Amazon Moves Into New Marketplace With Amazon Home Services
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Now, Amazon provides not just merchandise for the home, but services, too.
Amazon has formally launched its Amazon Home Services, a marketplace for professional services.
"We have 85 million Amazon customers who have shopped for products this past year that often require a service afterwards," Peter Faricy, vice president for Amazon Marketplace, told The Verge. "Things like TVs, toilets, and sinks. We’re very excited to see if we can solve what today is a real pain point. It’s tough to quickly find someone who is qualified," says Faricy.
This new marketplace transcends offering physical and digital products and now offers services for everything from house cleaning to goat grazing. It’s a move that attempts to compete with business referral companies Angie’s List and Yelp, and is part of an effort to expand beyond traditional retail.
“In less than 60 seconds, customers can now browse, purchase, and schedule hundreds of professional services form wall mounting a new TV to installing a new garbage disposal to house cleaning, directly on Amazon.com,” according to the press release. And the services have “Amazon’s Happiness Guarantee,” which back all service purchases, so customers can be confident that the job will be done correctly.
"We really make something transparent for customers which is difficult today," says Faricy. "We have standardized and prepackaged all of our service offerings. So you know exactly what is going to be done and how much it’s going to cost you, up front, no surprises."
Amazon will screen service professionals and offer reviews from verified customers, as well as offering upfront pricing schedules and verified reviews for each service. Faricy says that all the billing will run through Amazon, and that the provider only gets paid after the finished job has been confirmed.
To find the Amazon Home Services store from the Amazon.com homepage, customers can click on the “Amazon Home Services” link in the “Shop by Department” navigation or type terms including ‘home services’ or ‘local services’ into the search bar. In the new store, customers can purchase professional services within Home Improvement, Computer & Electronics, Lawn & Garden, Lessons, Automotive and many more categories.
There are now 85 million U.S. Amazon customers shopping for products that require professional services, and this new Amazon Home Services offers 2.4 million unique service offers across over 700 professional services, available to U.S. zip codes. The e-commerce giant is partnering with companies like TaskRabbit, Pep Boys, and TakeLessons to sell services.