Shopping Discussion

Amazon ship to locker in Whole Foods: No food items?

  • Last Updated:
  • Aug 20th, 2019 4:44 pm
Deal Expert
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Jan 9, 2011
19732 posts
28609 upvotes
Vancouver

Amazon ship to locker in Whole Foods: No food items?

I've tried to make a couple of Amazon orders to pick up at a local Amazon locker (located in a Whole Foods), and both times "This item cannot be shipped to this location". But it would let me ship by Canada Post FlexDelivery to London Drugs around the block.

Could the reason be that the items I'm ordering are also sold in Whole Foods and Amazon would just rather me buy them directly from there at a much higher price? Or is there some other reason? What other items are people encountering that can't be shipped to an Amazon locker?
6 replies
Deal Fanatic
Jan 5, 2003
5068 posts
5010 upvotes
Toronto
Perhaps Amazon has enough orders going to this set of lockers in the same time frame that they know the lockers are going to be full. In comparison, a Shoppers or London Drugs will have more space to hold orders for pickup. Rather than have a completed order sit at their warehouse, waiting for a locker to be available at that Whole Foods location, they'll just say they can't deliver there, unless they are sure they'll be space.

I predict the locker system for all retails will go away (like it did already at Walmart) because of the unpredictably of when people will pick up their orders, which limits how many orders you can have available for pickup.
Newbie
Aug 18, 2019
3 posts
If you compare the Eligibility pages for a Pickup Point VS an Amazon Locker, the locker is much more limited:

Order total 10 lbs VS 30 lbs, 0.4 meters VS 2 meters, etc.

There are other differences too, but it could easily be a size/weight limit depending on how much food you added to the order.

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/help/customer/ ... =201910770
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/help/customer/ ... =201911190
Newbie
Aug 18, 2019
3 posts
The other restriction applied to Locker but not Canada Post's Pickup Points is the line about Standard and free shipping "may be unavailable" at "some" lockers. (Wow so specific Amazon, good job, A+ communication skills.)

Take this with several salt-shakers because my memory is terrible, but I have a vague recollection from working at Vancouver's Amazon Fulfillment Center, where I constantly tried to get things delivered to the Locker in the warehouse parking lot:

Only certain carriers can deliver to the Locker, and only certain carriers can deliver to the Pickup Point I preferred when Locker delivery was unavailable (it's a Shoppers Drug Mart - Canada Post outlet). Further details are too foggy to recall, but I think I had better luck getting deliveries from Vancouver than Toronto to go to the locker.

Don't know about now, but at that time, Amazon Logistics didn't send things cross-country themselves; typically my DVDs from ON came Canada Post.

FWIW, my observation was that the system printed out shipping labels in a priority roughly as follows, depending on size/weight/distance/etc.:
  1. Amazon Logistics
  2. Canada Post
  3. Purolator
  4. UPS
  5. FedEx
  6. DHL (outside North America only, I think)
The carrier can be deduced from the format of the tracking number, if the site doesn't say how they decided to send it.
Deal Expert
User avatar
Jan 9, 2011
19732 posts
28609 upvotes
Vancouver
RFDbdr wrote: If you compare the Eligibility pages for a Pickup Point VS an Amazon Locker, the locker is much more limited:

Order total 10 lbs VS 30 lbs, 0.4 meters VS 2 meters, etc.

There are other differences too, but it could easily be a size/weight limit depending on how much food you added to the order.

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/help/customer/ ... =201910770
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/help/customer/ ... =201911190
Thanks for those links. One of the items I tried to order was too big for an Amazon locker, but the other was definitely within the size and weight limits, but still could not ship it there.
Deal Expert
Aug 22, 2006
31271 posts
17295 upvotes
RFDbdr wrote: Locker in the warehouse parking lot:
There's a locker in the warehouse parking lot?

Also what I wouldn't give if I could do same day warehouse pickups...
Do you not have anything else to do rather than argue with strangers on the internet
Nope. That's why I'm on the internet arguing with strangers. If I had anything better to do I'd probably be doing it.
Deal Fanatic
Aug 29, 2011
9925 posts
7089 upvotes
Mississauga
There’s one at the warehouse in Mississauga (Erin Mills and Millcreek).

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