Amazon and Royal Mail unite for Post Office click and collect service

Customers can now select their preferred pickup location from around 10,500 Post Offices at the end of the checkout process when ordering from Amazon.

By signing up to the Royal Mail’s Local Collect service – the UK’s largest click and collect network – Amazon hopes to offer more choice to those customers worried about missed deliveries, particularly in the run-up to Christmas.

The move builds on Amazon’s own click and collect offering, which it has been growing since 2011 in order to offer more convenience and flexibility to shoppers on the go.

Earlier this year, it tied with Transport for London to allow customers to pickup their orders from lockers at train stations in London. Amazon already has Collect+ outlets and a “Pass my Parcel” service at newsagents and supermarkets.

Nick Landon, managing director of Royal Mail Parcels, says: “Royal Mail is a key partner for online retailers and by teaming up with Post Office to offer the UK’s largest click and collect service, we are enabling Amazon’s customers to have greater control over the delivery of their items.”

“Royal Mail is developing services and investing in IT solutions to meet the changing demands of online retailers and their customers.”

The deal comes just a week after the Royal Mail named Amazon as an example of how online retailers were hurting its parcel business. Moya Greene, Royal Mail’s chief executive, said: “When an online retailer of the size and scale of Amazon decides to build its own delivery network, that changes the market for everybody.”

Consequently the Royal Mail has halved the growth forecast of its UK parcels business to between 1% and 2%. The business, which was sold off by the Government last year, has introduced several initiatives since to try and stave off the advances of online retailers. In September it began trialling Sunday deliveries to addresses inside the M25.