Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Amazon Prime Now One Hour Delivery Service To Manhattan Does Not Consider Roosevelt Island's 10044 Zip Code Part Of Manhattan

Another case of Roosevelt Island being jurisdictionally part of Manhattan but not considered so by the rest of the world. Amazon Prime Now started it's one hour delivery service for Manhattan but not to Roosevelt Island's 10044 Manhattan zip code.

According to the Roosevelt Island Twitterverse:

No 1 hour deliveries for us.

7 comments :

highbury said...

Can you blame them? It wouldn't make any sense for Amazon, logistically. What are they gonna do? Ask the messengers to take the tram across all the time? Between the wait time and actual time to deliver the package, it will take an hour to get on and off the island for every RI delivery from Manhattan.

rilander said...

The USPS and many online retailers incorrectly use the reverse zip code lookup when it's convenient for them, and insist that we live in New York, NY instead of Roosevelt Island, NY. Unfortuneatly the USPS workers at sorting facilities do not always use it correctly and shipments or important mail are often delayed while delivery people ride up and down Manhattan Island looking for Main Street!
If you do a reverse zip code lookup of 11375 it will pull up Forest Hills, not Queens or New York. If you do a lookup of 11238, it will pull up Brooklyn, not Prospect Heights. Yet both are part of New York, NY.
However if you do a reverse zip code lookup for 10044 it will pull up New York, not Roosevelt Island, as if Roosevelt Island is the city rather than a neighborhood like Forest Hills, or incorporated village.

YetAnotherRIer said...

"Grave injustice"? I sure hope it was meant tongue in cheek. Every delivery service (furnitures, Trader Joes, etc.) does not consider Roosevelt Island as Manhattan. News at 11. I'm still able to sleep at night.

YetAnotherRIer said...

"Unfortuneatly the USPS workers at sorting facilities do not always use it correctly and shipments or important mail are often delayed while delivery people ride up and down Manhattan Island looking for Main Street!"

Huh? That never happened once to me in the 10+ years I've been living on Roosevelt Island. We do have our own post office that deals with the zip code 10044 after all.

That said, your argument about Queens is not valid. It is Staten Island and not Tottenville or Saint George. It is Brooklyn, instead of Park Slope or Brooklyn Heights. Roosevelt Island, AFAIK, has always been New York. Queens is a bit special about this.

CheshireKitty said...

No, I disagree. Queens addresses are always - LIC, NY, then zip code; or Kew Gardens, NY, then zip code. It's never Queens, NY then zip code. Brooklyn though is just Brooklyn, NY, then zip code - no one would address mail/package as Crown Heights, NY, or Bay Ridge, NY, or Downtown Brooklyn, NY. But in Queens, addresses do include the "towns" or "neighborhoods."


I use Roosevelt Island, Island Station, NY, or NYC - it doesn't seem to matter. I think the USPS goes by zip code anyway.


Also - to get to the article, I do think Amazon should figure out a way to make deliveries to RI in an hour. It could be done if they established a distribution center in LIC - which could then be used to guarantee 1-hr deliveries to RI, as well as to W. Queens and Brooklyn, once those neighborhoods are also included in Amazon Prime.


Amazon may not have realized RI is part of Manhattan. Actually, RI is much closer to central Manhattan than Washington Heights, Inwood, or many points in Upper Manhattan. RI is one subway stop from the center of Mid-town. So it should not require a brainstorm to figure out a way to deliver to RI in an hour. If they are sending trucks then they have a logistical problem - if bicycle couriers or couriers on foot will deliver, then it would be a snap using the train And even if they need to use a truck, the trip from Mid-town to RI can usually be made by car in under an hour. The problem is, if there are no other drops or stops along the way for the truck, and there currently wouldn't be if Amazon Prime is only available in Manhattan, and if there isn't much business on RI, then the trip may be considered a "loss" - not worth it. However, for Amazon to be consistent and actually be able to truthfully say it offers Amazon Prime service for Manhattan, it should find a way to include RI, which is part of NY county/Manhattan.


Otherwise, they should change their advertising to say - Manhattan Island, instead of Manhattan.

CheshireKitty said...

If they have messengers using the subway, the F train usually runs very frequently. Manhattan is only a few minutes away via train. Driving is different though - probably Amazon would have to establish a distribution center in Western Queens/Brooklyn to be able to deliver to RI in under an hour.

CheshireKitty said...

Actually, the trip from central Manhattan to RI via the Queensboro Bridge is not as long as the trip from central Manhattan to Washington Heights, or other areas of Upper Manhattan. But, I agree; many times RI is considered "part of Queens" since it's attached to Queens via the RI bridge. I suppose many delivery services would think of it that way.