Walmart’s ShippingPass service has always been intended as a competitor for Amazon’s Prime membership, and now the program has formally launched to the public. After recently cutting down its shipping window to two days to match its competitor, Walmart is celebrating the public opening by matching Amazon in another way: by offering a 30-day free trial, perhaps hoping that shoppers will come to depend on the service and never want to leave.
“Once you start using it, it’s hard not to notice the everyday low prices on the stuff you need and want,” Fernando Madeira, president and CEO of Walmart United States said in a statement. “Just remember, if the day you shop with us ends in a “y”, you’ll be saving.”
While ShippingPass doesn’t offer the extras of Amazon Prime like streaming video, Washington Post discounts, or access to a grocery box service that doesn’t make a lot of sense, it does give Walmart shoppers Prime-like benefits for half the price.
Where the mega-retailer offers the services, members will have access to online grocery order pickup or delivery of their grocery orders by Uber drivers, keeping Walmart from having to hire a delivery fleet of its own. Early-adopter members of ShippingPass will get an extra free month added to their membership to match the free trial that everyone else is getting.
Liberty and Low Prices for All [Walmart] (via Reuters)
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist