“Unfortunately there are a lot of places I just pull up to and they are straight out sketched out wondering if they’re being robbed,” one user wrote on Reddit yesterday. Per posts on a Reddit community of Amazon drivers, these late-night deliveries are still par for the course. Then, this October, a driver was mauled to death by dogs while on the job - Amazon responded with a memo reminding drivers that they can check for a paw print icon in the “delivery notes” section of the app so that they “aren’t surprised by our four-legged customers.” Drivers are also still peeing in bottles, despite Amazon’s adamant refusal that this is a common practice. Some drivers have reported having guns pulled on them when they make a delivery at night, while others would drive with their seatbelts buckled behind them to make deliveries quicker. Amazon also contracts drivers through Delivery Service Partners (DSP), which are independently operated businesses.Īccording to a report from VICE last year, the holiday season often leads delivery drivers to work late into the night, making the job more dangerous. Drivers contracted through Amazon Flex are gig workers who use their own vehicles to make deliveries on their own time. These “unexpected heroes” are estimated to make between $18 to $25 an hour, according to the website for Amazon Flex. “For drivers, it’s more than just the packages that they deliver - they form relationships with customers, provide support to the community in tough moments, and sometimes play the role of the unexpected hero,” Beryl Tomay, vice president of Last Mile Delivery at Amazon, wrote in a press release. For comparison, Amazon spent over $4.3 million on anti-union consultants last year. That means that Amazon will pay about $5.1 million to workers through this promotion. The five drivers who receive the most thank yous will get a $10,000 bonus plus $10,000 donated to a charity of their choice. If a driver is one of the first one million to receive a thank you, they get $5. The new thank you feature is part of a promotion that Amazon says it’s running to celebrate its impending milestone of 15 billion packages delivered. All of the customer tips at issue were already paid to drivers as part of a settlement last year with the FTC.” “This lawsuit involves a practice we changed three years ago and is without merit. “Nothing is more important to us than customer trust,” Amazon spokesperson Maria Boschetti said in a statement, per Bloomberg. Meanwhile, news also broke today that Amazon is being sued by the DC Attorney General, seeking penalties for allegedly misleading consumers by using tips to cover couriers’ base pay. Last year, an Amazon delivery driver said that the high volume of orders during holiday season “ makes life hell.” This year, these contracted workers can get a $5 tip if their customer says, “Alexa, thank my driver.”
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