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Comment by subhro | Hacker News Reader

Good points. But, with Amazon taking the lion’s share of online sales, how much of delivery is left outside of Amazon?

I am not advocating for Amazon, just wondering if this move is sustainable for the employees while Amazon gets (theoretically) strong armed.

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What is online sales worth when products can't be delivered?

It takes some time, but things will balance. If Amazon is not able to get the product to the consumers, the consumer will leave for the competition that is a bit more expensive, but can.

I've thought along those lines as well. I don't know if this helps clarify, but I did learn, for example, FedEx is actually quite strong without Amazon: "Last year [2018], Amazon accounted for 1.3 percent of FedEx’s total revenue." https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/07/business/fedex-amazon-shi...

Amazon always shunned FedEx (used them as an option of last resort) because, unlike UPS, they refused to make changes that would be short-term beneficial but make their future outlook dependent on the whims of their biggest client.

If they "sell" 20,000 cheap knockoffs smartphones, but no one ships them, did they really sell them?

Shipping is crucial to Amazon's business model. The last mile problem is the vulnerable jugular of the e-commerce industry

Do you have the money still?

Legally yes. Amazon isn't entitled to money for products they don't deliver.

Even if 1% of the customers fail to demand a refund, this is profitable

If Amazon sells something they know they can't deliver, if even 0.1% of affected customers start pressing for fraud charges this becomes very unprofitable

>Shipping is crucial to Amazon's business model. The last mile problem is the vulnerable jugular of the e-commerce industry

This is also why dock-workers unions have historically been very powerful.

https://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/etd/ucb/text/FoxHodes...

If Amazon's deal is bad and nobody else offers delivery work, companies will just leave the delivery business. Neither the equipment nor the skill set is highly specialized, so switching to something more profitable is comparatively easy.

If you have the skills and/or capital to do that, yes. I suspect a lot of delivery companies enter into this deal because it's a way to get up and running, and earning money, quickly, without a whole lot of capital or expertise. The downside of doing this is that your beholden to Amazon. The downside of not doing this is that you might not have a job.

I'm certainly not defending Amazon in any way, but trying to understand why so many people are in this position, and this seems like a reasonable explanation.

Unfortunately, I have no idea what the answer might be, except that no one is going to like it in the short term.

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