EBay Ends Same-Day Delivery in US in Face of Amazon Effort

SAN FRANCISCO, United States — EBay Inc. is killing its U.S. same-day delivery service EBay Now, an acknowledgment it won't try to match the speedy delivery of e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc.

The online marketplace hinted the service wasn’t performing last year when it canceled the EBay Now mobile application and encouraged its use on desktops. The program had been available in the San Francisco area, New York, Dallas and Chicago.

“While we saw encouraging results with the EBay Now service, we always intended it as a pilot, and we are now exploring delivery and pick-up/drop-off programs that are relevant to many more of our 25 million sellers, and that cover a wider variety of inventory that consumers tell us they want,” R.J. Pittman, chief product officer, said Monday in a Web posting. “We will continue to pilot scheduled delivery in the U.K.”

Amazon has invested heavily in same-day delivery, offering the service for free to Amazon Prime subscribers in New York, Seattle, San Francisco and other large cities.

EBay, which has been struggling for sales in the face of increased competition, forecast July 16 that marketplace net revenue would rise 3 percent to 5 percent this year, excluding currency effects. The company split last week from its former payments unit, PayPal Holdings Inc.

By Spencer Soper; editors: Jillian Ward, Andrew Pollack, Reed Stevenson.