Amazon is pausing a controversial plan to redistribute its fleet of delivery vans after encountering widespread resistance from its delivery service partners that operate them. These partners lease the vans from a fleet manager selected by Amazon and are contractually obligated to pay for repairs before returning them to the company for redeployment (of which they have no option to say no), and participants say they have been hit with surprise bills totaling tens of thousands of dollars.
Some delivery service providers say the high repair bills have been impacting their profitability, but that they have no ability to challenge them without risking that Amazon cancel their contracts. Several company owners have chosen to close down or declare bankruptcy because they couldn't afford the repair costs.
So let's get this straight:
- Delivery service providers are independent operators.
- However they have to lease their vans from whoever Amazon tells them to.
- They have to pay for repairs themselves, even though they couldn't select more reliable vehicles.
- They have to use an Amazon-supplied app to receive repair estimates, which partners say are unreliable.
- Then they have to pay surprise bills after the estimates prove to have been wildly inaccurate because they have no ability to get repairs done at the facility of their choosing.
- And to make matters even worse, partners never know when Amazon will demand up to 10 of their vehicles be reassigned to another company or shifted into a rental fleet, while still leaving them responsible for the repair costs.
This one turned out to be so ridiculous that even Amazon recognized it! Well, partly…
In a forum post last week, an Amazon representative said the company would suspend all pickups of vehicles for repair prior to redeploying them while it examines the complaints. Nice move, but too little too late for the delivery service providers that already went out of business over the matter.
An Amazon spokesperson later told WSJ that the company encourages delivery service providers to dispute incorrect invoices and has identified issues with how the app made estimates that were incorrectly passed on to a partner, and later, Amazon said that delivery service providers would receive a temporary 20% discount for repairs.
How about instead you let them truly operate as independent service providers and buy / operate / repair / sell their vehicles as they see fit?
It's one thing to say, “Hey partners, your cars need to prominently display the Amazon logo, as well as be clean and presentable at all times on routes.”
It's another thing to say, “We can take your cars at a moment's notice, and you're responsible for repairs, and you have to use this shady mechanic who gives shitty estimates and then surprises you with huge bills.”
At this point, nothing Amazon does really surprises me anymore though.