Amazon Prime Now too disruptive to London’s businesses

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Deutsche Bank are the latest city institution to clamp down on deliveries from Amazon and say enough is enough, according to fnlondon. Personal deliveries to employees have become to numerous and too frequent and, with the advent of Amazon Prime Now parcels arriving from early morning to late evening, they just can’t handle the volumes any more.

The problem isn’t just the number of parcels arriving but in recent times has been exacerbated further by Amazon and particularly Amazon Prime Now. It’s all too easy to place an order for delivery within the hour and this means rather than one courier arriving with a deluge of parcels, there is now a constant stream of couriers arriving throughout the day, each one needs to be scanned for security and delivered to the recipient.

In the future Deutsche Bank will have all personal orders delivered off-site and they’ll only be bought on-site in bulk a couple of times a day.

The growth in ecommerce isn’t just a problem for businesses and their post rooms who have to handle an ever increasing volume of personal parcels. It also adds to congestion in the city and even using bike or motorbike couriers isn’t going to make the problem go away. Many companies have offered different solutions from consolidating deliveries outside the square mile and having a single courier deliver in bulk to locker solutions or outsourced post room collection points either within or outside office buildings. Click and collect from local shops is also an increasingly popular solution, we’re written about this before when we visited HV Kingsley to interview David Poluck who runs the newsagent.

Office deliveries of personal orders is a big enough problem when items arrive by post or courier. The situation is acerbated when deliveries can arrive at any time of the day or night with Amazon Prime Now or other same day services such as eBay’s Shutl.

As ecommerce continues to grow, offering a wider choice of delivery options is going to become ever more essential. Businesses have to make a choice whether their employees are valuable enough that it’s worth investing in parcel collection points or if parcel volumes are growing to such an extent that it’s disrupting their business to unacceptable levels.

As an online retailer, whether you’re selling on marketplaces or your own website, offering a choice of delivery options – both timed deliveries, and click & collect solutions or lockers, may make the difference between a consumer buying from you or a competitor.

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