The quick and the late: Testing same-day delivery

NEW YORK – It was a Friday and I was eagerly awaiting my vegetable spiralizer, red wine and Roku stick. They all arrived as promised.

But where was that book and makeup I ordered? And my pizza?

Same-day delivery offers the tantalizing convenience of online ordering with nearly the same immediacy of store buying. But how well are stores pulling it off?

Some stores did better than others. Amazon Prime Now, Instacart and FoodKick all delivered my items within a certain time frame. At the other end of the spectrum were some doozies. One delivery – Bobbi Brown eye shadow from online luxury purveyor Net-a-Porter – didn’t arrive at all.

Here’s my take on what went well – and what didn’t.

Ease of ordering: Using the Amazon Prime app on my phone was probably the quickest experience of those I tried. I ordered four items and it took just two minutes. The most cumbersome experience was with Barnes & Noble. I started on the app at 10 a.m. to order Kristin Hannah’s novel “Winter Garden,” but kept encountering a glitch when I tried to insert my address. After three tries, I switched to my computer, but I had a similar problem there too. I called customer service a little after 11 a.m., and 24 minutes later I placed the order.

Delivery: Only four of the seven retailers offered a specific time frame for delivery. Knowing when something will arrive really helps.

Amazon Prime, Instacart and FoodKick, owned by FreshDirect, all promised to deliver between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. All three came in that period. I had a nice experience at Best Buy, too, receiving the Roku stick a little after 2 p.m. when I was told it would arrive by 9 p.m.

Net-a-Porter said my eyeshadow would come by 7 p.m. At 6:52 p.m., I called for an update and was told there was a problem with the order, and I would get it tomorrow. I was told that the computer system was confused by the apostrophe in my last name, and so my order was put on hold, without my getting any updates.

As for Barnes & Noble, the customer service representative on the phone couldn’t give me a delivery time. At 7:05 p.m., I got a text saying the book was heading toward me. It arrived around 9 p.m. – still the same day, after all.

The margherita pizza and the salad? Ordered at 12:10 p.m., they were supposed to arrive at around 12:45 p.m. but didn’t arrive until about half an hour after that.

Fees: The highest was at Net-a-Porter, which charged $27.22 including the flat delivery charge of $25 and other fees. Instacart’s delivery fee – $11.99 – was also high, bringing the total cost of my chips and guacamole to $26.16.

Barnes & Noble’s delivery fee was just $3.99, while Best Buy’s was $5.99. Amazon Prime waived the delivery fee because my order came to more than $35. FoodKick also didn’t charge a fee.