Listen, fuck Amazon, and fuck racism, and I’m not doing a hail corporate here- but did they really stop delivering because residents were black? Or for other reasons? Because making something a race issue that is instead a liability or crime issue hurts everyone.
Even if it is higher crime there it doesn't seem fair that they pay for fast delivery but don't get it. If you pay for prime you should get 2 day shipping.
From the article:
The district says that in 2021, before Amazon implemented its delivery “exclusion,” more than 72% of Prime packages in the impacted ZIP codes were delivered within two days. But last year, it was only 24%, according to the complaint.
Meanwhile, the district’s lawsuit says Prime members who lived in other parts of the city received two-day deliveries 75% of the time. Amazon was also improving its delivery speeds nationwide.
When some customers in the city complained about the slower deliveries, Amazon concealed the true reason for the delays and “deceptively implied” that the delays “were simply due to natural fluctuations in shipping circumstances, rather than an affirmative decision by Amazon,” the lawsuit says.
Yeah that’s a good point- at minimum they should just stop offering prime there then. I’d be pretty pissed :/
Some of it has to do with facilities, but yeah it's a bitch. I put something in my cart and it says same day if I'm on Orlando, 6 days where I am in Tennessee, 2 days in Syracuse. Same paid service though no matter where you reside.
I'd guess at least half the time a company or politician says a problem with a city or neighborhood is its crime rate they're talking about black people living there.
The people of the US (and the majority of the world) are currently enjoying the lowest rates of violent crime in recorded history. Yep even in those scary cities.
They had attacks on their drivers.
DC wants them to warn customers that that can’t get the full service depending on zip but imagine what the next headline reads. Probably something like: “Amazon’s racist policy disproportionately excludes black zip codes from Prime delivery service”.
Fucked if they do, fucked if they don’t.
Did they refund the Prime subscription of these residents, or otherwise make up for unfulfilled promises?
They'd certainly be less fucked if they stopped stealing from their minority customers.
True. And they should.
Doesn’t change the next headline. “Amazon refuses to sell Prime delivery to black people”.
If only there was something a multibillion dollar company could do to improve the situation... nothing?
That would be best, but you can have multiple addresses in your acct. So say, if you happily used your acct at other addresses, then input an address in a risky zone, what should they do? Fractionally discount you at the end of the year maybe for that purchase vs all other purchases? Offer you to cancel at a prorate?
They mention targeted attacks against drivers in these zip codes. If it's really about race, why stop at those 2?
Not that they should hold out on their promise to subscribers but I don't buy the race angle
Yeah, to me this reads less like a specifically racist choice and more so a tangent of POC being left/forced to live in impoverished areas, the latter of which will go hand in hand with higher crime rates. I sympathize with the frustration to the decision, but I can't think of a good argument for forcing Amazon to put it's employees at risk.
The thing is they shouldn’t be selling prime subscriptions to people in those zip codes then, since they advertise the fast shipping as a reason to subscribe.
I certainly agree with that - if the service can't be provided, they shouldn't be taking money for it.
There should definitely be a notification to people in those areas that rush delivery will not be available. There are other reasons to buy prime, so I don't think it should be completely unavailable, but residents should be able to make an informed decision.
This is exactly it, and this is the point that is often missed in a great many discussions on modern racism and discrimination. Amazon is not refusing to deliver there because those people are black. They refusing to deliver because their drivers got attacked. The fact that those neighborhoods are mostly black has nothing to do with it. It is a correlation, not a causation. The root causes the same though, it was probably a red line neighborhood back in the mid-1900s and never recovered.
Amazon should make it clear to people buying prime in those areas though, that rush delivery will not be available and if they want to buy prime they will get all of the other benefits but not fast delivery.
Why would slower deliveries stop targeted attacks?
I may have read it wrong but my understanding was Amazon pulled back their own drivers from those zipcodes and delegated their packages to other carriers
Yeah, I didn't read and I should have.
Should've spent more time with my kid instead of the computer.
I'm sorry... are you saying I'm not parenting my child? Because I posted that yesterday in the morning. You know, when kids are doing school?
Amazon won't even deliver to my apartment. They just leave shit out in front of the building
for reference, the affected areas are most of the district on the other side of the anacostia; pretty much everything east of the green line on that side of the river.
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.