Amazon offers free holiday shipping in U.S.

SEATTLE — Amazon says it will offer customers free shipping on orders delivered through Christmas regardless of whether they are members of the Prime membership program, a move that comes two weeks after rival Target undercut the company with its own free-shipping offer.

Target last month said it would offer free two-day shipping on hundreds of thousands of items, with no minimum order size, from Nov. 1 to Dec. 22 — a move designed to keep customers looking to shop online from defecting to rivals like Amazon or Walmart, which both charge for expedited shipping.

Walmart offers free two-day shipping on sales of more than $35, while Amazon’s free delivery-window guarantees are limited to members of its $119-a-year Prime program.

On Monday, Amazon returned fire, saying it will eat the shipping costs on “hundreds of millions” of items on its online bazaar during the holiday rush. A spokesman said it is the first time Amazon has dropped its minimum order size to qualify for free standard shipping — which generally takes between five and eight days — to zero.

A day after Target’s announcement, a public-relations firm hired by Amazon had sent journalists an email detailing the company’s own delivery perks, a rundown that primarily listed features of the paid Prime program. Also mentioned was the previous free-delivery threshold on orders larger than $25.

Amazon’s shipping costs have grown rapidly in recent quarters. During the fourth quarter of 2017, the company spent a record $7.3 billion getting packages to customers.