Amazon Home Services Has Arrived in Philadelphia

Pay Amazon to find someone to help you with household tasks.

It’s not enough that you can have anything under the sun delivered to your front door. Now, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, you can pay Amazon to find someone in Philadelphia to put together a bookshelf or grill, configure your wireless printer, or hang your new 52-inch plasma TV in time for the start of Phillies season. OK, so maybe not Phillies season, but you get the point.

Amazon Home Services has launched in Philadelphia and a bunch of other cities, and the idea is simple: Enter your zip code, select the service you need from a wide variety of options, tell Amazon when you need the work done, and they set you up with a “pro” who will do your bidding. Amazon doesn’t charge your card until the work is actually complete.

The list of services is pretty wide-ranging and amusing in parts, with options like Hire a Goat Grazer, Hire a Silk Aerialist and Hire a Singer. But none of those particular services are available in Philadelphia as of yet.

Come to think of it, most of the potential service offerings are not available at this time in Philadelphia, so if you need to hire a plumber or gutter cleaner, you’ll have to go about it the old-fashioned way or check back later.

The currently available Amazon Home Services options in Philadelphia include things like in-home virus and spyware removal for $205 and treadmill assembly starting at $175. That 52-inch plasma hanging could set you back as much as $299, while Amazon will charge you $150 to send someone to assemble your charcoal grill for you, if you are really that inept or lazy that you can’t assemble your own charcoal grill.

Amazon says that all of its Amazon Home Services “pros” are thoroughly screened with interviews, background checks and reference checks and that they are licensed, where applicable, and insured.

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