Soon you’ll have three free options to ship your Amazon products: Amazon Prime, Amazon Super Shipper Saving and Amazon Tote. According to the Financial Times, Amazon hopes to take their Amazon Tote program across country to help deliver your items.
Unlike Amazon Prime – which requires a yearly fee – and Super Shipper Saving – where you need to make a $25 purchase – the Tote system has no additional costs or minimum amount of products you need to buy. Simply opt to use AmazonTote, and your products will be delivered to your doorstep via a recyclable tote bag on your weekly Tote delivery day, revolving around when they are going to be in your zip code. Items must be under 50 pounds and eligible for Amazon Tote delivery, normally meaning sold by Amazon not another retailer, but they don’t need to fit in the bag. Larger packages will be left on your doorstep with the rest of your products – and covered if the weather deems it necessary. You can add items up to two days before your Tote day, remove items up to 12:01 on your delivery day and return items by placing it on your doorstep in your Tote bag up to two days before your next weekly scheduled Tote day.
Not only will Amazon save on packaging costs on this deal, they have the potential to save on actual shipping costs. In Seattle, the only area where Amazon Tote is currently available, Amazon Fresh trucks deliver the products instead of the traditional mail carriers. It can even be faster than the Super Saving option, depending on how close your order is to your delivery. The company is hoping that the service will help increase customers who are interested in purchasing everyday goods like cleaning supplies and dog food. No word if Amazon Fresh, a separate services that delivers perishable food owned by the same parent company, will be expanding as well (but signs point to the Tote service expanding for products bought only on the Amazon.com site) or which cities will receive the service first.
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