Harvey Norman offering same day delivery

Australia may be big on innovation, but we’re behind in a whole host of areas including online shopping. Amazon Prime is a subscription service available in the UK and US which mean you can buy online and get delivery same day. Well, forget subscriptions, Harvey Norman today announced a same day delivery service in partnership with Aussie startup Shippit.

You’d agree that Harvey Norman started this whole online shopping thing a fair way behind the eight ball – fighting hard to retain the strength in “bricks and mortar” retail while watching the likes of Kogan.com boom. The last few years has been a big game of catch up and we’re seeing strong commitments from Harvey Norman to online despite it’s complex Franchisee structured retail system.

This is a first for the Australian market, offering three hour delivery options to our major cities, plus the ability to schedule and re-schedule delivery times with a narrow three hour window.

No more waiting all day for the delivery man, you set the time window and you pay accordingly – similar to how Woolies and Coles work with their grocery shopping.

“Providing a seamless purchase experience for our customers is critical. We introduced Click & Collect in 2012 to make it easier for customers to get the items they bought online, from their local Harvey Norman store. By using those same stores, we can now offer even greater flexibility and improved customer service with our new scheduled, same day delivery option,” said Gary Wheelhouse, Chief Digital Officer for Harvey Norman. “We have looked to smart software to help overcome this challenge and the despatch system that Shippit has developed takes our operations into consideration, making it frictionless for our franchisees’ store staff to send out products for same day delivery.”

Delivery options like three hour windows and same-day delivery is available for small appliances, consumer electronics, and small goods. And just like “Uber”, it allows ratings for the user on the delivery itself too.

Rob Hango-Zada, joint-CEO of Shippit said, “We are really excited to finally announce our partnership with one of Australia’s largest and longest standing retailers. Our experience from working with hundreds of retailers across Australia is that our service really is one-of-a-kind. In the case of Harvey Norman, what appealed most was the stand-out shipping experience our platform could offer their customers. We also worked with the retail giant to co-develop a ship-from-store dispatch process that literally strips hours of wasted time from the whole shipping process for store staff. By partnering with Shippit, in addition to booking standard deliveries through Australia Post, Harvey Norman can now offer smart extras like national three hour delivery scheduling, live GPS delivery tracking, and progress notifications that only a unique startup like Shippit can offer.”

Shippit are just the technology provider. Your actual goods will come via a Bonds Courier.

When we tested this yesterday afternoon same-day delivery was not an option at 2.30pm, so we’d expect there’s a time limit to when the same day service is possible, but if you order early you’ll get the same-day option.

Trevor Long

Trev is a Technology Commentator, Dad, Speaker and Rev Head. He produces and hosts two popular podcasts, EFTM and Two Blokes Talking Tech. He also appears on over 50 radio stations across Australia weekly, and is the resident Tech Expert on Channel 9’s Today Show each day and appears regularly on A Current Affair. Father of three, he is often found down in his Man Cave. Like this post? Buy Trev a drink!