Article doesn't mention this, but a big selling point is painless returns. Just drop stuff off and get your money back.<p>IMO that makes them a much more attractive option for items like clothes that might not fit.<p>EDIT: I might be wrong here, I assumed it was talking about Amazon locations like the one that recently opened up in my hometown, but that's "Pickup Point", this is "Instant Pickup".<p>Pickup Points do 1-day delivery and easy returns, I don't think you even need a Prime membership.<p>Not clear from the article if Instant Pickup locations offer those services too or if they're only for stocking common items with fast availability.
Some sort of mutant combination of a parcel locker service and Argos, by the look of it. Is there any US equivalent of Argos, actually?<p>(Argos is a shop where you choose the stuff you want from a catalog, type its product number into a machine, and collect it from a counter a few minutes after).
I feel like there's room in the world for a kind of locally-owned-but-Amazon-franchised brick-and-mortar store. It would probably be named, advertised, etc w/o oversight from amazon, and pick their niche and character in the local market, etc, but source supply from Amazon's network and additionally play the part of a pickup/dropoff site for local deliveries. This is assuming Amazon could trade off some of their margin for the batching of goods (for the shop) and the oversight of their pickup site.
Here's [1] the official press release from Amazon.<p>Not sure what's up with the weird URL, I got there from Amazon's `About` page.<p>1: <a href="http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2293961" rel="nofollow">http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-ne...</a>
This is pretty genius. Back at college, the regular USPS office looked like an Amazon branded post office. Almost all boxes had the distinct blue tape with the Amazon Prime logo. College students, though broke, love to impulse buy. Amazing move by Amazon.
It's interesting to see a lot of recent innovations from Amazon are going back to brick and mortar (Whole Foods, Amazon Go, Amazon Bookstore, etc).