One of the perks of living in Amazon’s hometown is the chance to try some of the company’s new services long before the rest of the country. In the case of the AmazonFresh grocery service, that also means the company’s customers here have been grandfathered into what can often work out to be a sweeter deal on delivery fees, compared to those paid by customers in AmazonFresh’s newest markets.
And for now, at least, AmazonFresh appears to be keeping Seattle as an exception.
Amazon Fresh in the Seattle region awards “Big Radish” status to customers whose cumulative order volume exceeds a certain threshold (which varies by delivery zone) for a given month. Customers with Big Radish status get a lower minimum order requirement for free deliveries.
The end result: For people in the Seattle region who do most of their grocery shopping on Amazon (which no doubt includes many Amazon employees) it’s quite possible to avoid delivery fees altogether.
In the newest AmazonFresh markets, San Francisco and Los Angeles, the company instead requires customers to sign up for Amazon Prime Fresh, a souped-up version of the Amazon Prime subscription program that costs $299/year and provides free deliveries on orders above $35 on AmazonFresh.
It’s less complicated than the “Big Radish” formula but also more costly for customers in many cases, especially up front.
Given the recently announced increase in the regular Amazon Prime subscription, to $99/year, we wondered if Amazon might also take the opportunity to normalize the AmazonFresh delivery pricing, and shift Seattle to a similar Amazon Prime Fresh subscription model. But a company representative responded to our inquiry by saying that there are no changes to Amazon Fresh as part of that news.
Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have some ordering to do to maintain our Big Radish status for the month.
