Amazon’s 2-day Prime shipping option finally available to Canadians
8 January 2013
From TheStar.com:
Amazon is bringing its unlimited, two-day shipping service to Canada.
The world’s largest online retailer says starting Tuesday, Amazon Prime will be on offer to Canadian customers for an annual fee of $79.
The service is already available in the U.S. and six other countries.
Amazon says the two-day shipping guarantee will be offered in most of Canada.
. . . .
Amazon Prime has been offered in the U.S. since 2005, and recently expanded to include a free e-book lending service for Kindle users and a television and movie streaming service to its subscribers.
At this point, Oliver says there are no plans to offer these options in Canada.
Link to the rest at TheStar.com and thanks to Rebecca for the tip.
, Amazon will pay Passive Guy a small affiliate commission on any of your purchases.
Squee! I’m sure we’ll get the streaming/library options at some point up here in the Great White North. Or maybe that’s just my optimistic nature.
“I’m sure we’ll get the streaming/library options at some point up here in the Great White North.”
Rebecca,
As you are being so generous as to share your frozen white stuff with us here in the South, no doubt this is a gesture by Amazon of international Amity.
We’re coming for the North West Passage next:)
brendan
I think it’s more a gesture of Amazon trying to placate us and stop us from taking over, but it’s too late! We’re already invading (but we are nice about it).
(For further info, check out The Canadian Conspiracy – it ain’t called the “Green” Card for nothing!)
I, for one, welcome our new Canadian overlords.
Nice of Amazon… finally.
I must admit that I’ve almost completely stopped ordering from them, as they use UPS to ship, and I’m never home when UPS tries to deliver (and I can’t have shipments delivered to work). I miss when they used Canada Post, to be honest. It was easy to pop by the post office and pick up a parcel, rather than having to worry about having to redirect a parcel, or risk having it sent back.
Have to agree with you Alyssa. I’m in Ottawa, and UPS is HORRIBLE here. A single depot out in the middle of nowhere with lousy hours and horrible service. Don’t even get me started on the number of times I’ve gone on their site to reroute the package for pickup only to have them TRY to deliver yet again — when I asked the depot why they would deliver a second time when I rerouted it in their system, I was told I basically had to request a change by 10:00 the day before. In other words, if they deliver it Tuesday afternoon, and I want to pick it up Wednesday, I have to ask on Tuesday morning before they even try to deliver it! Nice.
I’ll settle for their streaming options though…
P.
Opening up 2-day shipping and Prime does make sense though, as Prime members get Kindle lending (AFAIK), and Amazon did just open up the Canadian store to Kindle purchases.
But as for paper books and DVDs (etc.), I’ll stick to other sources.
Yeah sure, they have the Kindle store in Canada, but a lot of books are not available so I have no desire to switch my account over from the US store.
The Canadian government has lots of rules in place with TV and movies, so that Canadian content is priority. As such, we more or less can’t stream via services like Hula or Netflix (for TV series). I assume most people are happy to pirate these things.
Eh. I live in Toronto and my stuff always comes within two days anyway – usually it’s only one day. I’m still waiting to see if they’re going to sell Kindles on Amazon.ca, open up their app store or make downloading MP3s available.
What’ll really be impressive is when the .ca store at least approaaches the .com store and is not just a newpaperstand version of .com. That’ll be nice.