E-commerce giant Amazon.com today launched Prime Now in Manhattan, a mobile app enabled delivery service that sees essentials such as paper towels, shampoo, books, toys and batteries sent to customers within an hour of order. The Prime Now service is powered by Amazon’s growing network of fulfillment centers that utilize high-end technology to speed up order delivery times for customers. The service which is now available to Manhattanites will be available in other cities next year.
According to Amazon, the Prime Now service is available from 6 a.m. to midnight everyday including weekends. Customers will be paying zero charges on two-hour deliveries while those who wish to have their orders delivered within an hour are charged $7.99. A portion of Amazon’s new building on the 34th Street in Manhattan will serve as a hub for all the deliveries made via the service.
This latest service by Amazon builds on its existing delivery service - the membership based Prime program - which offers customers unlimited Free Two-Day Shipping on more than 20 million items across all categories, unlimited streaming of tens of thousands of movies and TV episodes with Prime Instant Video, one million songs and hundreds of playlists with Prime Music, early access to select Lightning Deals and access to more than 600,000 books to borrow with the Kindle Owners' Lending Library. The membership fee for the Prime program is $99 a year.
Dave Clark, Amazon’s senior vice president of worldwide operations
There are times when you can’t make it to the store and other times when you simply don’t want to go. There are so many reasons to skip the trip and now Prime members in Manhattan can get the items they need delivered in an hour or less. We’ve long felt that Amazon Prime is the best deal in the history of shopping and now it has gotten even better. Prime members in Manhattanare going to love this service and we cannot wait to roll out Prime Now to additional cities in 2015.
