Amazon Australia’s free “One-Day Delivery” offer isn’t as straightforward as its name suggests

Amazon Australia is promising its Prime members free next-day delivery in “most areas of” Melbourne and Sydney.

Billed a little misleadingly as “One-Day Delivery” the online behemoth says the initiative will see Prime members receive their goods the following day “on eligible items” with an order cut-off time “which can be as late as midnight”. Goods will be delivered the next day without a minimum spend required.

The service applies to goods ordered from its Australian e-commerce site “to the majority of” Sydney and Melbourne postcodes.

Prime members who are seeking deliveries outside eligible postcodes will still receive free delivery “in as fast as two days on eligible orders” according to an Amazon statement, “and will also experience enhancements in delivery speed as Amazon Australia continues to invest in their operations and logistics network”.

The company did not say which types of products are excluded from the new service but advised that “hundreds of thousands of products across categories including toys, household and personal care, electronics, books, pantry staples and more” are eligible.

“Eligible items can be identified by the ‘Prime Free One-Day’ or ‘Prime One-Day’ icon.”

Janet Menzies, country manager for Amazon Australia, said the service has been made possible by the company’s investment in new fulfilment centres and delivery stations close to where its customers live and work, which allows for shorter shipment journeys for packages, speeding up shipping speeds. The company now operates six fulfilment centres, recently doubling its capacity for storing and shipping small to medium-sized items.

She said that during the coming months, Amazon Australia aims to expand both the selection of eligible products for the ‘One Day’ service and the applicable delivery areas.

This article was first published by Inside Retail.