Amazon Pickup store near OSU solves doorstep-theft issue
The buy-online, pick-upin-store trend has gotten a boost from the biggest name in online commerce.
Amazon, best known for packages that are delivered directly to customers’ doorsteps, opened Amazon Pickup stores in August in five markets, including Columbus.
The locations are essentially way stations, where packages can be held safely until their owners can pick them up.
The cities chosen for the initial rollout, in general, are home to large numbers of college students, a key customer group for the service.
The Amazon Pickup store in Columbus exemplifies that with its location on North High Street directly across from Ohio State University.
Because of where many students live — in dorms or apartments with many residents and visitors — making sure the right person gets a package can be problematic. That makes a nearby pickup center appealing.
“It’s a good idea,” said Jason Parks, owner of digital-marketing firm the Media Captain. “They want to have a lot of different ways to make it easy for the customer, so they’re testing out a small but high-profile location. Ultimately it’s a branding play, a way for Amazon to get their name in front of a lot of millennials and Gen Z customers.”
Columbus customers have been a combination of students, OSU employees and nearby residents, said store manager H.P. Bath. “Ever since we opened, we’ve had a really positive response.”
The service is free to Amazon Prime and Prime Student members.
The stores don’t resemble conventional retail shops as much as post-office-box locations that happen to be powered by mobilephone apps.
When customers arrive to retrieve an item, they go to a pickup wall and flash a pickup code on their phones at an electronic reader. A message pings on their phone to “hang tight” until the order is ready, usually within one minute. Those picking up packages are given the opportunity to buy additional items. The items available as add-ons — snacks, drinks, tech accessories and such — are displayed on the customer’s phone.
Once the order is ready and the customer is on-site, a door flips open on the wall, allowing the customer to pick up the package. For customers who are there to return a package, a counter nearby is stocked with tape and packing material.
The pickup process takes no more than a couple of minutes — often less than a minute — from the time customers enter the store until they leave.
Such was the case during one recent morning, when the store was humming with a constant flow of customers stopping in to pick up or drop off packages, with an occasional UPS driver wheeling big bins loaded with packages into the back room. No one was grabbing soft drinks or snacks that are available as impulse purchases, however.
“This is amazing,” said OSU student Daniella Morris. “I can’t get packages delivered to my apartment — either they go to the wrong place or don’t show up at all.”
When Morris showed the pickup code on her phone, no locker door flipped open; the package was too big for the lockers, so an Amazon employee working in the backroom scurried out with it.
That guarantee of actually getting a package is particularly helpful for the target customer, Parks said.
“Where I live, my condo, every day there are Amazon boxes piled up,” he said. “In the back of my mind, I’m thinking there’s a risk that someone could lift it. So if you’re worried about not getting it delivered to your door, this provides a better option.”
Another customer, Michelle Doyle, came in with 7 -month-old son Hank in a stroller.
“I’m actually returning something,” she said, handing a sealed box to Bath.
But she expressed a bit of concern. “I don’t think the tape is very good,” she said, plucking at the edge.
“That’s OK,” Bath said. “We’ll put it in a bigger box.”