What’s an e-commerce giant supposed to do when it needs more warehouse space? If you’re Amazon, you just ask the merchants whose stuff you’re selling to share, by offering to let them slap Prime labels on their products. [More]
SHIPPING
After Hanjin Bankruptcy Crisis, Shippers Seek Out Large, Stable Companies
By 11.7.16
The sudden bankruptcy of Hanjin Shipping left billions of dollars’ worth of cargo, potentially including all of your holiday gifts, floating on container ships in the ocean in legal limbo. Now the companies that ship cargo don’t want to risk having that happen again. [More]
Patent Troll Sues Basically Anyone Who Notifies You When Your Package Ships
By 10.28.16 — Updated: 11.1.16
It’s a process most of us are familiar with, by now: you buy something online, and you get two emails from the site you bought it from. The first is an order confirmation, with an invoice, order number, or order summary in it. The second, a few hours or days later, is a shipping notification: a heads’ up that the package is coming your way, with info about what carrier is bringing it and when you can expect your goods to land at your doorstep. [More]
Walmart Slowing Store Openings, Accelerating Distribution Centers
By 10.6.16
It’s no secret that Walmart is gunning for some of Amazon’s customer base: gobbling up e-commerce site Jet.com for $3.3 billion, mulling the idea of investing in Amazon competitor Flipkart, launching the $50/year Prime-rival Shipping Pass, and increasing distribution channels. As an indicator of the retailer’s online-focused future, Walmart has announced it is slowing the growth of its bricks-and-mortar stores while building more warehouses to expedite deliveries. [More]
The Bankruptcy Of A Company You’ve Probably Never Heard Of Could Make Christmas More Expensive
By 9.1.16
Unless you’re a stevedore or are involved in logistics, you’re probably not terribly familiar with Hanjin Shipping out of South Korea. So news of the company’s bankruptcy filing on Wednesday may have been slightly off your radar. But when one of the world’s largest shipping companies goes belly-up, it can have ripple effects that may mess with your holiday. [More]
Amazon Showing Off Its First Branded Freight Plane
By 8.5.16
It’s not enough for Amazon to sell folks anything from tablets to kitty litter, streaming video to bendy straws — it wants to be in control of its own shipping, too. To show off what the latest step in that plan looks like, Amazon is unveiling its first freight plane, emblazoned with the company logo on the side so no one can mistake who’s in charge. [More]
Former Macy’s Employee Pleads Guilty To $3.5M Mail Fraud, Kickback Scheme
By 7.12.16
A Florida man could spend up to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to taking part in a million-dollar, years-long shipping and kickback scheme involving his former employer Macy’s. [More]
Oversized Box From Sears Has Enough Room To Stash Preteen Daughter
By 5.27.16
Amazon was once notorious for shipping items in comically oversized boxes, an e-commerce phenomenon that we blame on mysterious employees called the Stupid Shipping Gang. We don’t hear about over-packaging from Amazon that much anymore, perhaps because the Stupid Shipping Gang has all moved on to jobs packaging e-commerce orders at Sears. [More]
Airmule: Odd Name For A Real Service That Swears It’s Not A Shipping Company
By 5.19.16
Hear the word “mule” in any context other than the barnyard and you’ll likely think of people shoving illegal drugs or other contraband in bodily cavities in order to smuggle it past the authorities. So when we heard about a new “peer-to-peer” courier service called AirMule, we had to take a closer look. [More]
UPS Will Now Let Customers Follow Packages Out For Delivery In Real Time
By 5.13.16
No more wondering what your package gets up to while it’s out for delivery — did it stop for a drink and miss its connecting flight? — with a new service UPS is rolling out that allows customers to track their shipments in the final stage, from one second to the next. [More]
Walmart Testing Two-Day Delivery Subscription Service
By 5.12.16
It’s finally time: Walmart is officially ready to take on Amazon’s $99/year two-day shipping service, Prime, by knocking off a delivery day and a dollar from its own ShippingPass subscription service. [More]
FedEx & eBay Want To Help You Sell Your Unwanted Stuff (For A Cut, Of Course)
By 5.10.16
The next time you clean out your closet and collect a pile of unwanted smartphones, unused tennis racquets and dusty golf clubs, and old handbags you never take out anymore, you could consider selling that clutter online, without even having to pack it up and post it for sale — if you don’t mind handing some of the profits off to FedEx and eBay. [More]
With High Shipping Costs, Online Shopping Is Not Big Business For Chocolate Makers
By 3.25.16
Sure, shopping from the comfort of your couch can be an easy, convenient alternative to schlepping to the mall or grocery store. But there are just some things that might not be worth the trouble to have shipped. Case in point: chocolate. The sweet treat can be a real pain to transport, for both the company and customer. [More]
eBay Solves The Most Annoying Problem Of Selling: Packing Things And Shipping Them
By 3.15.16
There’s a problem with being only an occasional eBay seller: you don’t have a warehouse full of boxes and packing material like a full-time business. No need to worry: eBay has a new idea to make selling easier. In a new service that’s only available in a few cities so far, they’ll send a courier to your house to pack up and ship the item. [More]
GameStop Now Lets You Order Items Online Even If They’re In A Store And Not A Warehouse
By 3.2.16
Most retailers still have a bit of a brick wall between their online and offline presences, and it can create challenges for consumers. To fight that, GameStop has decided to bring a bit of the 21st century to their operation, with a nationwide “ship from store” program. [More]
Amazon Taking Longer To Ship To Non-Prime Customers
By 2.2.16
After all these years of Amazon Prime being around, most of us know that a major perk of the subscription service is free, expedited shipping. But it looks like Amazon’s focus on getting packages to Prime customers has resulted in slower deliveries for shoppers who didn’t ante up $99/year for Prime. [More]
Amazon Doesn’t Just Want To Send You Stuff, It Wants To Handle Shipping Too
By 1.15.16
Amazon is sitting pretty right now with all the business it does as an online purveyor of merchandise, but it’s not content to just sit on its throne of branded boxes, it wants to be the one shipping those items to customers as well. The company just got approval to expand into ocean shipping, giving it more control over items that ship from Chinese factories to U.S. shoppers. [More]
Jet.com Doesn’t Want To Promise Christmas Delivery, Warns Gift-Shoppers
By 12.22.15
The new site Jet was meant to be the e-commerce version of Costco, charging users a $50 annual fee (which they later dropped) in exchange for excellent discounts on a wide variety of merchandise. This is Jet’s first holiday season, and the good news is they have a lot of business. Unfortunately, that means that they can no longer guarantee delivery by Christmas. [More]
