The Treasure Truck is the latest gimmick to get you to spend even more of your hard-earned cash on Amazon.
The trucks will drive around the streets of Seattle loaded with a new daily deal product every day. Using the Amazon mobile shopping app you can buy the product and arrange to meet the truck on the street and pick up your bounty.
It's an ingenious and hilarious marketing coup for Amazon tapping into Internet shoppers' desire for surprise gifts. The treasure truck will drive around a different neighborhood of Seattle every day loaded with a special secret item. Truck items can only be purchased on the Amazon mobile shopping app and will either be heavily discounted or unique goods like a limited edition Glassybaby candle holder.
The first deal will be an inflatable paddleboard that sells for $469 on Amazon.com but can be grabbed from the treasure truck for just $99 starting at 7 a.m. on Saturday, June 27. Treasure hunters can sign up for push notifications, or follow Amazon Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds to keep track of the daily deals.
When you find a treasure item you want, you click buy now on your Amazon app and select a time slot and location to meet the truck. If you miss your pickup time, you can reschedule or cancel the order altogether. The deals will work on a first-come, first-served basis, so when the truck is empty the treasure will no longer be available.
The other upcoming deals Amazon is revealing include two 24-oz. porterhouse steaks for $20 and a beach cruiser bicycle reduced from $299 to $99. For now, the treasure truck will only be roaming the streets of Seattle. Amazon hasn't said whether it plans to expand the project beyond its hometown.
The trucks are a fun idea and will be moving billboards for Amazon, but the main idea of course is to get more people onto the Amazon shopping app, which is available on Android, iOS and Amazon Fire devices. Already this month Amazon started using shipping boxes festooned with ads for the new Despicable Me Minions movie, so who knows what it will try next.
