The attorney general of Washington, D.C., filed a lawsuit against Amazon on Wednesday, alleging that the firm secretly denied citizens in specific ZIP codes in the nation’s capital access to Prime’s lightning-fast delivery service.
AG’s lawsuit According to Brian Schwalb, since 2022, Amazon has surreptitiously charged Prime customers who reside in two historically underserved D.C. ZIP codes the entire subscription fee while excluding them from its fast delivery option. Benefits of Amazon’s Prime membership program, which costs $139 annually, include streaming content access and two-day shipping.
According to a statement from Schwalb, Amazon is charging tens of thousands of diligent residents of Wards 7 and 8 for an expedited delivery service that it claims to offer but does not deliver. Amazon is free to alter its operations, but it cannot secretly determine that a dollar in one zip code is worth less than a dollar in anything other.
Steve Kelly, a spokesman for Amazon, stated in a statement that the claims that its business methods are dishonest or discriminatory are completely untrue.
Kelly stated in a statement that while we want to be able to deliver as quickly as possible to every zip code in the nation, we also need to prioritize the safety of delivery drivers. Drivers delivering Amazon packages have been the target of targeted and specific acts in the aforementioned zip codes. For the express purpose of ensuring driver safety, we consciously decided to modify our operations, including delivery routes and schedules.
According to Kelly, Amazon has agreed to collaborate with the AG’s office on initiatives aimed at enhancing safety and lowering crime in certain communities.
According to the lawsuit, Amazon reportedly ceased using its own delivery vehicles to transport products in the ZIP codes 20019 and 20020 in June 2022 due to worries about driver safety. The complaint, filed in D.C. Superior Court, claims that the corporation depended on outside carriers, such as UPS and the U.S. Postal Service, to make deliveries instead of its own in-house delivery network.
According to the lawsuit, even though residents in certain ZIP codes paid the same membership fee for Prime, the choice resulted in noticeably longer delivery times than their neighbors in other District ZIP codes.
Before Amazon implemented the adjustment, over 72% of Prime packages in the two ZIP areas were delivered within two days of checkout, according to data from the AG. After the change, two-day delivery rates in the district rose to 74%, whereas that percentage fell to as low as 24%.
Disparities in Amazon’s Prime program have been the subject of previous complaints. After a Bloomberg investigation revealed that Black people were only roughly half as likely as white residents to be eligible for same-day delivery, the firm said in 2016 that it would increase access to same-day delivery in areas like Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, and Washington.
According to statistics from the 2022 Census’s American Community Survey, the ZIP codes in Schwalb’s complaint are located in regions with sizable Black populations.
In June 2023, the Federal Trade Commission also filed a lawsuit against Amazon, alleging that the corporation used so-called dark patterns—deceptive design strategies intended to influence users toward a certain option—to deceive customers into signing up for Prime and thwart their attempts to unsubscribe. According to Amazon, the complaint was untrue in terms of the law and the facts. The trial is scheduled for June 2025.
Scwalb’s case claims that Amazon never informed local Prime subscribers of the shipping ban. According to the lawsuit, Amazon claimed that slower delivery times were caused by uncontrollable factors when customers in the impacted ZIP areas complained to the firm about them.
Amazon is accused of breaking the district’s consumer protection rules in the case. In addition, it requests that the court stop Amazon’s dishonest behavior and impose penalties and damages.
Amazon uses a network of gig workers who deliver packages from their own cars as part of its Flex program, as well as carriers like USPS, UPS, and FedEx. Amazon’s contracted delivery companies are typically identified by their Amazon-branded cargo vans.
In an effort to reduce delivery times from two days to one day or even a few hours, Amazon has quickly grown its internal logistics force in recent years. According to the corporation, it delivered over 5 billion products in a single day in July, setting a record for the quickest Prime delivery speeds in the first half of the year.
Amazon now has more control over its delivery operations as it is using its own employees.
Schwalb’s complaint references an internal corporate guideline that states that if a driver encounters violence, intimidation, or harassment, Amazon may decide to bar certain locations from its internal delivery network. Package delivery in excluded areas is handled by UPS or USPS.
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