), at least in Cincinnati, there is an honest to goodness Amazon pickup location. IN addition to normal shipping, you can get same-day pickups from anything that is at their local warehouse (maybe from their Indianapolis warehouse too?). I think this is more like an Amazon branded, dedicated locker site than a store front. But, at this point, that's all they need. http://www.amazon.com/gp/campus?campusId=CAMPUS_CIN http://www.amazon.com/gp/campus?campusId=CAMPUS_CIN

jlgaddis 11y ago

NewEgg only has a couple of warehouses / distribution centers in the USA but one of them is about an hour away from me. Recently, I needed a new SSD as quickly as possible and placed my order around 23:30 local time. Before noon the next day, I got an e-mail letting me know that it was ready to be picked up. Minus the drive, picking up the package was basically a five minute deal (i.e. out of my vehicle, going in and getting the package, and back into my truck took less than five minutes). From now on, I'll only order from NewEgg when I need items urgently and am willing to make the two-hour (roundtrip) trek to pick them up, having been burnt by their shipping policy once before. (Since someone will inevitably ask, I paid out the ass for one-day shipping only to receive my package three days later. Apparently, "one-day" only applies to actual shipping time. The two days my order was being "processed" didn't count.) Just today, though, I found myself wishing both NewEgg and Amazon (who has their own distribution center very near to NewEgg's) had a walk-in retail storefront nearby. There is a Fry's about 90 minutes away but sometimes I just want to go in and browse and find things I wasn't really looking for or expecting.