
Amazon is now delivering half its own packages, rivaling FedEx and UPS - paxys
https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/13/21020938/amazon-logistics-prime-air-fedex-ups-package-delivery-more-than-50-percent
======
RcouF1uZ4gsC
One side effect of the growth of Amazon is the replacement of "decent" jobs
with absolutely soul sucking ones.

In the early 2000's I knew people that worked as delivery drivers for UPS or
FedEx and it was a decent job. They seemed happy. Now I see the Amazon
delivery people, and they look majorly stressed out as if they are on the edge
of collapse. Many times they are delivering things at 10pm desperately trying
to meet their quotas.

I think a lot of the same thing happened in the retail as well. I see the
salespeople at malls or brick and mortar retail stores. Even though it is
stressful, at least they get to be somewhat human in that they talk to people
and have some degree of freedom to move around. Compare that with the Amazon
warehouse workers whose every second has been planned out with maximally
efficiency and who so afraid of losing their jobs that they are afraid to go
to the bathroom.

It seems the "decent" jobs are going away, replaced by ones that turn workers
into robots to better extract value from their labor.

~~~
tharne
I think we're all guilty of contributing to this problem. We all say we're for
livable wages and then don't vote with our dollars as often as we should. I'm
definitely guilty of going to Amazon because a book is a few dollars cheaper
there and I can get it in two days instead of a week.

If we care about workers and corporate behavior, we need to be willing to pay
a little more for products that are made by companies who's ethics we can get
behind. Purism and System76 are good examples of this in the laptop space.

When we do vote with our dollars, the results are often impressive, as seen by
the surge in availability of organic meat and produce.

~~~
jacobolus
If we care about workers and corporate behavior we need to change the law (and
elect/appoint legislators and political executives and law enforcement agents
and judges who will follow/enforce existing laws) to allow workers to
unionize, increase the minimum wage, enforce fairer working hours, safer
working conditions, better worker protections from fraud and theft, etc.

If Amazon wants to run a delivery network it should have to own the trucks,
pay the workers a salary, guarantee them basic labor rights, and so on.
Foisting all of the legal and financial liability for bad practices onto
fragmented and poorly managed subcontractors who only exist to serve Amazon as
a single customer is a tremendous abuse.

Federal antitrust action against monopolies and monopsonies would be helpful
too.

Individual consumers can’t possibly have full information about the supply
chain of every item they buy, and we can’t expect consumers to solve this type
of problem.

~~~
jberm123
This sounds contradictory to me:

If Amazon wants to run a delivery network it should [be an even larger
monopoly]

...

Federal antitrust action against monopolies and monopsonies would be helpful
too.

~~~
jacobolus
Amazon is a monopsony with respect to its delivery subcontractors. They are
not real independent businesses in a real market, but are wholly reliant on
Amazon, using Amazon branding and with most aspects of their business dictated
by Amazon. The only reason Amazon has set things up this way is because it (a)
allows them to deliberately abuse their subcontractors’ workers in ways that
would be unlawful if they directly employed them, and (b) shields them from
various kinds of legal risks which they should be liable for.

Disclaimer: I am not an expert in Amazon’s delivery network or other business
practices. You’d have to ask a labor lawyer for a full account.

------
snowwrestler
Amazon is pulling a fast one here, and The Verge is letting them get away with
it. Here’s the key part:

> it’s also been building out a network of its own delivery drivers under the
> Amazon Flex platform, which is a kind of on-demand contract network similar
> to Uber and food delivery companies like DoorDash.

So, in fact Amazon is _not_ delivering their own packages, they are employing
an ad-hoc network of local truckers to deliver their packages. This is in
contrast to FedEx and UPS, who employ the men and women who leave boxes on
your doorstep.

This matters because:

> (Amazon Flex has been plagued by damning reports that the high demands it
> places on Flex drivers have directly contributed to automobile fatalities.)

I’m sure Amazon intends to build out a full shipping network, which is the
only way to optimize both quality and cost in shipping. The reality is, they
are still a long way from doing so.

~~~
uoaei
Some of the most unsafe driving I've seen is from those Amazon Sprinter vans.
I blame Amazon more than the driver.

~~~
banana_giraffe
The office complex I work at had a major tenant leave a while ago, leaving a
building empty and a parking lot empty. This parking lot is now full of these
Amazon delivery vans. God help you if you try to make it into or out of the
parking lot on foot during their rush to start deliveries, or worse, when
they're getting back.

I feel bad for these workers, they're clearly stressed out, but I can only
feel so bad after almost getting flattened a few times.

------
post_break
I'm just happy because 9 times out of 10 USPS would mark my stuff as delivered
and then deliver it the next day. I have yet to have an Amazon delivery go bad
besides when they try to deliver to my work after 5pm. I recognize people have
huge issues with amazon delivery drivers but my experience has been better
than USPS.

~~~
paxys
Last week the USPS driver was clearly running behind on his route (which is
fine), but then decided to mark my package as "could not access delivery
location". Which is funny because:

1\. USPS is the only carrier that has direct access into my building (because
that's where the mailboxes are)

2\. I was home all day and there was definitely no delivery attempt

I'm guessing they have SLAs in place with Amazon that penalizes them for late
delivery, so they have to resort to such tactics.

~~~
nostromo
This happens to us weekly.

We simply don't get mail at least one day a week, maybe two.

Packages are marked as undeliverable. But then they show up a few days later.

I've asked around and have heard that mailmen (mailpeople?) in my city just
don't finish their routes everyday.

If that's because they're understaffed or too busy due to Amazon or just lazy
is up for debate.

------
softwaredoug
We can be mad at Amazon, but so many brands have a chance to ruthlessly focus
on customers, but choose not to. Even today, in grocery, you see it happening.
There’s major players with deep pockets struggling to do an end-to-end grocery
customer experience that competes. After a while I don’t _want_ companies like
this to survive.

If many markets were about two competent players duking it out, I’d be
sympathetic. But usually it’s Amazon vs some company I’ve mostly just
tolerated my whole life, but seems to care less about the customer. Amazon
just often deserves to win.

Now maybe it already is already to the point we need to think about anti trust
issues, but that comes with a big cost of potentially protecting a lot of
incompetent players out there.

(And there are lots of brand that ruthlessly focus on customers that treat
employees very well, ie Starbucks, Trader Joe’s, etc)

------
buss
Amazon's last mile delivery is a significantly worse experience than FedEx,
DHL, or UPS. I put their service about on-par with USPS, which is to say: full
of people lying about attempted deliveries.

With both USPS and Amazon I get notified of successful delivery hours or days
before the package actually shows up, or attempted delivery when I was home
and nobody used the callbox. They're making a huge mistake by not prioritizing
the delivery experience; it is eroding customer confidence and loyalty.

~~~
Terretta
In Manhattan, 100% of deliveries from their in-house delivery service to my
building (any tenant) are returned as “undeliverable”, while 100% of
deliveries from USPS and UPS are fine.

It’s a 24/7 multiple doorman building with a famous address (even
{address}.com works) and the number printed in 10 foot letters.

There are zero moments in years that a package could not be delivered, yet my
account shows 50 fails of their in-house delivery, and 450 successes of UPS
and USPS.

So ... riddle me this.

What does their vaunted machine learning have to say about such situations?

It’s scenarios like that that suggest the best ML still has a long way to go.

------
Keverw
Pretty amazing you can go from being a little tiny online bookstore to owning
your own fleet of planes, trucks and vans. Very inspiring story.

Also like when they are close to you, it tells you how many stops away they
are in the app. So useful if you ordered something and excited to get it.
However it seems when they used UPS packages would get here earlier like noon
to 2PM, while Amazon own drivers seem to be a little later... but I guess that
depends on where they started their day, maybe I'm closer to a UPS hub or
something.

~~~
Shivetya
I am just amazed they determined buying the thousands, if not tens of
thousands of trucks, recruiting and training drivers, and the logistics of it
all, was better for them than what they could negotiate from the delivery
giants and USPS.

I would assume they considered shipping items for others including pickup and
delivery from customer homes. I just cannot believe it is only for delivery of
their own goods

~~~
paulmd
they're not buying the trucks and recruiting the contractors, it is more gig-
economy bullshit. You are a 1099 worker who rents your own truck and whatever
is left over is what you get.

------
Kovah
The same happens here, but DHL is the major player being replaced and it makes
total sense for both Amazon and its customers. To be honest, since my first
delivery made directly by Amazon, until now, I never missed a single package.
It was delivered on time, most times on the day after the order. DHL on the
other side has horrible drivers that would just drop off the package at the
next post station, instead of knocking on your damn door, while you are at
home. This is absolutely frustrating and I really hate DHL for that. From what
I heard (no hard facts, sorry) the payment of the drivers is not really worse
than those of the DHL drivers. Yet they do a lot better job.

Personally, I don't understand the matter of having to pay nothing for the
shipping of online orders. Why don't they charge at least 3€, which is then
used to pay the drivers more? A regular DHL package costs about 6€, not
including the package material itself. I would appreciate paying more for the
delivery if I knew that the drivers receive a better salary with that.

~~~
kelnos
> _I would appreciate paying more for the delivery if I knew that the drivers
> receive a better salary with that._

Unfortunately most people do not think like that, and would just not buy the
item (or would buy it from a cheaper competitor) if there were higher shipping
fees. Amazon knows this; free shipping is essentially a marketing cost for
them. And they know that even if the shipping/delivery experience is sometimes
frustrating, people will still come back for more.

~~~
Kovah
Yes, sadly. In this times it's more important for people to save 5€ on a new
TV, than caring for their fellow humans or even the environment. _shrug_

------
dpcx
"Delivering" is kind of an overstatement - "shipping" maybe. I've placed at
least a dozen orders over the last month. Almost half of them have been
subsequently marked as "Get a replacement" (or whatever the text says). The
Amazon delivery drivers seem to not be nearly as dedicated as UPS/FedEx
drivers, at least in my area.

------
lxmorj
I feel like "delivering things" is a great night-shift job... There are some
infrastructure changes needed, but they seem well worth it.

------
dfc
The number of Amazon packages that are prematurely marked as delivered has
skyrocketed lately. When I have inquired about it via chat I have been told
that this is common and I will probably receive the package later today or
tomorrow. Does this happen to there people? I'm going to start fire paying
attention to how these are shipped and if it's via Amazon versus USPS/FedEx.

~~~
edoo
You used to be able to get a free month of prime for any shipping error but
they stopped that too.

------
gerbilly
Yeah and I just got apackage from them where everything was damaged. The book
was just thrown in along with a large item. It was all creased and useless as
a gift.

The carton for the small appliance they bundled with the book had what looked
like a punch mark in it.

The whole shipment was an utter mess.

------
edoo
In my neck of the woods Amazon only uses their in house delivery for Sunday
deliveries, otherwise it is UPS. A few months ago I had a 12 year old girl
standing at the door with my package. I lightly joked, you look a little young
to be driving deliveries around, and she responded that she was working with
both her parents. When I asked if they waited in the car she said they were
dropping packages at the neighbors. An entire family working on likely one
wage. I've only used Amazon a couple times since then and never on Sunday
again. If the other days start getting serviced by their in house delivery it
will mean total boycott.

------
harikb
These days I explicitly order items with a later delivery date (usually an
amazon suggested 'amazon delivery day'). The good thing about this that I get
to claim/reserve a limited-sale item, but at the same time have the luxury of
re-considering my choice on the impulse-buy one or two more days before the
item is shipped.

------
rco8786
UPS and Fedex execs must be absolutely flabbergasted at how fast this
happened.

------
gexla
The article mentions that Amazon is also on pace to be rivaling FedEx and UPS
in total volume as well. It's interesting that Bezos' estimate of 5% of retail
equals this much volume of packages.

------
gogoaa
I really hope that Amazon will start its own medical insurance subsidiary.

------
Tempest1981
The article only mentions UPS, FedEx, and Amazon. (4.7, 3.0, 2.5 billion)

How many via USPS?

~~~
brewdad
In my area, anything small enough to fit in my mailbox or the smallest
cardboard box they use comes via USPS. If it's in the local warehouse, Amazon
delivers it. Otherwise it's UPS. I can't think of the last time an Amazon
package arrived via FedEx.

