AmazonTote Goes the Way of Webvan - Shutting Down in March
Last year, Amazon started a pilot project in one Seattle neighborhood that allowed its customers to order products online and have them delivered to their homes (in a reusable Amazon bag) twice a week. As TechFlash’s John Cook noted at the time, this service “conjured images of Webvan.” Indeed, just like Webvan, a poster child of all that was wrong with the first Web bubble, Amazon is now shutting this service down and is redirecting its customers to AmazonFresh instead. AmazonFresh, too, is only available in the company’s hometown of Seattle. Fresh offers users free delivery – either pre-dawn before 6am or later in the day – but unlike AmazonTote, it is focused solely on groceries.
AmazonTote delivered all your Amazon orders of the previous days in one go (and in a recyclable bag). As Gizmodo pointed out when the service first launched last July, this basically gave everybody in the Seattle area the equivalent of free two-day delivery service.
Just a few weeks ago, there were rumors that Amazon was actually planning to expand this program. Clearly, this expansion is not happening anytime soon now.
