Amazon says its Prime deliveries are getting even faster

To me, Prime’s two-day shipping promise is more of an added bonus to Prime Video and things like To fall. But this has become an expectation, leading other retailers like Walmart and Target to launch their own faster shipping options.

Now, Amazon says its deliveries are getting even faster, advertising which delivered more than 2 billion same-day or next-day items to Prime members during the first three months of 2024, breaking its record for 2023. The company says it delivered nearly 60 percent of Prime orders on the same day or day next in 60 of the largest metropolitan areas in the US.

If you shop on Amazon, have you noticed any differences lately? Same-day and next-day options appear to be more widely available, but it’s difficult to say how this applies to different items in different locations or whether the associated costs are worth it based on reports of warehouse and worker injuries who organize themselves to obtain better conditions.

Amazon’s control over shipping and fulfillment helped make it the target of a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit. The agency alleges that Amazon engages in anticompetitive behavior by unfairly limiting which sellers are eligible for Prime shipping and coercing companies to use its fulfillment services. Amazon says the FTC’s efforts may result in “slower or less reliable” Prime shipping for customers.

In 2019, Amazon said it was spending billions to build an internal fulfillment operation spanning planes, trucks, drones and robots to rival FedEx and UPS and enable such one-day or less deliveries. And last year, it introduced a program that allows sellers to ship their products directly from factories – regardless of whether they go to one of Amazon’s many warehouses.