Amazon UK Found Guilty Of Airmailing Dangerous Goods (theguardian.com) 56
Amazon UK has been found guilty and fined 65,000 euro for breaking aviation safety laws after repeatedly trying to send dangerous goods by airmail, reports The Guardian. From the article: A judge at Southwark crown court in London said on Friday that Amazon knew the rules, had been warned repeatedly, but had failed to take reasonable care. Although the risks from the goods sent for shipment by air were low, he blamed the breaches on "systemic failure" at the online retailer. As well as the fine, Amazon was ordered to pay 60,000 euro towards prosecution costs. Earlier in the week, the jury found Amazon guilty of breaching rules for shipping dangerous goods by airmail on four counts between November 2013 and May 2015. The prosecution was brought by the Civil Aviation Authority, after a complaint from Royal Mail. Some offences took place after Amazon knew it was under investigation. In each case, the items -- two packages containing laptop lithium batteries and two containing aerosols that used flammable gas propellant -- had been flagged up by Amazon's computer systems as possibly dangerous goods, and subject to restricted shipping rules.
Are we punishing risk assessment? (Score:2)
Aerosols are stored separately at Amazon’s warehouse because they are deemed dangerous, and training literature for warehouse staff explains that lithium batteries are dangerous, “potentially causing burns, explosions or a fire”.
Training literature updated to say, "lithium batteries are safe, unlikely to cause burns, explosions or a fire"
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"Alcohol, which does improve your drinking skills!"
FTFY!
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Apparently only Amazon is allowed to have risk assessment. Royal Mail clearly should bend over instead of doing their own risk assessment.
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They probably made more than that in the time it took to write that post.
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Amazon struggles to make a profit.
Amazon has made a deliberate decision to focus on growth rather than profit. So far this has been a very smart strategy, and their investors seem to agree.
Amazon is an obvious counter-example to the claim that American investors only focus on short term results.
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I always heard "The exception proves the rule." This makes sense if you use "proves" in a very old-fashioned sense meaning "tests", or if what's important is the existence of the exception. If I run a storefront, and put up a sign saying "Emergency - store closed 1-7 PM today", I'm implying that the store is normally open 1-7 PM on that day.
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The reason that Amazon is an exception is that they are actually investing for the long run. Most unprofitable companies are not investing, they are just losing money through mismanagement and using "we are investing for the long term" as an excuse. So of course investors don't tolerate that.
There are plenty of growth funds that specialize in companies focused on growth rather than short-term profit. If there was really a lack of long term investing, these funds would out-perform the market. For the mos
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Is there some Hollywood accounting going on? Last I heard Bezos isn't exactly skint.
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Amazon is greedy for being unwilling to properly ship potentially dangerous goods.
Given this only happened 4 times, I'd bet it's just a process enforcement issue - that is, they have a process to prevent it, but no real incentive to police it.
Therefore, a 60,000 Euro fine is hardly enough to discourage the behavior.
Maybe - it's they're only doing it negligently, that's enough incentive to actually follow the process they (I'm guesing) already have. Or to just fly all the explosives only on the new planes they bought. One of those.
Fix the law (Score:1)
Fix the law; $68K is an inadequate fine to hurt enough to fix their behavior. Prohibiting them from using any airmail for a year would be much more reasonable.
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Great plan until they actually do that and then realize how much money Amazon was pumping into the mail service. Even just on the Airmail side of things. Plus there is the very real possibility that if they barred Amazon from Airmail that Amazon might just switch over to exclusively using private carriers. Either way I will guarantee the mail service will see a hefty hit to their bottom line and people in the employ of said mail service will likely lose their jobs as a result of punishing Amazon in such a w
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And why do middle-man scum like FedEx and UPS exist again?
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And why do middle-man scum like FedEx and UPS exist again?
UPS and FedEx are getting their small packages delivered, and customers are getting Saturday delivery.
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$68K
It wasn't $68K. The summary says it was €68K, but it wasn't that either. It was £68K.
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Hah, not it wasn't, it was £65K! Now everybody looks stupid, including me!
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£65,000 = Pounds Sterling, if you Please. Accepted at all good Courts of Justice...
Couch cushion money for Amazon...
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Only the American ones.
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Only the American ones.
That door swings both ways...
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Try following the laws in the countries you operate in, instead of whining. See which is more profitable long-term. This law is reasonable and easily followed.
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Reasonable in that the government has a reason to enrich itself.
Reminds me of Mr. Burns quote (Score:2)
The reference to Airmail made me think of a Mr. Burns quote:
"I'd like to send this letter to the Prussian consulate in Siam by aeromail. Am I too late for the 4:30 autogyro?"
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You there, fill it up with petroleum distillate and revulcanize my tyres post-haste!
Ridiculous (Score:2)
"Earlier in the week, the jury found Amazon guilty of breaching rules for shipping dangerous goods by airmail on four counts between November 2013 and May 2015."
This is where I stopped reading. Please come back when you have a proper justice system where proper judges determine your guilt, not a bunch of people whose only interest is to get out of the jury chamber as soon as possible.
What I don't understand. (Score:2)
What I don't understand is why you are not allowed to air mail a battery by itself in a sealed container, while you are allowed to air mail the same battery inside a device. I am not that familiar with battery technology, but I would expect that a battery connected to a circuit to have additional ways of catching fire compared to a battery by itself. I mean if a fault happens inside the battery you are screwed whether it is in a device or by itself, but AFAIK there are cases where the problems were caused b
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Well, I am familiar with the basics at least and, as far as I know, the extra circuitry is there to protect them from problems that are related to the battery charge and discharge. Otherwise the danger with lithium batteries seems to be short-circuits that can happen INSIDE the cell when tiny metal particles move around and touch parts they should not, or something like that. The circuitry does not protect from anything like that. That's why I am asking whether someone who actually knows this stuff can shed
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... or when they are involved in a plane crash. Most of the safety regulations are there to protect the emergency responders that may come to the site of an accident.
Where I used to work, we couldn't air ship some of our chemotherapy drugs. They wouldn't explode or catch fire, but if a box of them were crushed, the people who breath the air could be seriously harmed.
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Some of those aspects make sense, but the big ticket items about "bumping around" are just bullshit. Most laptop batteries, for exampe, come inside a protective plastic case. Most (in my experience) have recessed metal contacts so the battery is unable to short against a loose conductor.
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I think there's a reasonable (flawed) assumption devices provide an acceptable level of physical protection for their batteries, mainly from puncture and external short circuits. At least more protection than padded bags, cardboard or light plastic packing is going to achieve without stringent unenforceable packing standards.
Another condition for transporting in devices is that they cannot turn on, ruling out most of the causes of in-device fires.
Possibly credible if you ignore cheap knockoffs that aren't s
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Shipping lithium batteries in bulk is what caused the downing of a UPS cargo plane a while back which is why they're no longer allowed - one battery caught fire, which then caused other batteries in the same container to catch as well.
But you can carry batteries onto a plane in bulk — the limit is on battery capacity, not on the total capacity you're allowed to carry, so you can put 30 batteries in one bag and walk onto a plane...
Who fucked up the currency in the summary? (Score:2)
Amazon UK has been found guilty and fined 65,000 euro
No, it was pounds (British ones, specifically).
Also, there is a symbol for both the pound and the euro. Mind you, knowing Slashdot, it would probably display as Ãc.
(Jesus, I couldn't even paste in a string of nonsense ASCII characters without Slashdot screwing it up somehow. That c was supposed to be a , but doing that resulted in an â
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And then I hit Submit too early. Bah. Fergeddit.
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From the onset of a cabin fire you have 17 minutes [skybrary.aero] to get the plane on the ground before complete loss of the aircraft.
The growing situation with batteries is bloody terrifying. Will it take a total loss of aircraft before a better solution (than just an outright ban) can be found? Could this be what happened to MH-370 last year?
Not new. (Score:1)