Struggling with the coronavirus emergency and with the need to stay at home to limit infections, thousands of Italians are trying these days to shopping online. From Esselunga a Conad, from Coop a Carrefour passing through Pam, the sites of major supermarket chains have been inundated with orders. In less than a week the requests for home shopping are double, if not tripled. Result: some systems went haywire from overload, while others have stopped accepting orders, because there are already too many to escape. In the best of cases, those who manage to shop online must accept biblical delivery timeswhich can come up to two weeks.
The problem is logistical. As a rule, supermarkets do not operate delivery systems similar to those of the e-commerce giants. They therefore do not have a network of express couriers on the postal model, but rely on smaller external companies, often active only in limited territories. Not surprisingly, many supermarket sites that allow you to shop online first ask users to indicate your postal code, to check if their home is in a place covered by the service.
On the other hand, the emergency of the last few days has been of such proportions as to put even the home delivery giant, His Majesty Amazon, in crisis. It also includes among the services offered by the American group Amazon Prime Now, which allows you to shop online (some products are branded Amazon, others are not) and receive it at home. In Italy, Prime Now is only active in Milan, Rome and Turin, moreover in collaboration with the supermarket chains Pam and Unes. Here, despite the almost militaristic organization and the high efficiency of its delivery system in the metropolis, Amazon too has gone into crisis due to the coronavirus. At the moment, those who try to do their shopping from Rome arrive at the last step of the procedure and are forced to stop, because the system does not provide any delivery date to indicate.
The most complete explanation of what is happening is provided by Carrefour: “Following the exceptional number of requests – we read on the website of the French chain – there may be delays in delivery and unavailability of some products. The delivery of expenses will be carried out on the landing in front of the door and the payment methods could be limited to online payment".
It is easy to predict that, failing to shop online, many Italians will be forced to leave the house to go to the supermarket. Let's just hope that they don't decide to do it all together and above all that it is always possible to maintain a radius of at least one meter between people, the minimum safety distance to avoid contagion from the coronavirus. And also to limit the entrances.
