In an apparent move to bridge the gap between the conveniences of online shopping and in-store pickups, Amazon has reportedly started to roll out high-tech lockers to hold your purchases until you’re ready to pick them up.
According to The Daily, Amazon is apparently testing the storage lockers around the Seattle area and, if successful, may expand the project nationwide next summer.
Customers with delivery addresses located in specific zones will apparently be able to select nearby 7-Eleven locations as alternate shipping addresses when making purchases from Amazon’s website. When packages are ready to be picked up, customers will get e-mails containing special barcodes that can be used to unlock the lockers containing the items.
GeekWire.com got some nice snapshots of the lockers that have been installed in one Seattle-area 7-Eleven store and managed to get one of the store clerks to reveal that the lockers would be activated this Friday. Aside from that, Amazon’s been mum when questioned about the project.
The idea makes sense, especially if you’ve ever missed a package delivery, so it’ll be interesting to see if it takes off and whether it’d even be able to somehow expedite Amazon’s already-fast shipping times even more.
[via GeekWire]