When Amazon.co.za went live in May 2024, it was noticeably without its much-heralded Prime delivery service. It was a lacklustre launch, really in name only, as it had very little to sell and not many people rushed to take up the limited opening discounts.
But, more significantly, it forced South Africa’s own Amazon, Takealot, to lift its game. Two days later, it announced its own subscription delivery service.
TakealotMore is priced at R39 or R99 a month and, crucially, offers much faster deliveries.
For Prime, I was just happy with next-day, let alone the same-day delivery – if you order before midday in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria. There’s also, crucially, no minimum order spend.
Amazon Prime, which costs R59 a month, is much cheaper and includes Prime Video, a Twitch channel subscription, and Luna, its cloud-based gaming service. The Video service alone was billed at R79 a month, so you’re already winning.
The annual R399 fee gives you a 44% discount, says Amazon, making it even more value for money.
It includes Prime Video, which is worth it alone. Apart from sci-fi hits like Rings of Power, Fallout and The Boys, there’s a lot of good action shows, including Jack Ryan, Reacher, Citadel and the Terminal List series.
I used to dip into Prime Video for a few months every now and again to watch these excellent series, but now I have it as part of the package, as an incentive for the delivery services.
Takealot can offer groceries from Pick ‘n Pay and takeaways via its delivery app, Mr D. I have been a happy user of Mr D for decades now, as have many other loyal customers. With groceries and takeaways, Takealot offers a pretty well-rounded package.
But the real competition to beat for Amazon is the winner of the delivery app wars, Sixty60. It has by far the most useful – and robust – delivery platform. Even before COVID, I was using it for deliveries in under sixty minutes. I was happy with just same-day delivery back then.
Checkers has its Xtra Savings loyalty scheme, so the R99 a month unlimited free deliveries is called Xtra Savings Plus. Checkers also offers discounts for in-store shopping, and its 875 stores around the country make Sixty60’s one-hour delivery possible.
That and Checkers owns a majority stake in the delivery company that does the last-mile schlepping, Pingo, which also has electric vans for bigger deliveries from Checkers’ substantial inventory of big items it sells via its Hyper stores.
All of this is good news for consumers.
