Amazon Prime Deliveries Once a Week as a Means to Help Environment

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 31, 12:05AM EST · Published Mar 1, 6:15AM EST

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Amazon Prime Deliveries Once a Week as a Means to Help Environment — © NoDerog / Getty Images

Two-day free shipping has been a hallmark of the benefits of Amazon Prime. Longer cycles of days to get packages delivered by ground transportation were no longer the norm. Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) wants to bring back slower delivery for some people. These Prime members will only get deliveries once a week. Amazon management says this is part of the company’s plan to make “shipments net zero carbon, with 50% of all shipments net zero by 2030.”

Amazon has cast the new arrangement as one of convenience. A Prime member can pick one day a week to get all deliveries. Amazon holds all ordered merchandise until that day. Then, the entire order is delivered at once.

The new service is called “Amazon Day” delivery. Amazon presents it as a way for people to plan their deliveries better. A once a week delivery means people can decide when they will be home for an Amazon drop off. It is free to Prime members.

The Amazon Day promotion assumes that people will stay at home most of one day. Amazon will combine orders “when possible,” a term it does not define. The storage of items by Amazon for delivery is pitched as a benefit.

[nativounit]

Prime members can still get their deliveries under Amazon’s normal system. However, Maria Renz, Vice President, Delivery Experience at Amazon, said, “We’ve been testing this program with a group of Prime members and Amazon Day has already reduced packaging by tens of thousands of boxes — a number that will only continue to grow now that the program is available to Prime members nationwide.” The statement does not tell whether some Amazon Prime members have objected to the new system over the course of the test. And management does not say what percentage of people have decided against the service and opted to get normal Amazon Prime two-day delivery.

Renz also summed up Amazon’s description of benefits: “Amazon Day adds another level of convenience to the many shipping benefits Prime members already enjoy. Prime members can now choose to get their orders delivered together in fewer boxes whenever possible on the day that works best for them.” That is unless no single day works best for them at all.

[recirclink id=531188]
[wallst_email_signup]

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.