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Whether it’s cleaning supplies or a new smart speaker, ordering products from Amazon has never been easier. Now though, the e-commerce giant has given its deliveries an ultrafast boost — that is, if you’re willing to pay a bit extra and live in an eligible area.
We’ve come a long way from the 2-day shipping launch of Prime back in 2005 to the rollout of “Same-Day” deliveries in 2015. Amazon’s delivery infrastructure has continued to improve over the years, but it just got a major upgrade with new 1-hour and 3-hour delivery options. This rollout covers major hubs like LA, Chicago, Houston, and Washington D.C., but it’s also hitting smaller cities like Boise, Idaho and American Fork, Utah.
Given that I’ve had an Amazon Prime membership since 2006 and I live less than 2 miles from a local delivery station, I’m exactly the kind of person this service is built for. I decided to try out one of these new ultrafast delivery options for myself to see if it actually lived up to the hype. Here’s how it went and why 1-hour or 3-hour delivery just might be worth it if you’re in a bind.
Article continues belowForget “Today by 10 PM”
Now I normally try to plan ahead when it comes to ordering things on Amazon. However, to test out the service’s new ultrafast delivery options, I thought of the perfect scenario where they’d really come in handy.
While I grew up mopping my kitchen floor with Pine-Sol for a very deep clean, my wife spent her childhood mopping with Fabuloso. Since moving into our house with laminate flooring though, I’ve switched to using Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day concentrated cleaner mixed with rubbing alcohol and hot water in a refillable spray mop.
Now when Prime Day or even a Big Spring Sale rolls around, I like to restock but as a bottle of Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day lasts so long, sometimes I forget to do so. When I looked under my sink when thinking about what to buy with 1-hour or 3-hour delivery, I noticed my last bottle didn’t have enough cleaning solution left in it to mop my whole house.
When scrolling through Amazon’s new Get It Fast landing page for items eligible for 1-hour or 3-hour delivery, I saw quite a few of my household staples like Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day. Likewise, there were a few products I didn’t expect like TV mounts, USB-C to Ethernet adapters and more.
I picked up a two-pack of Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day with a Lemon Verbena scent as it was on sale for almost half off. Although the 1-hour delivery option wasn’t available, the 3-hour one was for an extra $4.99. This was a jump above Amazon’s previous fastest delivery time, Today 2 PM - 6 PM. Now for the waiting.
Flexing to the finish
I placed my order at approximately 12:53 PM and expected it to arrive just before 4 PM. While this reorder was solely for the purpose of testing out Amazon’s new ultrafast delivery options, if it hadn’t been, that 3-hour window would have been perfect for my schedule.
When I clean the house, I have a four-step process that I’ve fine-tuned over the years. It starts with tidying up and getting every piece of furniture that can be moved out of the way. This means taking the kitchen chairs out to the garage and rolling up every throw rug we have to store them safely in a closet. As we now have two dogs, I then sweep every room — even with one of the best vacuum cleaners, the less my machine has to work, the better for its longevity. From there, I vacuum the whole house, and once that’s done, it’s finally time to mop.
Since I live in a long, one-story home, this whole process takes me about five hours. If I had started a whole-home clean without a bottle of Mrs. Meyer’s to mop with, this 3-hour wait would actually work out perfectly.
Almost immediately after placing my order, I started getting delivery update notifications from Amazon. My package left the shipper facility, arrived at a carrier facility, was processed, and before I knew it, it was out for delivery. While I was hoping that my package would arrive in one of those sleek new electric Amazon delivery vans for a photo op, that wasn’t the case.
If you’ve ever had an Amazon package dropped off by a driver in a personal car, you’ve experienced Amazon Flex. Essentially "Uber for packages," the company uses independent contractors with their own vehicles to speed up the pace and output of deliveries. This gig-economy sprint is what makes Amazon’s new 1-hour to 3-hour windows possible.
Although I didn’t get the shot of my package with a blue Amazon delivery van in the background, everything arrived just fine. My tracking showed the package was delivered at 3:15 PM — a full 2 hours and 22 minutes after I hit buy. If I had been mid-clean, those two bottles of Mrs. Meyer’s would have been the final piece of the puzzle for a freshly mopped house.
A worthwhile splurge
Now, are Amazon’s new ultrafast deliveries worth it? Well, that depends on whether or not you’re an Amazon Prime member. I am, which means I can get 3-hour deliveries on select products for an extra $4.99 or 1-hour deliveries for an extra $9.99. If you don’t have Prime, those fees jump up to $14.99 and $19.99, respectively.
To put this in perspective, if I were to pick up a bottle of Mrs. Meyer’s from a local grocery store via Uber Eats, I’d typically have to pay a $3.99-$5.99 delivery fee along with a service fee of 10-15% and, of course, a tip for the driver. That’s easily $12-$15 in extras without the markup from the store itself. With Instacart — even if I had a subscription — there are often “heavy order” fees or long-distance fees. Without one, the delivery fee and service fees would usually be about $10-$12 for a small order.
I doubt I’ll be using Amazon’s new ultrafast delivery options all that often, but for something like cleaning or if I’m in the middle of a Home Hacks DIY project, not having to stop what I’m doing to head to the store easily justifies the extra cost.
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