Amazon is Now Making Its Delivery Drivers Take Selfies (theverge.com) 72
Amazon is now making its delivery drivers take selfies, in a bid to reduce fraud. Using facial recognition, the company will verify drivers' identities to make sure they are who they say they are. From a report: The new requirements appeared on the Amazon Flex app to drivers, notifying them that they needed to take a selfie before continuing work. Of course, Amazon warns drivers to "not take a selfie while driving." By asking drivers to take selfies, Amazon could be preventing multiple people from sharing the same account. These efforts could screen out anyone who is technically unauthorized from delivering packages, such as criminals who are attempting to use Amazon Flex as an excuse to lurk in front of people's homes.
Not surprised (Score:2, Funny)
I hear their CEO started taking selfies a while ago. Always good to see the leadership of a company take initiative to be an example.
Re: Not surprised (Score:1)
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Showing the true quality of their service. (Score:3)
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Because real delivery companies hire employees. And are responsible for those employees. Amazon is trying to avoid responsibility through contracting but it's still trying to treat them as if they were employees. ... (other good points)
The same could be said for Uber and Lyft ...
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Uber and Lyft skirt around laws made to protect consumers from price gouging by taxis, and openly flaunt it as a business strategy - surge pricing. It seems like if you can propose a business model that re-introduces risk back into the system, there is a ton of money to be made.
The next big thing is crowd-sourcing food. "Sorry, you got poisoned eating from Food. We want you to know that health and safety is our number one priority. Here's a $10 coupon to deal with that dysentery.. "
Re: Showing the true quality of their service. (Score:4, Insightful)
Uber and Lyft skirt around laws made to protect consumers from price gouging by taxis
Uber and Lyft skirt around laws made to protect price gouging of consumers by taxis.
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Sorry, English is not my native language.. Its C.
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Sorry, English is not my native language.
I was correcting your economics, not your English.
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Knowing "who" is who the business is, if you hired a contractor. ;) If you want an individual human, it might turn out that they're an employee; even if you use weasel words.
The IRS rules say who an employee and to much cont (Score:2)
The IRS rules say who is an employee and to much control makes them one
Re:Employed versus contracted (Score:4)
Amazon draws enough water that they will not be told what's a contractor vs what's an employee. They will tell the regulators.
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Mod parent up (Score:2)
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Yep and damned near blew it for the rest of us that WANT to work as REAL contractors.....
It's harder now to work 1099 due in large part to these fuckers that wanted to have it both ways.
To do it now, you'd better incorporate yourself so you can do corp-to-corp on contracting to give the company a better feeling about not getting screwed like MS did in the case you mentioned.
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Amazon draws enough water that they will not be told what's a contractor vs what's an employee. They will tell the regulators.
This usually gets decided by a jury in a lawsuit. None of that water is sold by judge or jury.
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You wouldn't.
But you could force your client(s) to pay additional money to cover the employer tax contribution retroactively. It would burn the relationship, but more money is good. If you're 'done' with the client, why not?
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Wouldn't you be less liable for your SSI contribution? You are paying a nominal 7.5% if you are an employee and 15% if you are self-employed. That is 7.5% of my wages I can tell the IRS to go get from my "employer", right?
(Obviously, this is not going to be very good for my relationship, though.)
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Exactly, even better if you can force them to disgorge some benes (or cash in lieu).
They will be butthurt.
Re: Employed versus contracted (Score:1)
How about identification for customers? (Score:2)
Now if only they had a standard policy about their drivers identifying themselves to customers...
Like the delivery guy who claimed to be from FedEx (when I called him out for literally throwing my package at my door), but clearly worked for Amazon.
Shouldn't it be a simple matter of "if a customer asks who you are, you show them this view on the delivery app, no questions asked"?
this makes so that they can't be 1099'ers or subs (Score:2)
this makes so that they can't be 1099'ers or subs.
As they are saying you must do the work vs an real 1099'er that can sub out jobs to any one that they want.
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subcontracting the work out would have to be allowed by the driver's agreement with amazon.. which it most certainly does not allow, nor is it required to be allowed for them to be a '1099er'.
you're just trying to fan some flames here because you believe amazon is exploiting their delivery drivers.. they are, yes, but within the limits and restrictions of current tax and employment laws.
Amazon Driver stole a DHL Package off my porch (Score:1)
Last week I caught an amazon driver on camera delivering a package I ordered while also stealing a DHL package that had been left on my porch 15 minutes prior.
Amazon clearly has work to do to improve their driver screening process.
The older among us can still remember... (Score:3)
The "optimization" to get everything done by the least-possible-paid people has its down-sides.
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Now I am pretty darn sure that there are USPS employees who have a side-gig stealing mail in my area.
Surprised analysts don't ding AMZN for this (Score:2)
It seems clear to me that delivery is kind of a problem for Amazon. They've moved away from the main package shippers, either because it's too expensive or they just have too much local delivery to make those systems work for the kind of delivery speed Amazon wants.
Their self-initiated delivery systems have been a real mixed bag -- contractors, and whatever the people driving Amazon-branded vans are (I can't decide if they are employees or contractors with Amazon's logo on a private van; the vans seem too
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I'm surprised Wall Street hasn't had a fit of FUD about AMZN's growth being hindered by all their delivery problems when you consider how central to their business model is. I mean, Tesla can't self-drive a brand new car to your house within 24 hours and Elon Musk is a failure, why aren't the talking heads on TV screaming about the imminent demise of AMZN because it can't get packages delivered?
This just reminds me of something from several years ago. Nintendo announced some 10-15+ games at E3 and video game related people were excited and several said they won E3, etc blah blah...... Nintendo's stock dropped some huge amount because investors were scared that Nintendo wasn't dropping all console gaming and full time pursuing the "future of gaming" which was mobile apps.
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I think what happened was they stamped their feet and demanded lower rates, and the main carriers decided, "No, we won't make any money if we agree to that, we don't care how much volume you have we need to make money to do the work."
And so they're doing it themselves. Maybe they can, who knows. So far they seem to suck at it. I'm skeptical that they'll really save money in the end.
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I suppose the risk to other carriers is that Amazon has SO MUCH money to burn on alternative delivery schemes that even if they failed a lot, they still might stumble into something that works or possibly could turn into its own business, kind of like how sharing out their excess computing capacity turned into AWS.
And even when they fail (like package theft), they can paper over it with order replacement. If they miss delivery dates and are 1-2 days later, almost nobody is going to stop buying from Amazon
Turtles all the way down (subcontracting gigs) (Score:2)
It shouldn't surprise anyone that it is common for "gig economy" workers to informally "subcontract" their work.
Because the "subcontractors" are unknown to the ultimate "employer" they aren't subject to: minimum-wage laws, working-hour rules, insurance rules, accountability, etc. etc. etc. Of course, all illegally.
I have seen - for example - the delivery drivers that have their kids do the actual deliveries. I have seen the signs in the Whole Foods "gig loading zones" admonishing (with little effect, I'd i
Uber has been doing this for years (Score:2)
I drove for Uber for a while, and they required this as well. It was to make sure I was not farming my work out to subcontractors.
How about (Score:2)
Taking a selfie WITH my package you just delivered to show what condition the box is in as it leaves the custody of the driver ?
Besides, ( in my town ) Amazon relies on UPS or FedEx to deliver the products I order.
They, in turn, sub-contract the final delivery of said package to USPS.
So, how is this selfie thing going to work when they're not even delivering the packages ?
As a positive, I know my package is going to show up at the usual time when the mail goes by.
As a negative, the stupid USPS guy will try