Amazon will spend $800M to bring free 1-day shipping to Prime

Get ready for Amazon Prime one-day shipping. At the company’s quarterly earnings call, CFO Brian Olsavsky disclosed that Amazon is working to shorten its promised two-day shipping on Amazon Prime to one day. “Our goal is to evolve the two-day free shipping program to a one-day free shipping program,” he said.

It’s going to cost the company a lot of money, however. Olsavsky said it would cost about $800 million, which will likely eat into Amazon’s bottom line in the coming quarters. “We’re trying to take advantage of the fulfillment capacity and transportation capacity . . . that we have,” the CFO said.

As for a timeline, Amazon wouldn’t give too many specifics. “We expect to make steady programs quickly and through the year,” Olsavky said, but wouldn’t say whether it would be fully rolled out by the holidays.

For now, Prime customers will be happy to have their stuff delivered to them quicker. We’ll see what kind of hell this creates for the people behind Amazon’s logistics program.

Update: An Amazon spokesperson contacted me in regards to the last sentence, which refers to Amazon’s checkered history with workers’ conditions and emphasis on speed and efficiency, and provided me with the following statement: “We’re able to do this because of 20-plus years of investment in our fulfillment and logistics network.”