Amazon Expands College Package Pickup Footprint

Whether it’s by air, land or sea, there are few retail pundits who would claim that Amazon isn’t, at least, setting the pace for express delivery services. However, even Amazon knows that it can’t get every package to every doorstep it wants — but it can get close enough.

Amazon announced Wednesday (March 2) that it had finalized an agreement with The University of Texas at Austin to open a 2,500-square-foot package pickup location for UT students. The retailer is taking to calling the building Amazon@UT Austin, and while the name might not catch on, the free one-day shipping for orders placed before 10 p.m. might for Prime members.

“This partnership with Amazon is one more way that the university is providing value to our campus community,” Gage E. Paine, vice president of student affairs at UT Austin, said in a statement. “With the pickup location in the heart of the UT Austin campus, this enhanced service will benefit our students, offering them a convenient and secure place to pick up their merchandise. Faculty and staff will also be able to take advantage of the service.”

The Amazon@UT Austin building is slated to open and start receiving packages this summer, though the retailer didn’t stop there; it also announced similar agreements with the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Davis. These three college campus pickup locations join the five that are already up and running at universities in Ohio, Massachusetts and California.

While some pundits might decry the encroachment of brazen capitalism onto the hallowed ground of America’s college quads, stories abounded last year — like this one from the University of Connecticut’s Daily Campus — that college mailrooms simply cannot keep up with the volume of orders that campus-bound scholars are now making. If customers want their packages fast and Amazon wants to keep it that way — and if college mailrooms acknowledge they can’t do the job — it would seem like an on-site Amazon facility is somehow the logical choice here.