Right off the bat, we had to download a separate app ‘Prime Now’ in order avail the rush-hour delivery service.
There are no chocolates
Logging on Prime Now, we realised that while there were a select few mithais (Indian sweets) available for rush delivery but there were no chocolates. This is despite the fact that the app explicitly advertises ‘Chocolate Diwali Packages’ by Cadbury.
Even the sweets are limited
If you go to a shop, you have at least 20 different options to choose from. But we could only spot 8 sweets in Amazon’s catalogue.
We could only spot laddoos, dry fruits, halwa, mysore pak and soan papdi. That too from only two retailers, Lal and Bikano.
While Lal offered 9 different varieties of sweets, Bikano only had two variants on its list. And even between the two options that Bikano offered, the panjiri ladoos appear and disappear on whim.
2 hour rush delivery is definitely an option, but it’s not free
It’s not uncommon to assume to that delivery will be free, but in this case that doesn’t hold true. You have to shell out an extra ₹49 to get sweets delivered in 2-hours.
And, the scheduled delivery is free even only if your order is above ₹500
We also found an option to schedule a delivery within 24 hours, which the site claimed would be free if the order is above ₹300. We added more items to our cart, but free delivery wasn’t applicable until our order added up to ₹500.
Finally, we placed our order
We ordered ‘Besan Laddoo’ -- an traditional Indian sweet. We chose the products offered by Lal at and confirmed it 10.53am in the morning. As promised, the expected delivery time was exactly after two hours.
Surprise, surprise!
We were sceptical that Amazon would be able to pull it off, but the delivery boy showed up even earlier that expected.
Earlier than expected
The expected time of delivery of the package was 12.53pm but it arrived at around 12.31pm. That’s approximately 30 minutes earlier.
Not too shabby
Despite Amazon offering limited varieties and charging a delivery fee of ₹49 for the rush delivery, the service is worth a try. We were pretty amused by the fact that the delivery boy was able to make it to us before the expected delivery time.
The Head of Prime Now India, Siddharth Nambiar told Business Insider that, “Prime Now has a selection of over 10,000 products with everything a customer may need or desire to be delivered within hours. This festive season, we added sweets and mithais to our selection and offered 2 hour ultra-fast delivery in all the four cities we operate in. Massive customer response for some of this selection, including Cadbury Celebration gift packs, resulted in sell-out demand in a few pin-codes. We are humbled to see such overwhelming demand and will continue to strive to delight customers with similar unique offerings every season.”
