Walmart challenging Amazon with shipping offer

The world's largest retailer is throwing a counterpunch to Amazon's Prime service. 

 

Walmart is offering a free 30-day trial of its ShippingPass program, which offers consumers  unlimited, two-day free shipping for a year.  Normally, the service costs $49 per year.   (So as not to feel left out, existing ShippingPass members will receive a free month of the service).

 

In addition, starting July 1, Walmart promises to begin offering special online rollback prices which will last 90 days or more. The retailer is promoting the price breaks as being in honor of the upcoming Independence Day holiday, but the timing certainly gives it a running start against upcoming Prime Day deals.

 

ShippingPass costs about half of the $99 annual Amazon Prime membership fee, with customers trading one day of shipping for a lower cost. However, Walmart has the advantage of fulfilling from its network of thousands of local stores, as well as not offering other digital features of Amazon Prime such as content streaming.

 

Walmart’s online shipping program has no minimum requirements for number or cost of items ordered and also accepts free returns. Much like Amazon’s secrecy around the performance of Prime, Walmart has so far not broken out details about ShippingPass metrics.

 

In addition to offering its own July online sales event, Walmart has also treaded on Amazon’s turf by providing online grocery delivery and free cloud hosting services, as well as by testing delivery drones. In 2015, Walmart competed with the hugely successful Prime Day event by lowering the minimum order for free shipping from $50 to $35 and lowering online prices for thousands of items. The discounter is upping its game this year, although Amazon has not released specifics about the latest iteration of Prime Day and may have a few tricks up its sleeve.

 

The ShippingPrice promotion and online discounts will be available on both the Walmart e-commerce site and mobile app. In a corporate blog post, Walmart also promised it has “some other ways we’re going to connect our app, site and store for customers in the coming weeks.”