A recent report claims that Amazon’s delivery service partners are going into debt and face seemingly instant termination of their contract if they fail to follow every guideline handed down from the Masters of the Universe. One small business owner who had his contract canceled said: “I am a pimple on the butt of an elephant when it comes to Amazon.”
Vice News reports that Amazon delivery contractors are increasingly finding themselves in tens of thousands of dollars of debt working for the e-commerce giant. Vice News spoke to a Boston delivery contractor going by the name of “Jim” to protect his anonymity.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos during the JFK Space Summit at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, Wednesday, June 19, 2019. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Jim operated a fleet of 30 Amazon delivery vans in the Boston area. One day he received a call from Amazon’s corporate offices in Seattle from a representative who told Jim that his contract to deliver packages was now terminated.
Jim told Vice News: “There were no rumors, no business coach saying, ‘Hey you need to plan for this.’ Nothing. This would be like someone walking into your business and shutting it down and saying we don’t care, you can sue us. I am a pimple on the butt of an elephant when it comes to Amazon.”
Jim had moved from the Midwest to Boston in March 2020 to open a last-mile delivery firm. Amazon’s Delivery Service Partner program advertises that its partners can expert to make up to $300,000 annual profit with an initial investment of as little as $10,000. Jim had almost 20 years of experience working in the Midwest for package delivery firm Airborne Express and felt well equipped to run a delivery firm.
“My sons and I went to follow the American Dream to be a small business,” he said of his decision to start an Amazon delivery company. “I took a leap with Amazon.” Running an Amazon delivery business during the coronavirus lockdown was demanding and added extra complications. For instance, Amazon required all packages be hand-delivered to customers or the driver would receive an infraction.
Jim commented: “Basically we were risking our own lives to deliver Amazon packages. In most places, you are able to go to a front door, take a photo, mark it delivered, and leave. In the city of Boston, if a driver did not give it to a person, he was written up. It took a lot of extra time to contact the customer, wait, and redeliver. We delivered 3 million packages that year.”
Now, Jim is facing bankruptcy, a terrible credit score, and the possibility of losing his house. Vice News spoke to three other Amazon deliver-service partner owners in California, Georgia, and Oregon who stated that Amazon’s delivery service partner program had destroyed their life savings during the pandemic and put them into hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt.
Read more at Vice News here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com