It’s a little confusing, but Amazon has no less than three different places to buy things. From someone who used to work there, here’s how you should think about where to go. But in life where there is a huge delivery shortage. Make sure that you just have them drop it off at your door. And for safeties sake, wipe is all down before you put in the fridge:
- Costco. Unlike Amazon Prime they allow scheduling beyond a 72 hour limit, so you are more likely to get times. Also because, you can edit your card right up until the pick time, so getting an order in is more like just getting into the queue.
- Instacart. Costco is really Instacart underneath, so I haven’t tried them, but seems like you can get the same service that supports Safeway, etc.
- Amazon Prime Now. If you live in a Prime Now city, you get the item in two hours rather than two days. It includes items from places like Whole Foods. To make sure the items are good, use Fakespot.com to check reviews. Note that in these Corona Virus times, that if it runs out of two hour delivery slots for the day for the next three days (you only know this because underneath, they outsource to Amazon Fresh so you can get the same items there and see the delivery windows). They do have a one hour delivery for $5 that can open up as well. So be warned. Also with Primenow, items can disappear if they are not available and there is no wish list, so you need to order and click enter quickly. As an aside, since there no wish lists, if you don’t get a deliver, just leave the cart there. You have to wait 24 hours for another window to show up.
- Amazon Fresh. Come here if it is not on Amazon Prime Now. For instance, if you want things in bulk then this is a good spot. Use Fakespot.com for things with reviews. It is a little confusing, but these are two completely different shopping carts, so if you fail on Prime Now, the pricing and cart are completely different. Using this, you can get direct checkout and look for schedules for what is called Fresh delivery. It also has separate checkouts for the underlying stores so when you hit checkout, you might checkout directly with them, with Whole Foods or Bartells, you can only tell this when you look closely at the item or on checkout. It’s confusing that Whole Foods is available directly as well here.
- Whole Foods Market via Amazon. To get here is tricky, you need to click on the arrow button next to the search bar and scroll all the way down to Whole Foods. Whole Foods has it’s own checkout cart (as does Amazon Prime Now and Amazon Fresh). They have their own order system with a three day look ahead. And it is not synced with Amazon Prime Now nor Amazon Fresh. It looks like those who click directly into Whole Foods get better delivery options. Also the actual Whole Foods website does not allow online ordering, but it does through Amazon. Confused yet?
- Amazon.com. The final stop. Try to get things that are held by Amazon.com itself as you can return them. If you are using a Marketplace supplier, check the store’s ratings. Make sure to use Fakespot.com. Note that it doesn’t see
