Amazon testing convenience store delivery

Next time you’re at the convenience store, go grab some potato chips, a soda and….your Amazon delivery?!  I want to share early word about a pioneering test of a new way to pick up your package.

The online retail giant is reportedly getting ready to test delivery of shipments to 7-Eleven stores in Seattle. All packages will be stored in electronic lockers for customers to retrieve, after they receive an e-mail with a secret code to punch in at individually numbered lockers.

One of the hassles of ordering something online right now is that, if it’s an expensive electronics item, it normally would require a signature for home delivery. This new test system should go a long way to freeing you up to get the package on your own schedule, while ensuring that the package doesn’t get stolen.

It would also save Amazon money. Instead of delivering to home addresses, Amazon would be able to just drop 50 deliveries off each day inside a convenience store kiosk. Plus, it would build customer traffic for 7-Eleven. (I envision a scenario in the future where you might pay one price for home delivery and another cheaper price for 7-Eleven delivery.)

One thing’s for sure: Things are moving quickly and they never stop.

I’ll give you another example. Every time I talk about the United States Postal Service, I get a lot of very angry posts from postal workers on my Clark Stinks message board. But how are those people from the postal service communicating to me? Online by e-mail! No stamp, no envelope, no letter.

So the idea of the USPS still being relic of a different area, and being hamstrung and handcuffed by the U.S. Congress, is a real problem. The USPS is supposedly a private, for-profit semi-governmental entity, so they should not have to go to Congress and ask how to run their operation. They should be cast loose and truly be made a private organization that has to adapt and change to the times.

And those times are moving faster than ever. Who would have imagined five years ago that Amazon would be testing convenience store delivery? And who would have imagined that instead of existing to sell physical books online, now their primary business is sending out e-books to an e-reader called the Kindle?!