The wonderful folk at Amazon are getting serious brownie points from all impatient Brits today. The moment has arrived; the holy grail of online shopping. Amazon have officially introduced a 1 hour delivery service.
Yes. You heard us. Prime Now promises to deliver your online Amazon shop direct to your door in 60 minutes or under. Picture high-speed bikes whooshing round Trafalgar Square leaving the Ocado delivery van trailing in their firey wake. It's pretty high-octance, instant-impact stuff, people. It means your copy of Taylor Swift's 1989, the reassuringly expensive Nespresso machine you've been eyeing up and your sex swing – yes, Amazon sells sex too – can be on your doorstep quicker than you can say 'Let's go to the mall!' And that's bloody brilliant news because we live in an ever increasingly fast-paced age, dontcha know? Prime Now means your office can buy a much-needed emergency fan, have it delivered and circulating sweet cool air among your colleagues by the end of your lunch hour. Take that, heatwave!
But hold off on the rejoicing for a moment while we tell you what you need to know. The Prime Now service, which is only available through an app, does come with a few provisos and a teeny bit of small print.
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It is only available for those priviledged few with Amazon Prime membership, which will set you back the princely sum of £79 a year.
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1 hour delivery costs £6.99 and has to be on orders over £20. On the upside, Prime Now subscribers may choose a 2 hour delivery service totally free of charge, which seems like the most economically viable option. What's an extra hour without your new shiny bluetooth headset?
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Prime Now is not available on all Amazon items, but it is available on booze which is really good news. The service covers 27 Amazon departments. That's a lot of stuff you didn't realise you needed.
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The service is currently limited to the capital. But fear not, it's only a matter of (unfortunately, undisclosed) time before Amazon will roll out the service across the UK. Huzzah! The people at Amazon have said the service should be nationwide, at a postcode near you, by the end of 2015.
And get this, the app even comes with an Uber-esque option to tip your delivery driver, the entirety of which Amazon swears will go to the man on the bike rather than the Office BigWigs. A small pre-warning: this could either lead to warm fuzzies or the need to learn a whole new guide to etiquette in order to avoid virtual tipping blunders. But we'll jump that hurdle when we've scraped together all the pennies in our swear jar to join Amazon Prime and experience the wonder that is Prime Now's 1 hour delivery service.
Excuse us, we're off to online shop.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.