Amazon Launches Text-Message Shopping

SEATTLE, WASH. (AP) — It’s no April Fool’s joke, you can now order your favorite book or product from Amazon.com, simply by texting your request on your cell phone. Amazon.com Inc’s brick-and-mortar competitors have yet another reason to fear the Internet: this new service that lets shoppers compare prices and buy things with a few quick taps on their cell keypad.

Amazon TextBuyIt, which launched April 2, lets people text the name of a product, its description or its UPC or ISBN to 262966 (that’s “Amazon” on the keypad) from anywhere their cell phones work — including from inside physical stores.

If Amazon stocks matching items, the service returns two results at a time. Shoppers can immediately buy one of the first two of the selections by texting back the number “1” or “2,” or they can ask for more by texting the letter “M.”

New TextBuyIt customers will be prompted to enter the e-mail address associated with their existing Amazon account plus a shipping zip code. The service then calls them and walks through the checkout process using an automated voice system. Shoppers get confirmation by text message and e-mail.

From there, the customers can check an order status on Amazon’s website.

Howard Gefen, director of Amazon mobile payments, would not directly answer when asked if the service is meant to extend Amazon’s reach by poaching customers browsing at bookstores or big-box electronics retailers.

“We think this is a great experience. We think they’ll use the product...wherever they happen to be,” he said.