I think this is smart. It's heading off Amazon and their 'Local' initiative (marketplace + angies list) and Amazon's end-goal of Local, which I believe is cutting UPS/Fedex/et al out of the loop. I could see a scenario where contractors requested through Amazon would deliver your packages for that day in exchange for no Local fees, or something to that effect. Amazon saves on shipping, and more deeply embed their customer in to their own ecosystem.
Fedex, by doing this, embeds themselves more deeply in to the businesses they work with, so that switching from Fedex to UPS or to AmazonShipping is not just a matter of changing the carrier, but also changing your IT team/some other logistics team.
I think this is smart. It's heading off Amazon and their 'Local' initiative (marketplace + angies list) and Amazon's end-goal of Local, which I believe is cutting UPS/Fedex/et al out of the loop. I could see a scenario where contractors requested through Amazon would deliver your packages for that day in exchange for no Local fees, or something to that effect. Amazon saves on shipping, and more deeply embed their customer in to their own ecosystem.
Fedex, by doing this, embeds themselves more deeply in to the businesses they work with, so that switching from Fedex to UPS or to AmazonShipping is not just a matter of changing the carrier, but also changing your IT team/some other logistics team.