Amazon have announced this morning a new Click & Collect service called Amazon Counter that gives consumers the ability to pick up their Amazon purchases at their nearest Next store.
At launch, customers will have access to thousands of Counter locations in the UK and Italy, with more locations and partners coming on board across Europe in the future. Starting today, delivery to an Amazon Counter location is available on the tens of millions of items sold on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.it and works with One-Day and Standard Shipping. The service is available at no extra cost to Prime members.
Counter is part of the Amazon Hub family, which includes Lockers. Amazon designed and built the technology for Counter from the ground-up, resulting in a quicker and simpler experience for customers. For store partners, Counter enables store staff to serve customers without disrupting their daily activities, driving meaningful engagement between stores and their customers.
After shopping on Amazon, customers proceed to checkout and select a Counter pick up point as their delivery location. As soon as their package arrives at the store, the customer receives an e-mail notification with a unique barcode as well as the address and opening hours of their selected store, and will have 14 days to collect their parcel. At the store, customers show the barcode to the partner store staff, who will scan it, retrieve the package, and hand it to the customer.
Naturally all merchants who have their products stored in FBA or are Seller Fulfilled Prime qualified will have their goods made available for Amazon Counter.
“With Counter, we’ve used technology to enhance and redesign the click and collect experience. We’re excited for customers to experience this service at one of the thousands of stores now available for Counter, but we’re not stopping there. We’re now actively looking to bring even more partners onboard across Europe — from family-run corner shops to retail chains — businesses of all sizes can take advantage of the opportunity as we expand the Counter network for customers.”
– Patrick Supanc, Director of Lockers and Pickup, Amazon
Next have around 700 stores in the UK and there is one on most major high streets in the UK as well as on many retail parks in out of town locations. One of the big advantages for consumers who work in town is easy collections at lunch times or after work. The big attraction for Amazon is that it will increase their percentage of 1st time delivery success and provide an alternative for those customers who don’t want parcels left with neighbours or who don’t have a suitable safe place for them to be left.
“The ability to collect Amazon parcels from hundreds of NEXT’s UK stores provides a helpful and exciting new service for UK consumers. Amazon Counter combines the internet’s power to offer unprecedented choice with all the convenience of local stores. In a tough retail environment our aim is that Amazon Counter will contribute to the continued relevance and vibrancy of our stores.”
– Lord Wolfson, CEO, Next PLC
In Italy, Amazon Counter goes live today with thousands of stores in Italy with partners Giunti, Fermopoint and SisalPay.
10 Responses
Good call, overall have had good experience using eBay Click & Collect, customers are able to collect items in their own time.
“As soon as their package arrives at the store, the customer receives an e-mail notification”.
That is assuming they have not opted out of all emails including important delivery ones like they are allowed to do.
had another customer complaining yesterday that we had not responded to them despite our reply being sent with an hour and clearly showing in the message system.
Interesting that they’re allowing 14 days for pickup vs ebay 7 days. That could reduce the amount of uncollected returns, the only real downside to click and collect schemes.