To appease shoppers in a hurry for their online purchases, eBay and Amazon have been working to develop faster delivery methods, and they’re not alone. On Monday, the United States Postal Service gave notice it is expanding the market test of its same-day delivery service.
Called Metro Post, the service debuted in San Francisco in late 2012 and in New York City in late 2013. Shoppers can place orders from participating retailers by 2 pm and get their orders delivered between 4 – 8 pm that same day.
The USPS said yesterday it would expand the market test to the Washington, DC metropolitan area next week.
Interestingly the US Office of Inspector General (USOIG) found the Postal Service did not properly implement the pilot test of its same-day delivery pilot program in San Francisco. It stated in its report in early 2014, “Although the pilot could provide some revenue opportunities for the Postal Service, we could not evaluate these opportunities because the pilot was not properly implemented.”
As a result, the PRC issued regulations in September that establish new procedures concerning market test requests, saying it had considered lessons learned from past market tests in creating the new rules.
In a related service, the PRC granted permission in October for the USPS to test a new grocery-delivery service called Customized Delivery, which provides customers with delivery of groceries and other prepackaged goods primarily during a 3 am to 7 am delivery window.
EcommerceBytes published a table showing the differences between Customized Delivery and Metro Post in this October news story.
The Washington, DC test of Metro Post encompasses the District of Columbia and the Virginia and Maryland suburbs and will begin on or shortly after January 15, 2015.
