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Amazon rolls out free same-day delivery

Written by Tom Ryan

Amazon on Thursday began offering free same-day shipping on "over a million" items to Prime subscribers in 14 major metropolitan areas.

The order size for Prime Free Same-Day Delivery has to be over $35. Delivery on orders under $35 costs $5.99 for Prime members, and starts at $9.98 for non-members. The order also has to be made by noon with the promise of a delivery by 9 p.m.

The products available include books, staplers, headphones and video games and come in addition to the "tens of millions of items" available to Prime members for two-day free delivery.

Eligible products will be designated on Amazon.com with a Prime Free Same-Day logo on the product page. Customers can check a Prime Free Same-Day to filter items eligible for the service while conducting searches on the site.

The 14 markets in the launch are: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Dallas/Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle/Tacoma, Tampa and Washington, D.C.

Amazon free same day delivery
Source: Amazon video

Free same-day delivery builds on December's launch of Prime Now, which offers one-hour delivery on select items for $7.99 and free two-hour delivery. Prime Now, also exclusive to Prime members, is available in Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Brooklyn, Dallas, Miami and Manhattan.

Amazon also offers grocery deliveries in New York City, Seattle, Philadelphia and parts of California under the AmazonFresh brand.

Amazon has been aggressively adding warehouses, improving warehousing technologies and experimenting with delivery methods to meet its ambition to control "the last mile" of a package's journey to consumers' doorsteps. Prime Now, for example, uses bike couriers, who recently have been also utilizing New York City's subway system to fill orders.

Free same-day delivery and Prime Now both support Amazon's $99-per-year Prime membership program, which is seen as a critical loyalty driver. The service also pushes further to remove the "instant gratification" that buying an item at a physical stores has long held versus waiting for an online delivery to arrive.

Reports noted that the move is also partly defensive, given that Google, Walmart and eBay are all testing same-day delivery. The Wall Street Journal noted that startups such as Uber, Lyft, Deliv and Postmates that pick up products from local stores for cheap delivery also present challenges for Amazon.

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