Shopper's delight: free shipping with noon
One of the major pain points of ordering from Souq.com and consequently Amazon, was that most products came with AED 10 shipping charge per item. While that might not seem as much, but suppose someone were to buy 10 items that were not fulfilled by the Souq or Amazon, they had to pay AED 100 just for shipping. That quickly adds up.
Amazon started offering its Prime service for just AED 16 per month, which comes with free shipping on most local products, as well as those that come from the US and other countries.
The Prime service is a good deal, which not only offers free shipping, but also access to Amazon Prime TV service and others.
While noon does not have the other services to attract customers with a monthly fee, it did roll out free next-day delivery in the UAE on all products. The move is expected to give serious competition to Amazon's e-commerce business in the UAE, even though Amazon seemingly has more products on its platform.
Noon did not announce this service, but we noticed while shopping online. Here is a screenshot:
For Saudi & Egypt, noon still maintains SAR 200 and EGP 250 as minimum order value for free delivery.
Belonging to parent company Emaar, noon has the funds to spend to compete with Amazon, or at least level the playing field. While Amazon's sheer size and number of products, including international shipping, is hard to beat, offering free next-day delivery on all products will certainly help noon stay in the race; as well as be preferred compared to Amazon by those not subscribed to the Prime service.
