USA Click and Collect Service Not Yet Here

Shopping
1

More and more online businesses are offering click and collect. We click and go to the shop only to stand in a queue and wait for someone to find our purchase - sometimes at the register and sometimes out back.

Walmart (USA) has been rolling out lock box lockers in the fronts of their megastores for click and collect. When you check out online you get a barcode on the receipt. You go to the appointed locker, flash you bar code, and voila, your goods are in your hands as long as you pony up to collect them before the ā€˜date you cannot miss or the goods are returned to stock for manual collectionā€™. No queues and no waiting, other than to traverse the often city-sized car parks to get in the shop from where you parked. :wink:

It operates much like the Auspost lockers at Woolies and other places, so the technology is already with us. Any prognostications when (if?) one of our retailers will realise ā€˜weā€™ would be happy to use a similar system and roll one out?

5 Likes
2

Officeworks have lockers which they use for ā€œMailmanā€ parcel posting & delivery, maybe they will expand that option to make it Click & Collect as well.

3 Likes
3

One would not think it too hard to connect those dots but it would not be surprising if the contract with Auspost prohibits it as with a post box is only for postal services.

2 Likes
4

First I have heard of this. Three years after they announced the rollout, they havenā€™t arrived at SE Qld.

5

They are at a few other places, but in context Woolies seemed an appropriate reference.

1 Like
6

Well Iā€™ll be danged! They are at the Aust Post Office in the shopping centre where we often shop. Never noticed them as we hardly ever use that PO.

1 Like
7

I have tried the Aussie style click and collect once and possibly wonā€™t try it again as it took maybe 15 minutes to execute a pick up and purchaseā€¦while walking into the same store and buying off the shelf would have taken no more than about 5 minutes. The additional time was for waiting in a queue for others in front to get refunds for returns, paying for laybys, for the staff to find my item etc.

Australia post already use a locker system for collection and could easily be rolled out for stores. I expect the onIy challenge will be if it becomes popular, stores would need large banks of lockers (taking up considerable room) someone within the premises.

1 Like