Brief: Amazon hires taxis to meet Singapore Prime demand

Photo credit : jetcityimage / 123RF.

The news (extracted from Today):

• Confronted with a deluge of orders, Amazon’s Prime Now service has resorted to booking taxis — on top of tapping freelance drivers — to make deliveries.
• Transport operator ComfortDelGro, which has the largest fleet in Singapore of almost 16,000 taxis, confirmed bookings through its call center by Amazon Prime.
• Singapore’s Land Transport Authority has stated that taxi and private-hire drivers cannot courier goods if they are not also carrying passengers. However, ComfortDelGro said all of its Amazon bookings included at least one passenger.

Why it matters:

• Amazon confirmed third-party logistics providers (3PLs) would handle Prime deliveries when it launched the service in the city-state last week. That the company apparently needs to hire public taxis to complete deliveries indicates that its 3PL arrangements are not working as expected.
• This is not the first hiccup for Amazon Prime since it entered Singapore to much fanfare last week. Just a day after its official launch the service went down, apparently due to high demand.
• Prior to Amazon’s Singapore entry, there was plenty of discussion about the US company’s preparedness for the Southeast Asian market. These apparent setbacks just days after Prime’s launch are likely to reignite that debate – and may provide some comfort to its incumbent competitors in the region.