eBay Extends Same Day 'eBay Now' Service

[engine]

eBay Now, the same-day shipping service that first debuted for San Francisco residents nearly a year ago before further expansions into San Jose and New York, is preparing to broaden its service yet again, with added support for the Bay Area peninsula, plus Brooklyn and Queens, as well as Chicago and Dallas later this summer, as previously reported. In addition, the company is today launching a PC version of eBay Now for the desktop.

According to Dane Glasgow, eBay’s VP of Mobile & Local, the company chose to bring the previously mobile-focused eBay Now delivery service to the desktop, because those who visit eBay from both web and mobile are some of the company’s most valuable customers. In a given week, he says, 21 percent of eBay’s visitors come from multiple devices – a PC and a mobile device – but they make up 44 percent of eBay’s gross merchandise volume.eBay Extends Same Day 'eBay Now' Service [techcrunch.com]

[dpd1]

Wonderful... Yet another insane standard that people will expect from everyone. I was reading the other day, about Amazon's efforts in this as well, which I'm sure aren't even fully announced yet.

When I was a kid, I worked delivering stuff for a few years. $5.50 was the absolute lowest charge we had. That was just for an envelope going a mile or less. And that was 80's dollars, when gas was .89 a gallon and a decent new car was 10k. I really don't understand how they afford to do this stuff.

[engine]

>I really don't understand how they afford to do this stuff.

Surely, it's down to economies of scale?

In a recent purchase, the item was at the company about 10-miles down the road. However, it was collected from the company, shipped to a local shipping point, then sent to a central distribution warehouse about 150 miles away, was processed overnight, send back to the local distribution center, then delivered to the destination from there the next day.

It seems crazy.

Cost of shipping was only about the same as you indicated.