Amazon's new locker system at 7-Eleven store on Capitol Hill

Amazon’s plans to establish a physical presence where customers can pick up packages appears to be spreading beyond our borders. Retail Week reports that the online retailer has entered into an agreement to put the locker system — which looks identical to the one we recently saw at a 7-Eleven store in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood — at shopping centers in the U.K.

Amazon has not responded to our requests for comment, but with the latest report the locker system appears to be a much bigger project than we originally anticipated.

The lockers will allow customers — say those who don’t have the ability to have packages delivered at work or home — to enter a PIN and retrieve the purchases made online. The U.K. lockers, located near the public toilets at the One New Change shopping center, are expected to go live as early as next week.

A clerk at 7-Eleven told GeekWire earlier this week that the lockers in Seattle would come online this week.

As we noted earlier today, the locker system is not Amazon’s first foray into pick-up stations for physical goods. The company experimented with a project a few years ago that allowed customers in the Seattle area to pick up groceries from Amazon Fresh at brick-and-mortar stations. That project, however, was terminated in early 2008.

The lockers — which vary in size — could help Amazon more quickly deliver goods to customers and reduce transportation and shipping costs. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

 

 

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