Amazon Fresh (now available in Maplewood). Any feedback?

Hi All,  

Just realized that Amazon Fresh is now available in Maplewood: $299/year (or $199 incremental to Amazon Prime, which we already have).  Wondering if anyone is using it and whether they have any feedback...I have yet to see one of their trucks.    I signed up for a 30 day trial (free).   

Vielen Dank, 

Dieter

We used it for a few months when they launched it - they offered it for free to Prime members in the area. It wasn't terrible, but we decided not to continue with it.

Pros:

1. Very convenient. You can select a delivery window when you will be available, or let them deliver in coolers with ice packs.

2. Quality was decent, e.g. fruit was tasty and not bruised.

3. Green. Grocery delivery is good for the environment and uses a lot less gas than individual shopping trips.

Cons:

1. Selection was sometimes poor. Maybe they would only have 3 steaks in stock when we wanted 4. Or they would only have the more expensive organic when we were fine with non-organic. Not a lot of exotic ingredients, either.

2. Can't inspect. Once we got a head of romaine lettuce so we could have a salad for a meal. When it arrived, it was tiny, like 6 inches long instead of the kind of head that you could buy in a grocery store. That meal was kaput.

3. Drivers didn't pay attention to special instructions. We requested they deliver to the back deck (and pick up the old tote bags from there) and instead they kept leaving it in front. Eventually we had 30 totes piled up and had to complain to get them to come pick them up properly.

4. Excess packaging. If we ordered 4 pears, we'd get 4 individually wrapped pears. It ends up being a lot of bags and such.

5. Price. Things were often more expensive than in the store, or only a brand name was available whereas we would normally buy a generic in the store.

For us, even though there are several cons, the convenience was almost enough to be worth it. But we really like being able to pick out our groceries, and we love to cook and often do need more exotic/particular ingredients that we'd need to go out to find anyway. So we opted out. But I could see a lot of people really liking the convenience.

I loved it when it was free for all the reasons listed above, but I can't see paying $199 just the convenience of it. I'll stick with Trader Joe's or Fresh Direct for the occasional "splurge" of not having to go to the store. If our financial situation was different I might cough up the money. It was nice having a Grocery Fairy leave those nice green bags on our porch, full of nice fresh food.