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Amazon makes free one-day delivery available to Prime members

6/3/2019
Amazon is starting to make good on its promise to shift free Prime delivery to one day.

The e-tail giant, which initially announced plans to cut its standard Prime shipping time from two days to one day during its April 25 earnings call, is making free one-day delivery available to Prime members with no minimum purchase amount on more than 10 million products, in more than 10,000 cities and towns across the continental U.S.

In a blog post announcing the expanded one-day Prime delivery assortment, Amazon said it will continue to keep adding products for free one-day shipping and expanding its Prime delivery areas. Eligible products range across a wide variety of categories, including electronic devices as well as household items and cleaning supplies.

The blog cites Amazon’s strong fulfillment network in allowing it to expand the Prime Free One Day service.

“(W)e’ve been building our network for over 20 years, enabling us to create a world-class customer experience powered by incredible employees and great technology,” Amazon said. “We’ve strategically grown our network in the U.S. to include 110 fulfillment centers, 40 package sortation centers, 100 delivery stations, and 20 air gateways all to be closer to our customers. This allows Amazon to work smarter based on decades of process improvement and innovation, and to deliver orders faster and more efficiently.”

With this assortment expansion, Amazon is increasing the lead it holds in one-day free delivery on chief rival Walmart. In May, Walmart expanded its existing same-day grocery pickup and delivery service by launching free next-day delivery for purchases of $35 or more across a range of general merchandise from Walmart.com.

Unlike Amazon’s ongoing rollout of standard next-day shipping for all Prime purchases, however, Walmart’s one-day online delivery option does not require a membership fee. Walmart is initially offering next day delivery on 220,000 of the most frequently purchased products online.

Amazon previously said it would spend $800 million to enable standard one-day free Prime shipping. Within the past few months, Amazon has been attempting to boost its proprietary delivery capabilities with efforts such as expanding its Amazon Air Network fleet, and reportedly using fabric tents to quickly create temporary delivery storage stations.
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