FedEx have announced the creation of 8,000 new Dropoff and Pickup points at Walgreens drugstore chain across the US.
Walgreens strong focus on customer care makes them the perfect retailer to help meet the growing demand for convenient, secure dropoff and pickup options according to FedEx, who added that their customers rank pharmacies as a preferred location for ecommerce parcel collection and drop off.
As part of the FedEx Onsite program, customers will be able to drop off pre-packaged and pre-labeled shipments at Walgreens stores and pick up packages that they direct to their local Walgreens. There will be a small scale pilot over the next couple of months expanding to thousands of stores in 2017 and eventually roll out to nearly 8,000 Walgreens stores by Autumn 2017.
It’s interesting to see similar click and collect programs to those in the UK start to appear in the US. Getting parcels to consumers would seem to create very similar issues on both sides of the Atlantic and the solution is to get the parcel to a secure location with long opening hours as close as possible to the consumer’s residence. It’s not always easy though, as highlighted by Royal Mail this week, almost of quarter of Brits live in flats which automatically make deliveries more difficult.
It’s all too easy for a casual thief to steal parcels left on the door step as the video below from 2014 shows. Even if the contents of the parcel can be replaced, consumers simply don’t need the hassle and neither do the retailers and couriers and that’s why so many couriers are partnering with retailers to provide safe parcel drop off and pick up locations.
