Amazon Opens UC Berkeley Campus Facility For Students To Pick Up Packages, Maybe Try A Fire Tablet

amazon-asucstudentunionA new college semester will begin soon, and UC Berkeley has a new January transfer: Amazon is opening yet another staffed pickup point on a college campus. The facilities are meant to promote the Amazon brand and alleviate the strain on campus mail services that are flooded with Amazon packages, and there’s something interesting in the Berkeley version: students can sample Kindle devices at an in-store counter.

The new pickup location is called “Amazon@ASUC Student Union,” because when you add the @ symbol to something, that automatically makes it hip and relevant. People who want to use the center as a pickup point can simply add it as a delivery address to their Amazon account, then pick their package up when convenient, and the facility will be open to people who aren’t affiliated with the university as well.

The Amazon store that’s not a store has a counter for pickups, and it has actual merchandise. It’s not clear whether you can buy devices from the company’s Kindle family while inside the store, but You can play with e-readers, Fire tablets, and the Fire TV inside the center. Update: Amazon clarified that you can’t purchase the gadgets directly from the staff there, but you can of course order an e-reader, tablet, or streaming device and have it delivered there.

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