Amazon has never been short on fresh ideas, and the Amazon Instant Pickup Service was no exception. It was launched back in 2017 to save the time and efforts of customers spent running from aisle to aisle, looking for products in traditional brick-and-mortar stores.
With the Instant Pickup Service, users could place orders through the Amazon app and collect them within minutes from the pre-selected pickup location.
In the backdrop, as soon as an order was placed by a user, an Amazon employee would collect the item(s) from the shelves and place it in an Instant Pickup Locker. When the user arrived at the pickup location, all he had to do was scan a barcode on the app to receive their order. The pick-up locations somewhat acted like large vending machines.
The service was first launched in five cities inthe US, namely, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Berkeley, College Park, and Columbus.
The Instant Pickup service was brought to a permanent halt in 2018. There was no official announcement, though a company spokesperson confirmed the news in response to a leading media company. However, he did not disclose any reason for its closure.
The way Amazon pulled the plug on this service just after a year of its launch indicates that Instant Pickup was an experiment from the retailing giant that didn’t go as planned. Either it wasn’t gaining as much traction as projected, or the costs were too high to make it feasible (or a combination of both).
Nevertheless, after the closure of this service, Amazon has converted the Instant Pickup Locations into regular Amazon hubs.
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