Same-day-delivery in Germany? That’s so 2020!

Many major parcel service providers in Germany have stopped offering same-day-delivery. The reason behind this is painfully simple: the demand for same-day-delivery in Germany is just too low.

A couple of years ago, it seemed like the next best thing in ecommerce: same-day-delivery. A consumer orders something before 2 PM and gets it delivered to his or hem home the very same day. It sounds ideal and that’s why some logistics companies started offering this service as a unique selling point online retailers could offer their customers.

Same-day-delivery in Germany? Only Amazon is interested

But nowadays, major logistics companies such as Hermes and DHL have largely given up on this. It’s just that the customer demand for this service isn’t high enough. But meanwhile, Amazon continues its same-day delivery for Amazon Prime subscribers, t3n.de writes.

Amazon still offers same-day-delivery for Prime members.

Hermes is said to have removed same-day-delivery from its offer at the end of last year. According to Hermes’ spokeswoman Birte Ayhan-Lange customers are less interested in having the delivery with them on the same day. They think it’s more important to be informed properly when exactly the delivery will arrive. Hermes is now busy improving its delivery window and the accompanying notifications.

The deadline for online retailers goes from 8 PM to midnight

An option would be to reduce the standard delivery times even further, instead of making costly delivery on the day of order possible. This means expanding the deadline of the latest possible handover of shipments from retailer to courier. In the case of Hermes, this deadline was set to 8 PM recently, but now it’s set at midnight. This means that if an online shopper orders something late in the evening, the retailer can quickly fetch it from the warehouse and hand it over to Hermes, after which the consumer will get his order the next day.

And just like Hermes, DHL stopped offering same-day-delivery last year. The company also sees an opportunity for improving the shipment notifications and is working on optimizing the delivery window as well. DPD discontinued same-day-delivery already in 2019.