Amazon customers will now be able to pick up the items they purchased through the retail giant’s online shopping site within two minutes, thanks to the Instant Pickup service. The Seattle, Washington-based electronic commerce and cloud computing provider is rolling out the free pickup service this week to all Prime and Prime Student members as a new and quick method for collecting a wide variety of essential items from phone chargers to foods. The broader goal of the service is to provide an additional convenience to Prime members in the way they obtain the stuff they just bought online, according to Ripley MacDonald, Director for Student Programs at Amazon.
With Instant Pickup, Amazon customers who have purchased items such as drinks or any of Amazon’s devices using the e-commerce company’s mobile app can now get their order in an instant from Amazon’s pickup facilities. That means you can choose to have your orders shipped to Amazon’s pickup locations instead of having them delivered to your address, which would take longer for your items to arrive. While Amazon maintains 22 pickup facilities across the country, Instant Pickup is available only in five of them: Los Angeles, California; Atlanta, Georgia; Berkeley, California; Columbus, Ohio; and College Park, Maryland. That being said, MacDonald added that the Instant Pickup service will be rolled out to more locations in the near future, noting how online buyers clamor for a quicker way to receive their items as their shopping behavior constantly changes.
You can also add more items to your Instant Pickup list at the last minute. Keep in mind that even if you have already placed your order and paid for the item in question, you can still browse a wide selection of products and make an additional purchase, which will be added to the items that you can pick up from any of Amazon’s self-service locker. The Instant Pickup service is the latest step in Amazon’s efforts to provide quick delivery of items to customers. Last December, the retail giant kicked off a drone delivery trial in the UK as a part of its Prime Air service. Months later, it was reported that the company filed a patent to set up drone delivery towers in various cities.