2 to become 1 with upcoming changes to Amazon Prime shipping
posted Saturday Apr 27, 2019 by Scott Ertz
We all know the standard features of Amazon Prime: free 2-day shipping on most of your orders. We've opened the *DRM Not Included section of F5 Live: Refreshing Technology with that line every week for over a year. But, all of that is about to change, thanks to a new policy from Amazon. The company has announced its intentions to turn 2-day shipping into 1-day shipping for most orders.
On an earnings conference call, finance chief Brian Olsavsky said that the company is working hard and spending millions of dollars to update its infrastructure to support this change in policy. In fact, this quarter alone, the company has spent around $800 million in preparation to roll-out 1-day shipping for Prime members. If you're a Prime subscriber, you may have already noticed some of the changes. Previously, there had been a $35 minimum on orders being shipped same day, but that requirement has already been dropped. They have also expanded the number of SKUs available on the site that are eligible for same day shipping.
This is going to be a big and exciting change for users of the site. However, not everyone is as excited about the change. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which has been against any moves made by Amazon to improve their customer experience, said that it is worried about the working experience for warehouse workers. The claim is that at 2-day, the pace is already too fast for more of the workers, and increasing the delivery turnaround would put more stress on them.
Of course, changing how fast the packages are delivered will change what day the orders are processed, but will not likely change the pace at which they are processed. Plus, and additional processing will almost certainly be handled by the increasing number of robots that inhabit Amazon warehouses. That change will also not make the union happy, but there isn't a lot that can be done about it.
There is no specific timeline for rollout, but it looks as if it will be done in phases, starting now.
