Amazon introduces shopping by SMS

Amazon this week introduced a new service in the US that lets customers buy products from the site by text message.

With the new system, dubbed 'TextBuyIt', mobile users can text a product name, search term or ISBN number to Amazon, and will get the top two results from the search sent back to them.

Customers can then text back if they want to make a purchase, whereupon Amazon will call to confirm the sale. It will be processed using the existing payment and address details.

All this sounds like a lot of hard work to me. I'm not sure why customers would choose to buy products in this way rather than wait until they are in front of a computer and can browse and buy more easily.

According to Amazon's Heather Huntoon though, there has been demand for the service:

"We have a lot of customers who use text messaging extensively. This is how they communicate and want to consume things.  For customers who know what they want and like to use text messaging, TextBuyIt is incredibly simple, convenient, and handy."

The service may also be useful for checking and comparing prices while out shopping. But with only two results at a time, that will be a slow process.

Huntoon said that Amazon had no immediate plans to introduce the TextBuyIt service in the UK. 

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