Amazon Lockers vs. Walmart pickup tower: Which is better?

Amazon Lockers and Walmart pickup towers are supposed to make online shopping easier. We put them to the test.Business Insider/Jessica Tyler

• Walmart and Amazon‘s pickup lockers allow shoppers to place orders online and pick them up in stores, rather than having their packages shipped home. 
• Walmart has pickup towers in 700 stores. Amazon has more than 2,000 locker locations. 
• We compared the two online-order pickup systems and found there was a clear winner. 

Walmart and Amazon‘s pickup lockers allow shoppers to place orders online and pick them up in stores, rather than having them shipped home. 

In April, Walmart announced it would be adding pickup towers to 700 of its stores, making the option to pick up orders available to 40% of the United States. 

Likewise, Amazon has installed lockers in thousands of locations in more than 70 cities across the US. Shoppers are able to ship orders directly to the nearest locker location instead of their homes. Prime members can still get free two-day or same-day shipping to lockers, depending on their location. 

In-store pickup is supposed to make shopping easier by allowing customers to skip lines and get their items right away, without having to pay higher rates for shipping. The service is also meant to help prevent package theft. 

Amazon Lockers offer the additional perk of allowing shoppers to make returns. Regardless of where the product was delivered, you can drop it off in a locker to return it. Walmart’s pickup towers do not offer a similar feature. 

Both the Walmart pickup towers and Amazon Lockers have their limits — larger products can’t be delivered to either one. However, Walmart is working to change this with its own pickup lockers, which can hold larger items like TVs. The pickup lockers are currently being tested at 10 Walmart stores in the Washington, DC, area. 

We tested out both pickup systems for online orders and found one was much easier to use than the other: