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Amazon Prime Sunday service goes live in the UK

by Mark Tyson on 21 January 2014, 11:17

Tags: Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN)

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Amazon has announced that Amazon Prime members in the UK can enjoy Sunday deliveries at no extra cost - "making every day an Amazon Prime delivery day". The infrastructure in place right now means that not everywhere in the UK is covered, despite the small size of this island nation, only London, Birmingham, Milton Keynes, Oxford, Nottingham, Manchester and Leeds are covered by the Sunday service right now.

The Sunday delivery service was trialled in London during December, in the run up to Christmas, and as a 'success' is now being spread much wider than just the capital city. Readers should note that the US version of the service is also limited to large conurbations such as LA and NYC with other large cities also earmarked to get the service shortly.

"Delivery on a Sunday means every day is now an Amazon delivery day and that Prime members can enjoy even more convenience when shopping on Amazon," said Jamie Stephenson, UK Director for Amazon Logistics. "At Amazon, we’re continually innovating on behalf of our customers. We know customers really appreciated the immediacy of Sunday deliveries during the Christmas period and we were able to deliver thousands more parcels in this way in those four weeks."

If you are in one of the designated areas and an Amazon Prime member you will simply add an Amazon Prime eligible item to your basket and you will see the Sunday delivery offer as part of the One Day Delivery promise on the relevant day. Amazon adds that this will occur or cusmtomers "when it is available in their region," - so some of the cities listed above may not be ready for the Sunday delivery option at this time - it's not clear.

Amazon's anticipatory shipping - predicting local demand

Just before the weekend there was an interesting story about Amazon preparing to ship things even faster and more efficiently to the customer. A patent was found detailing 'anticipatory shipping' which some news sites put a spin on, making it sound like Amazon would send you stuff that it knew you wanted even before you ordered it. Anyway, it's just an interesting system where stock is sent to warehouses near areas of high predicted demand for that product - it should make shipping easier/quicker when things are subsequently ordered.

HEXUS Forums :: 10 Comments

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Posted by pollaxe - Tue 21 Jan 2014 11:46
As a Prime member, living in the sticks who doesn't always get Saturday deliveries before Monday I hope this is a sign that they'll eventually cater for the non-urbanites amongst us, too.
Posted by Dooms - Tue 21 Jan 2014 11:49
All for this. It still annoys me that half the country is not open or working a full day on Sunday - I think I lived in London too long so now a bit spoilt when it comes to getting things when I have spare time, not in a small window of opportunity.
Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH - Tue 21 Jan 2014 11:50
They are priming for even more success.
Posted by kingpotnoodle - Tue 21 Jan 2014 12:14
pollaxe
As a Prime member, living in the sticks who doesn't always get Saturday deliveries before Monday I hope this is a sign that they'll eventually cater for the non-urbanites amongst us, too.

I guess I'm still in the London area but I often get Saturday deliveries at my small Hertfordshire town home. I've noticed on Amazon Prime items vary in the cut-off time for next day delivery and Saturday delivery and doesn't change whether I select my home or London office address. I have no evidence I've just always assumed it depended on either item size, warehouse capacity, which warehouse my item was coming from or perhaps the item's sales popularity (presumably more common items are better placed for shipping).
Posted by pollaxe - Tue 21 Jan 2014 12:25
Yes, I'm sure a number of factors come into play with it. To be fair to the delivery drivers, I live in one of those places where all the sat-navs send them sailing past and further up the hill.

I've noticed the Saturday delays tend to happen more with Parcelforce than any other carrier, usually when the item is coming from a lot further north (Scotland, in the last couple of examples.) Most of the couriers tend to be quite reliable with the exception of HDNL who always claim to have delivered the item and then it magically appears the following day or when I've complained. I've generally been happy with my Prime membership, I tried it for a month (free) and then forgot to cancel it, so it's my own stupid fault but it's not been too bad, really.

I'm in full agreement with Dooms, I really dislike the whole Sunday thing; it's archaic.

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