Amazon, Eager For Drivers, Offers To Help Employees Quit To Start Delivery Businesses (chicagotribune.com) 83
Amazon, which is racing to deliver packages faster, is turning to its employees with a proposition: Quit your job and we'll help you start a business delivering Amazon packages. From a report: The offer, announced Monday, comes as Amazon seeks to speed up its shipping time from two days to one for its Prime members. The company sees the new incentive as a way to get more packages delivered to shoppers' doorsteps faster. Amazon says it will cover up to $10,000 in startup costs for employees who are accepted into the program and leave their jobs. The company says it will also pay them three months' worth of their salary. The offer is open to most part-time and full-time Amazon employees, including warehouse workers who pack and ship orders.
Too bad their drivers suck (Score:4, Informative)
Lately most of my packages have been delivered by their inhouse delivery service and my god, it shows. Showing up late, not showing up at all, having my package show as "delivered" and never having received it, receiving empty packages that are obviously damaged...I never knew how many different ways a driver could screw up the simple process of delivery until Amazon started pushing their own delivery service.
I'd gladly pay more if they could go back to UPS/Fedex. Might be a bit more out of pocket, but at least I'd get some reliability back in the process.
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I'm guessing it's regional. In the central valley their delivery service is amazingly bad. I've had them refuse to deliver and return the product because they didn't want to go into the facility....repeatedly ( retirement home ).
Seems every time I order something I get to experience a new way to fuck up delivery of an order.
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I'm guessing it's regional.
I guess. Orange County here and it's been pretty solid for me so far. I've only had a couple of instances of weirdness. One time I sat in the cul-de-sac of my apartment complex and watched the driver walk around and drop off people's packages, but then drive away without dropping mine off. And another time I had a package sent to Amazon Locker, and they said someone signed for my package. That last one was a doozy, I was like, if I had it sent to a freaking Amazon Locker, why the hell was it hand-delivered
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Orange County here
You know that's ambiguous, right? The one with Disney Land, the one with Disney World, or the one where Disney bought land just to mess with real estate speculators? I'm guessing the one in Cali, because of the self-importance implicit in assuming everyone would know which one.
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Well, the person that poster was replying to referenced Central Valley, which implies California. It would follow that Orange County would be using the same reference. There's no self-importance or arrogance there. You appear to have an issue with context.
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Well, the person that poster was replying to referenced Central Valley, which implies California.
I assumed that "central valley" referred to the region in between the Appalachians and the Rockies. It would not have occurred to me that "central" could have been interpreted as "way the hell off to the left". Saying "central California" or "Orange County, California" would have been unambiguous, even though I have no idea where in California that is.
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I cancelled prime when they switched to a lot of Amazon branded delivery in my area.
It's really annoying not having Prime anymore, but it's slowly been getting more expensive, and then a huge drop in quality.
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Same here. And I subsequently stopped shopping on Amazon at all because Amazon sucks without prime.
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I try not too,
but often their long free shipping is kinda worth it, since I can get an eclectic bunch of things all at once.
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I generally use just the plain old free shipping. I've never needed anything immediately. And whenever it shows up, I get to be surprised to find out what I bought.
Re:Too bad their drivers suck (Score:4, Insightful)
Lately most of my packages have been delivered by their inhouse delivery service and my god, it shows.
Vancouver, Canada checking in.
Couldn't agree more. Their in-house delivery is terrible.
What's even more annoying is when you try to complain to Amazon they're just trained to eagerly and cheerfully refund your money. No, Amazon, I don't want a refund. I just want my damn stuff. Preferably delivered by a courier who knows what the hell they're dong.
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Bit classier than "fast cheap or good", but sometimes you wanna come across disparaging.
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Hmm... While I sort of agree with the informative mod, I think you're lying in your second paragraph. It's possible you'd pay more, but you wouldn't be glad about it, and I even predict that you'd jump to another company that offered you better prices. That's the root of how Walmart "succeeded" by squeezing the suppliers, and Amazon is just extending that model, squeezing the suppliers, the customers, and the employees hardest of all. I still think the REAL objective of this idea is to create a new class of
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From watching the route AMZL uses for my office deliveries, the drivers spend the day delivering to private residences and college dorms during business hours when people are at work/class, then "deliver" to businesses around 7-8pm. That's just idiotic route planning - peop
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I've done the same. Called amazon to deprioritize their own shipping service. Several times. I think I did it 6 times over the course of 4 months, never seemed to help; my shit kept ending up in their vans, to predictable results.
While I would be happy to pay a bit more to amazon and only use UPS/Fedex, I do wish there were a good alternative. Walmart is uniquely placed to challenge amazon's dominance, if only they would actually pursue it.
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Great idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Quit your job working for us......so that you can take on additional debt (because buying/leasing a delivery van is going to cost more than 10k, plus the commercial insurance for the van, the business license, business insurance, accounting, etc) and still basically work for us. Genius!
Re:Great idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Its worse than that: They are saying basically, "while we are experts at delivery, we could not make this profitable, hence, we would like you to take all the risk"
Re: Great idea (Score:1)
Exactly right.
Itâ(TM)s basically applying the Uber model to parcel delivery. Initially there will be some uptake, but then Amazon will bring it back in-house. Letâ(TM)s not forget the elephant in the room either, truckers have been doing the same thing for a century and they unionized. Itâ(TM)s not going to lower costs at all.
I won this bitchin' BMX bike! (Score:3)
Hey kids!
Make big money and prizes selling Grit!
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Exactly,
If Amazon could do it themselves profitably, they wouldn't be "Franchising" a delivery service.
The real question could these people do deliveries with their own equipment for Non-Amazon customers. Say they can make a deal with Wal-Mart, and with the local grocery store, to deliver for them too.
The problem with franchises ownership, is you are not the king of your hill, but you have to defend it like it is. For some Franchise, such as a McDonalds, or a Planet Fitness. They can bring in enough foot
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Exactly,
If Amazon could do it themselves profitably, they wouldn't be "Franchising" a delivery service.
The real question could these people do deliveries with their own equipment for Non-Amazon customers. Say they can make a deal with Wal-Mart, and with the local grocery store, to deliver for them too.
The vans are Amazon branded, so probably not. Although, I guess nothing prevents you from leasing/purchasing other vans to serve other customers. But Amazon is basically trying to pull an Uber here.
Uber to the MAX! (Score:2)
I bet Amazon has a clause in the contract to prevent adding Uber service to this. Either that or Amazon is planning to offer an integrated version. The vans will have a bench in the back and work like little buses. Hey, they can give the customers a discount if they help with the deliveries.
Oh yeah, about the security. Cameras everywhere to make sure no one tries anything funny!
Already down to 1/2 o'clock? Still no thoughtful reaction to my earlier "wage slavery" comment? No surprise on today's Slashdot.
It still gets worse (Score:2)
Its worse than that: They are saying basically, "while we are experts at delivery, we could not make this profitable, hence, we would like you to take all the risk"
It's even worse than THAT: This is nothing new! They offered the same deal [slashdot.org] last year to the public at large. TFA mentions over 200 businesses have already been created.
Dividing and conquering the peasants (Score:2)
It's worse than worse than that. Not only are they putting the risk on the outside delivery companies, they are dividing the deliveries among competing companies. I'm sure they do not guarantee any delivery zones or business volumes, and they are going to push each of the little "independent" contractors to the lowest level possible.
Divide and conquer worked for Caesar and it's gonna work for Bezos. I wonder what Jeff thinks about ol' Julius?
My longer comment below (about the "life worse than wage slavery"
Thanks for explaining (Score:2, Funny)
I was sure someone would be able to spin this as Amazon being evil. Congrats on accomplishing that!
They are allowing people who don't want to become delivery drivers the option of ignoring their offer. Could you tell us why that is also evil? We need to know.
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Offering people a shitty choice and tricking them into accepting it is considered evil. See also, pyramid schemes, snakeoil salesman, and unconscionable contracts.
Is this deal that bad? I doubt it's bad enough to be illegal. But it's reasonable to call into question their motives and ethics.
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The problem is the marketing. Quit your job, be your own boss. All sound good, but there is a lot of work in starting your own business, and the people who are suckered into the marketing, are probably not that prepared to run such an operation. Amazon is really pushing all the risk to the worker.
The 1099 worker is just a better deal for the company, vs W2 workers. However for someone who wants to do 1099 work while you may get paid more, there is a lot of risk that your job will be canceled at any time
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IMHO, you really don't have any more job security as a W2 employee than you do as a 1099 contractor, and you haven't had that in decades.
There is no such thing as a job for life, or employer loyalty to a faithful employee.
That has been long gone for a long time.
I figure if that's the case, if you
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In the stories where people are tempted by the Devil, they always have a choice. The Devil doesn't force them into evil, but entices them to do it with their own free will.
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In the stories where people are tempted by the Devil, they always have a choice. The Devil doesn't force them into evil, but entices them to do it with their own free will.
Depends on what you mean by choice. "Devil's Bargain" has two different implications. In some of them, the "choice" is to let a family member die for lack of some need the Devil is offering to fulfill if the victim will only sign this contract.
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I was sure someone would be able to spin this as Amazon being evil.
I didn't say they were being evil. For a fraction of people that take them up on the offer, it will be a better outcome than if they kept picking orders in the warehouse. The question is, will they be actual "small business owners", or will they be essentially underpaid (net) and nontaxed employees of Amazon? Look at their brochure: They say startup costs as low as 10k (oh, but you have to have 30k liquid as well to qualify) and they say up to $1-4.5M revenue, 75-300K profit. But that's with a fleet of
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That's 15k profit (best number), plus a driver salary (not sure what that is).
It could credibly be decent if they'd let you do a one van business.
I wouldn't do it, and I definitely wouldn't without long term guarantee of package minimums and maximums per truck.
I'd be really worried they decide it all isn't worth it and switch to some other method, and I'm stuck trying to build a local delivery company from scratch with a lease on a few vans.
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Did the brochure say anything about loans, per my longer comment (about "a life worse than wage slavery") below? My prediction (but I haven't gone as far as reading the brochure) is that Amazon is eager to give them loans, possibly even student loans.
I'm not sure about the "evil" part of it. It's possible that Amazon is morally neutral (like technology itself). However in that case I think there's some evil on the system side, and Amazon is part of the system.
Amazon got two mentions in Turing's Cathedral:
Silly /.er (Score:2)
Seriously, I keep waiting for this stuff to blow up. Sooner or later somebody's gonna cause a nice, big wreck with a lot of deaths and severely injured survivors. Modern cars are a _lot_ safer now so we've managed to avoid it, but sooner or later one of these guys is gonna cut a semi off and b
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1-day delivery needs improvement (Score:1)
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Pay and they will come. (Score:3)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Just my concurrence here, but I said much the same thing at length below, including a funny little story... If I ever had a mod point to give, I'd give you one.
I should have mentioned my personal decision to stop doing business with Amazon almost 20 years ago. I still read LOTS of books, but no thanks to Amazon.
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Given the sums of money involved, Amazon's earnings won't skyrocket because of this. I think it is simply in Bezos bones to employ as few people as possible lest the company become ungovernable.
Sorry, but... (Score:2)
and they take full liability for any think that ha (Score:2)
and they take full liability for any think that happens while being controlled like an employee.
You mean there's a life worse than wage slavery? (Score:2)
You gotta give 'im credit for knowing how to abuse people. Or am I mistaken in reading "help you" as "loan you money". I'm guessing the terms of the loan agreement promise you lots of business and the fine print is full of hooks and daggers. Probably cleverly worded in terms of Amazon favoring delivery contractors who are more obedient and docile. In other words, Amazon will always be allowed to give the actual business to whoever does it faster and in accord with whatever conditions Amazon imposes. "Well,
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Show some respect for your elders FFS. He's been completely civil. You might not believe this, but older folk have a different way of communicating than younger folk. Maybe one day in the future, you'll be mocked online by rude punks for daring to think what you're saying has any value.
Crack cocaine must be making the world better somehow, or people wouldn't be using it. You fucking idiot.
People sure LOVE attacking the most successful! (Score:2)
I gotta say, I'm siding with big "bad guy" Amazon on this one. It's just one more CHOICE they're putting out on the table for anybody working for them. If you're doing some grunt work on an Amazon loading dock just to get by and you'd rather try to start working for yourself? This seems to me like it's not too bad a deal. You still get 3 months' salary while you're first getting started -- which covers one of the toughest parts of going self-employed. (Even if you have a great business idea and you're
What a great deal!! (Score:2)