Amazon offers free same-day delivery in North Texas
Amazon wants to make your impulse buys even more impulsive.
The e-commerce giant is offering free same-day delivery in Dallas-Fort Worth and about a dozen other cities for its Prime loyalty club members.
More than 1 million items, including books, electronics and vacation gear, will be eligible for same-day delivery for orders over $35 that are placed by noon. The products will be delivered by 9 p.m.
Other metro areas receiving the new service include New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Atlanta. Amazon said it’s using a variety of “carrier partners” to make the deliveries.
Orders under $35 can still have one-day delivery for $5.99. Previously, the service cost $5.99 for Prime members and $9.98 for non-Prime members for the first item, plus 99 cents for each additional item.
About 20 million items on the site are eligible for free two-day delivery for Prime members. The club membership costs $99 a year.
“We’ll continue to make it faster and continue to look at different alternatives to give customers maximum flexibility,” said Greg Greeley, vice president of Amazon Prime.
Amazon has been expanding its Prime offerings to boost membership with services such as grocery delivery, one-hour delivery in some cities, beefed-up video streaming and the creation of a Bluetooth speaker called the Echo that syncs with Prime music.
It is also adding workers at its network of U.S. distribution centers to handle the orders. On Tuesday, it announced it was hiring 6,000 full-time workers at about 20 fulfillment centers, including 450 at its facility in Haslet.
The delivery sector is heating up with new startups challenging traditional delivery methods. The ride-hailing service Uber is testing local delivery, and the delivery service Postmates has begun working with restaurants like McDonald’s and Starbucks in addition to offering one-hour delivery for most restaurants and stores in major metro areas.
Not to be outdone, Seattle-based Amazon said last week that it would begin offering one-hour delivery from stores in New York’s Manhattan borough.
This story was originally published May 28, 2015 at 2:10 PM with the headline "Amazon offers free same-day delivery in North Texas."