I saw a news report yesterday, in the USA they are offering employees a buy-out upto $10,000 & "several months pay" to leave their jobs. They want them to become independent contractors with their own delivery van, and make 1 day delivery the new prime standard.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/13/amazon-will-pay-employees-thousands-to-quit-and-become-business-owners.html

According to Amazon, almost any entrepreneur can start a business with its Delivery Service Partner program with an initial investment as low as $10,000 to hire drivers and lease up to 40 vans to deliver Amazon packages from a warehouse to a person’s home.

Amazon has said that for “successful owners” operating between 20 to 40 vans, it estimates potential annual profits will range from $75,000 to $300,000 (although it can vary depending on city and the individual business’ costs).

And while associating with Amazon “is extremely powerful,” according to New York University Stern School of Business professor Anindya Ghose, no business is foolproof. Participants shouldn’t expect to suddenly make $300,000. Even Amazon provides a broad range of potential profits per year — and lots of fine print.

Plus the branding connection and incentive will mean business owners will be beholden to Amazon in some ways, Jeremy Kagan, an adjunct professor of marketing at Columbia Business School and the managing director of The Eugene Lang Entrepreneurship Center previously told CNBC Make It. And that can limit the ability to scale.

“When you go through all of the trouble of setting up a business, usually it will be in the later years when you’ve gotten established, you’ve got your employees, you’ve got your business, that you start really reaping the rewards of growing it, and maybe ultimately selling it,” Kagan said. But with a business that depends on another brand as its primary (or only) customer, “I don’t know that you have a lot of ability to grow from there.”

As for the incentive program, this isn’t the first time Amazon has paid its own employees to quit. The e-commerce giant also has a Pay to Quit program, in which once a year, the company offers to pay full-time associates at Amazon fulfillment centers up to $5,000 to leave the company. The company says it only wants employees who want to be there. Those who accept the offer can never work at Amazon again.

It's a race to the bottom! The hidden cost is insurance/accident claims on a delivery van and the inevitable accidents that will happen, especially if it takes running 20 vans & drivers to be profitable.

I personally know of one case where a guy appeared to have been hit while on a bicycle by an Amazon van and the insurance companies laid out a lot of money for legal fees in a "he-said/she-said" accident with dubious circumstances from both the driver (had many moving violations) and the cyclist (ex-convict drug dealer, 50 year-old, working as a pizza delivery man) who purjured himself in his testimony, and his lawyer still thought he could win some money! Somehow in a busy intersection, no cameras caught the accident, but a witness said he threw his bicycle under the van's passenger front wheel as it inched forward in traffic.

"The dispute has dragged on for seven years, with a number of proposals and counterproposals. Last year, Amazon.com offered $5 million worth of Kindle e-readers and various hosting services as part of a proposed compromise."

Soooo.... what about a handful of crapy locked plastic chunks and a free we-have-your-data-hostage plan for your subcontinent sized rainforest? It's not like you use it or whatever, it's just idling there soaking water and breeding pests.

Buy out is a strategy to reduce headcount on payroll w/o saying lay offs. Jeff B. must be preparing for the days ahead with the iron curtain lowering on Chinese products. Walmart is going to need their plan B.

When the world starts decoupling, soon enough, big guns will be pulled out, and eventually real ones. But we are all humans, so we keep repeating history, it seems.

Surprise

Amazon is set to purge many of its small suppliers over the next few months. The purge could shatter the generally favorable relationship between Amazon and many of its long-time vendors, as we first discussed last month when we reported that Amazon was accused of "crushing" its merchants by undercutting products with its own.

The move is supposed to help cut costs and focus wholesale purchasing on large brands like Procter & Gamble, Sony and Lego. Amazon wants to ensure that the company has adequate supplies of "must-have" merchandise that will help it compete with companies like Target and Walmart. As a result, bulk orders for thousands of smaller suppliers may dry up over the next few months.

It also means that many smaller retailers that have relied on Amazon for a steady stream of orders will have to win sales one shopper at a time on the platform's marketplace. This marks one of the large shifts in Amazon strategy since it opened the site up to independent sellers nearly 2 decades ago.

Who could have known. Now sheep showed to wolf that sells well and can be used for their real purpose... special dinner food.

Amazon started offering tours twice a day at 46 of more than 250 sites worldwide. (Previously they were offered only a few times a month at five sites.) Anybody can sign up online, as I did, without signing a nondisclosure agreement or promising to keep what they see to themselves. “Come see the magic,” the website suggests. “Tour one of our fulfillment centers and see first-hand how we deliver to you.” There is, this suggests, nothing to hide.

https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/6/26/18758599/amazon-fulfillment-center-tour-robots-workers

Amazon Dash Buttons will stop working on August 31st

Idea had been little strange, but now Amazon behaves more and more like Google.

Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Amazon has deliberately tweaked its product-search algorithm to more prominently feature products that are more profitable for Amazon, including its own in-house brands.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-changed-search-algorithm-in-ways-that-boost-its-own-products-11568645345

Btw, Aliexpress is doing it much longer and the more valuable customer you are - the worse offers (for your side!) they will present. And contrary to Amazon they will entirely remove best offers from search result.

Since opening in September 2018, Amazon’s massive fulfillment center on New York’s Staten Island has garnered a reputation as grueling and unsafe, even among a logistics network broadly criticized as such. Now, leaked company documents reveal that injury rates at the warehouse, known as JFK8, are over three times the industry average. What’s unclear is if these numbers are at all anomalous compared to Amazon’s other facilities.

https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-amazons-own-numbers-reveal-staggering-injury-1840025032

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Communications Workers of America, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, Service Employees International Union, and Change to Win submit this Petition requesting that the Federal Trade Commission initiate an investigation of Amazon.com, Inc., pursuant to the agency’s powers under Section 6(b) of the Federal Trade Commission Act. Amazon’s multiple roles as marketplace, retailer, and logistics and cloud computing provider enable and incentivize its anti-competitive practices, and the company’s dominance allows it to squeeze profit from and reduce choice among workers, consumers, merchants, and competitors. The legality of Amazon’s practices, the scope of its power, and the adequacy of existing regulation have prompted investigations by regulators around the world, but in many instances the company has responded to these investigations insufficiently or refused to respond entirely. As a result, many of Amazon’s most concerning practices remain opaque.

Petitioners call on the FTC to launch an investigation of Amazon’s anti-competitive behavior.

http://www.changetowin.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Petition-for-Investigation-of-Amazon.pdf

It is long time overdue.

2020 must become year of attack on Amazon. And beginning of its fall.