Amazon Prime Now Restaurants Review
Amazon is really looking to shake up a number of different industries with their various initiatives including their same delivery service Prime Now. In case you don’t know, Prime Now is a limited catalog 1 hour delivery service for Prime Members that is available in many cities. I did a full review of the normal Prime Now service previously and you can find that here.
Recently Amazon has started adding another service to Prime Now called Amazon Restaurants. Amazon Restaurants is a food delivery service that will be rolling out to all Prime Now cities, but for now is only available in Seattle, New York and a couple of other test markets. It is a direct competitor to Seamless, Grubhub, Eat24 and Delivery.com.
Prime Now Restaurants Experience in New York
Yesterday I happened to open up my Prime Now app to see if I could order an HDMI cable for my laptop and saw the new food delivery option popup. Since my wife and I wanted some real food and didn’t feel like going to a restaurant with the baby, we decided to order . For now Amazon is also giving $10 off your first order with the code CHOWDOWN which is nice as well.
After locating a restaurant that sounded good, we placed the order through the Prime Now app and received our $10 discount. Note that a suggested tip is added when ordering, but it can be changed. With that said, the drivers aren’t supposed to accept cash so make sure the tip added is the amount you want to give the driver.
Placing the Order
Our order was placed at 8:27pm and the delivery estimate we were given was 9pm to 9:25pm. Not bad. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out that way. Just like with Prime Now, Amazon Restaurants keeps you up to date with your delivery status and you can even track the driver. At 8:45pm we received a message that our food was on the way and then a few minutes later we received a message that the driver was arriving. Indeed I pulled open the app and he was on the next block so my wife headed downstairs to meet him.
Then, something bad happened. He began moving in the WRONG direction and before long he was 20 blocks away. Amazon has an option to contact the driver via the app and we called him to have him ask if we still wanted the food. What?!? Then, he explained that the restaurant gave him the wrong order and he was going back. In the mean time my wife was already waiting.
Without stretching this out too long, it took a total of 1 hour and 36 minutes for our driver to deliver the food. Much longer than the maximum of 58 minutes quoted, but at least the food was hot. The driver did apologize and genuinely seemed sorry. I thought about contacting Amazon to ask for a discount, but I automatically received the following email:
While I was a bit frustrated with the experience, especially with getting the food so late, I have to applaud Amazon for automatically sending out a future discount when an order takes longer than expected. I also feel $10 is fair compensation and thus never was compelled to contact them.
Bottom Line
Amazon’s delivery service seemingly has some kinks to work out, but I think their app is top notch and the ability to track the driver’s progress is very nice as well. I am also impressed with their automated discount issued for a late delivery. It is a nice little touch. Even though my experience wasn’t good, I would definitely try the service out again, since I have had nothing but good experiences with Prime Now thus far.
Have you used Amazon Restaurants before? What have your experiences been like? Let us know in the comments!
My two most recent experiences with Amazon Restaurants have been terrible. My orders were completely cancelled an hour after they were placed, right after they passed the delivery window. $10 credit is not the right amount of compensation for these botched deliveries. I love Amazon otherwise but not going to order food delivery from them again. This was in the Los Angeles area. I’ve had hiccups with Postmates too, only UberEats has come through each time.
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omg. ive been part of the SUPER SHOOMER SCOOMER dedicated fan club for so long and I didnt get a SMS txt alert that you were in NYC. terrible…
My issue is that when I order food through Grub Hub or similar services, the driver delivers the order directly to my apartment, which is much more convenient than having to go downstairs to my apartment building lobby in Los Angeles.
Yeah that would be an issue. We were in a hotel so we had to go down. When we use Prime Now at home they come to our door. I do agree that having to go down for food delivery can be a pain, although no delivery fee might make it worth it.
Shawn, I used Amazon Restaurants twice in the past and the food arrived on or before time on both occasions, so I would give them the benefit of doubt for your bad experience.
I received a $20 coupon in July to try out Amazon Restaurants as a gift for shopping on Prime Day. Sweet!!!
Nice! I am definitely not writing them off and like the system a lot. Hopefully they will roll it out to Vegas soon and I can test it some more. Every company has a bad day and this seemed like an honest mistake.
Shawn, I never knew you were in New York. All this time and we’re practically neighbors. Haven’t used Amazon Restaurants but I got the $10 coupon in the mail, so it’s been on my list. I’ll give it a shot sometime.
Check out his twitter feed, Hunter. He has been dropping hints he was visiting the Big Apple.
Hah, I’m not a good Twitter-er. Always liked RSS readers since you got all updates pushed to you and you can see what you missed and what you read. Though maybe there’s a way to do that with Twitter?
Hey Hunter. As they said I was just visiting. I’m from Vegas. Had fun though.