Amazon now lets Prime customers schedule orders for the delivery day of their choice - and it's a total game changer

Katie Canales

Apr 17, 2019, 17:59 IST

Amazon now lets Prime customers schedule orders for the delivery day of their choice - and it's a total game changer

Katie Canales/Business Insider

The ability to plan ahead and be home for when an Amazon order is scheduled to arrive proved to be a big improvement to the Amazon shopping experience.

In February, Amazon launched its Amazon Day delivery initiative, which lets Amazon Prime members pick one day of the week for all their Amazon orders to be delivered.
Instead of using Prime's existing free two-day shipping option - though customers could still opt for that if they choose - users can place orders throughout the week and choose their designated "Amazon Day" at checkout.
There are a number of benefits of using "Amazon Day," for both customers and for Amazon. One of them is the ability to plan to be home on the delivery day of your choosing, which can help prevent package theft.
30% of Americans have experienced package theft, according to a survey by Comcast. Not becoming a part of that statistic was wildly appealing to us, so we tried Amazon Day out for ourselves. It proved to be a huge improvement to our Amazon shopping experience.
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Amazon Day is the retail giant's new delivery option for Prime members.

The idea is to give Prime customers control over which day their orders will be delivered.

That can be useful for a number of reasons, and so we worked from home on our designated Amazon Day to try it out. Here's how it works.

First, we filled our cart with items from Amazon, like a cotton pad holder.

Once you're done shopping, it's time to choose from your Prime delivery options, which now includes Amazon Day.

You're able to choose any day between Monday and Saturday as your Amazon Day.

We went with Thursday this time around, but you're able to switch the day each week if you choose. So for instance, your orders one week could be delivered on a Wednesday, and the next week on a Monday.

Our guaranteed delivery date became March 21, our Amazon Day.

There were, however, two items in our cart that we couldn't directly assign to our Amazon Day.

There was a chance that it would be delivered on our Amazon Day, which was Thursday, March 21, but it wasn't for sure.

We eventually just decided to delete the items to avoid the anxiety of not being home when those specific items arrived.

But then we hit another snag. A work engagement prevented us from being able to stay home on our designated Amazon Day, and when we went to change the delivery day three days before, we were only given the option to change our shipping speed.

Since we weren't able to be home any day that week, neither the $56.90 one-day shipping option nor Prime's existing free two-day shipping would work.

We weren't given an option to simply schedule a different Amazon Day, even for the following week. The idea of paying more to change our shipping speed wasn't appealing, so we ended up just canceling the order altogether.

It made sense that we couldn't move our delivery date up without costs, but we would have liked to have the option to keep our order active and to simply schedule for it to come sometime the next week.

But in the end, this was the only downside to our experience. A couple of weeks later, on a Monday, we reloaded our cart with some of the same items we did before, as well as some new things.

We chose a cotton pad holder ...

... some Crest whitening strips, a bottle of Thayers Witch Hazel toner ...

... a tripod ...

... some Lavender-scented sachets ...

... and the Aztec Secret Clay Mask that everyone seems to be talking about, as well as a few more things.

At checkout, it was time to choose a day for all of our items to be delivered, so we clicked to see more delivery options. Our previous Amazon Day, which we'd marked for Thursday, was saved as a default.

But since you're able to choose a different Amazon Day every week if you want, we chose a Friday instead.

However, like with our previous order, one of the items we'd added to our cart, a folding table, wasn't able to be assigned to our Amazon Day.

But since it was something we really needed, we ordered it anyway. It was set to arrive Thursday, the day before our Amazon Day, and although it arrived safe and sound, there was a sense of anxiety all day Thursday, hoping it wouldn't get stolen.

On Tuesday, three days before our Amazon Day, we realized we were out of foil.

So we added a roll to our cart ...

... and chose Amazon Day at checkout.

We also added some resistance bands to our order. Being able to add items throughout the week and schedule them all to be delivered on the same day is hands-down one of the best aspects of the Amazon Day feature.

Finally, our Amazon Day arrived! We received our Amazon orders in three different shipments that Friday. One was delivered by an Amazon carrier, and the other two were delivered by UPS and OnTrac.

We were able to track the packages that were being delivered by an Amazon carrier right in the app. We knew when the carrier was close and to expect a phone call from them, since part of our delivery instructions was asking them to call when they got to the gate of the apartment.

Sure enough, they called around 11 a.m. to let us know they were outside ...

... so we ran out to grab our packages from them. The sense of security knowing the order we paid for wasn't just left leaning against the gate, or even in the courtyard of the apartment, was priceless.

And we were able to grab our packages and then get right back to work.

We couldn't track our next shipment via a map like we did prior, but we could look in the app to see when our order was marked as delivered. When it was, we ventured outside to investigate ...

... and saw it placed in the apartment's common area, which was lucky. We expected to find it outside the gate or in the courtyard, but the carrier must have been let in by a neighbor.

Two shipments down, one to go!

For our third shipment, we were notified of its arrival the old-fashioned way: by looking out the window.

We sauntered downstairs again to retrieve it.

And just like that, our Amazon Day experience came to an end.

Overall, we were pleased with the service. All of our packages had been delivered by 1:30 p.m. on our designated delivery day, and we were able to avoid the worry that stems from not being home when packages are scheduled to be delivered.

Being able to coordinate with our employer in advance to work from home on the day of our choosing was incredibly useful.

We can also see this being an especially useful service for when you're purchasing furniture through Amazon.

Our Amazon Day order didn't consist of anything too large, but if we had ordered a bed frame, for example, being home to receive it might be a necessity — one that would be made possible with a feature like Amazon Day.

On the flip side, Amazon Day may not be for Prime users who are needing an order quickly, in which case Prime's two-day free shipping option may be a better way to go.

There are other intended benefits of Amazon Day.

Because your order is scheduled to be delivered on a set day, all the items within it will be shipped in as few boxes as possible, which is a plus for the environment ...

... but also a plus for Amazon.

It's both cheaper and easier for the company to package customer orders in fewer boxes.

Amazon's fulfillment costs for Prime orders have increased in recent years, jumping up 43% from 2016 to 2017.

The company had been testing the Amazon Day program prior to its launch and, according to a statement from an Amazon spokesperson in February, it saw packaging materials reduced by tens of thousands of boxes.

So maybe Amazon gets something out of the Amazon Day delivery option, but our trial proves that Prime users definitely can as well.

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