Amazon expands same-day delivery to all of Boston following reports of it excluding black neighborhoods

Amazon will make its same-day delivery available to all of Boston, following a Bloomberg report last week that showed it excluded a predominantly black neighborhood from its service area.

"We are actively working with our local carrier to enable service to the Roxbury neighborhood in the coming weeks," Amazon said in a statement.

"Once completed, Prime members in every zip code in Boston, including the Roxbury neighborhood, will receive Prime Free Same-Day Delivery, in addition to existing Free Two-Day and One-Day shipping options."

The change comes after the Bloomberg report pointed out Roxbury, a predominantly black neighborhood located in central Boston, was the only Zip code area in the whole region to not have access to Amazon's same-day delivery. It also highlighted that other cities, including New York, Chicago, and Atlanta, saw the same patterns.

Amazon launched same-day delivery last year for Amazon Prime members, its annual membership that gives access to two-day free shipping and a bunch of video and music content. The same-day delivery was initially only available in 12 metropolitan areas but have since expanded to 27 regions.

Amazon told Bloomberg last week that it doesn't make its service available based on race but on the size of its Prime membership base in each region. It just happened that most of the predominantly black neighborhoods didn't have enough Prime members to justify the cost of making same day delivery eligible, it said.

But Roxbury was an interesting case because it was centrally located, and in most cases, same day deliveries had to pass through the area anyway. And after the report was published, Boston Mayor Martin Walsh and Massachusetts Senator Edward Markey pushed Amazon to expand coverage.

Amazon didn't comment on what exactly prompted this change, or if it had plans to expand to other predominantly black areas, only saying, "We are always looking to expand the benefits our Prime members receive and that's exactly what we are doing."

Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through hispersonal investment company Bezos Expeditions.