This worked as of 21:30 Eastern time on 6 December 2024.
Openly promoting the fact that they underpay their drivers, for a limited time.
Asking honestly, respectfully, and in good faith - is there a downside to doing this? Edit: I mean, is there a downside to rewarding the driver via this promotion.
Yes, it undermines the idea that drivers deserve a living wage and is just Amazon dipping their toes into shifting their drivers into something closer to ‘ride share’ style independent contractors who primarily get their income from tips.
Short term benefit for long term problems.
I mean, 100% the drivers should be being paid more and the entire system is fundamentally broken.
In the here and now though, where I can’t do anything to fix anything even if I entirely stop using Amazon forever right this moment, giving someone a random $5 that they wouldn’t otherwise have is a good thing.
Yea if you’re going to use a bad service might as well help while you can. It’s like going to a restaurant then not tipping because it encourages owners. They don’t give a fuck cause they still get your money
Short term benefit for long term problems.
slippery slope fallacy
Clicking a button that gives someone money at no expense to you isn’t causing the issue you’re worried about, it’s at worst symptomatic of the broken system that might lead to your concern.
Not all slippery slopes are fallacies.
Ever notice that all the counter service places are leaning into tipping because it became popular with coffee shops?
Sure. And if Amazon ever asks us to tip delivery people with our own money we shouldn’t because that’s bullshit.
That being bullshit has no bearing on if it’s good to click the button that gives someone $5 at no expense to you out of their employers pocket.
If a counter service place has a button I could press to give them $5 of the stores money, I would press it every time. That’s not a tip because it’s not my money supplementing the employees wages.
Then give the tip in person. Don’t let amazon know they can count on their customers to carry the burden of paying their employees
Oh God no, then it’s actually me paying the money, which makes it an actual tip.
If Amazon asks if they should pay someone more, the answer is always yes.That’s fair too. I’ll be honest I’m always going to be pessimistic as hell when it comes to anything amazon says and does. If it’s their money, make them pay up
Technically youre right, but would you say the same if Putin started handing out band-aids to ukrainians who just lost their families?
… What? That’s such a non-sequitor that I’m honestly not sure if you replied to the wrong thing or something.
I can’t say that I would say the same thing in an entirely different situation with nothing to do with the other.
Its a similar situation. You ‘cant do anything about anything’ and handing out band-aids is ‘better than nothing’. Would ‘giving someone a band-aid is a good thing’ be your stance in that situation or would you find it rather inappropriate?
They’re not similar situations at all. For one, it’s an absurd difference in scale. Whatever your opinions of Amazon delivery driver working conditions and pay, it’s in no way comparable to “an invading army murdered their family”.
Second, whether or not I should push a button to give someone $5 with no obligation on their part is a different situation from getting a bandaid for a murdered family on the whim of the responsible party.
If you could push a button and a random person somewhere in the world gets $1 million, would you push the button?
Plenty of untipped jobs are seen as being undeserving of a living wage, though, so I don’t follow your logic.
The downside is that it costs Amazon $5.00.
You don’t even know if this is really giving money to anyone, let alone the driver for your delivery.
But it doesn’t cost you anything. Worst case scenario is the same as not doing it.
That’s only a downside if you’re an Amazon executive or shareholder. To a human being, it isn’t.
I don’t know if a scrappy lil startup like Amazon can handle it.
Amazon has lots of money and they can easily afford this PR/marketing promotion that they choose to do. Amazon drivers work hard and deserve to be paid fairly for their work. Even though this is just marketing it still results in the drivers getting more money so if you order something from Amazon you might as well do it at every opportunity you get.
“Yes, we could be paying our drivers an extra 5 dollars, we just choose not to, lol.”
Why would they do it if they can have you do it?
You’re not paying, you’re clicking a button to have Amazon give $5 of their money to the driver.
They could have just given a bunch of drivers $5, but then they wouldn’t make a bunch of customers think Amazon isn’t too bad.So you should push the button, but also pointedly continue to think badly of Amazon.
This is normalizing tipping drivers and pretty soon it will be expected. Resist this enshittification.
If you’re this principled you should be boycotting Amazon anyway. If you’re not, give the driver $5 if it costs you nothing.
Expected? They’ll make it mandatory, and then lower the amount of wages they pay their drivers, pointing to the tips as justification.
100%.
It’s to mentally condition you when it WILL cost.
It’s not a tip. Amazon is giving them the cash not you. It’s more like a bonus
For now
If the future brings about a shift where delivery corporations reduce costs by outsourcing employee pay to the working class, then we must opt out of delivery companies bringing products to your door.
There will be a return of brick and mortar retail, or an opportunity for corporations to enter the market with new drive up delivery lockers where you can pick your shit up through a drive through window - McPackage (not sexual).
If there’s one slightly good thing about capitalism, it’s the blood-thirsty competition. Some corporation wants your money, and they’re gonna do what they can to capture the market and get your money. Drive up package pickup sounds really cool for a $79 annual subscription (until it eventually enshittifies). I’d love minimising the time I need to be home, the concern of missing a delivery, a porch pirate stealing a package, something getting damaged or lost in transit, etc.
Edit: I’m aware you can pay for P.O. Boxes and parcel lockers from delivery companies, but they will become anachronistic. Expensive monthly fees, small lockers, and inconvenient because you have to find parking at your strip mall, walk in, wade through people, and get your stuff from a small area. I can see drive up package pickup (McPackage) taking off if tipping your delivery drivers becomes the norm.
If there’s one slightly good thing about capitalism, it’s the blood-thirsty competition. Some corporation wants your money, and they’re gonna do what they can to capture the market and get your money. Drive up package pickup sounds really cool for a $79 annual subscription (until it eventually enshittifies).
It’s already enshittified. It’s a store. What you are describing is a store.
People have already forgotten this, but in the beforetimes you used to be able to go to a store and they would actually have a selection of products. Like, in stock. You could go to Radio Shack or CompUSA or Circuit City or even Best Buy and get whatever tech gizmo, hobby component, computer part, cable, or whatever it was you needed. Right then and there. And they would have it. All of it. No waiting. No shipping. You could even pay with cash. And you didn’t need a goddamned subscription.
Or you could go to Sears and get just about any fucking thing. Or K-Mart.
Nowadays retail is so damn transient because “everything is online,” so even major retailers don’t keep wide swathes of product in stock and expect you to just buy it from their web site. And worse, what they do have in store is always super scarce, which I’m positive they do on purpose to increase your urgency to buy whatever they do have now, because if you come back tomorrow it’ll probably be gone and out of stock forever.
As someone who doesn’t shop online anymore and a really goes to brick and mortar, the stock is dwindling OR you can actually sure the garbage they are trying to sell. I’ve just not bought things so many times because I can actually see the poor quality up front.
It’s really maddening, isn’t it? I went in to Autozone the other day fully prepared to pay 3x the online price for a coil pack for the vehicle I was working on in order to have it now. Autozone claimed they had it in stock on their web site, at the location I went to.
They didn’t have it. Their only response was that they could order it – at their full retail price – and have it from the “hub” on their next shipment in three days.
Even with the Hyper Mega Priority Next Day Select Plus Ultra shipping option, it was $80 cheaper to get it from RockAuto and I had it the next day, which wasn’t ideal but still better than Autozone’s bullshit.
I didn’t expect the brick and mortar retail location to compete with online stores on price. I was absolutely willing to pay a ridiculous premium to have that part right then, when I needed it. But what I got was the worst of both worlds: The insulting price, but still no availability. This is because bean counting idiots have decided it’s cheaper to make their inventory “lean” and keep as little as possible of it in stock. And apparently they keep their staff lean, too, because no brain cells were available to notice that a ~$180 component in a box about a foot and a half long was no longer on the shelf even though the computer said it was.
And motherfuckers wonder why retail is dying. Um, yes, that would be because retailers ruined it.
Correct, that’s why my comment also mentions the return of brick and mortar. I’m aware of retail stores and how they used to operate, having worked retail for years while I did school
It’s costs a lot to store unsold inventory. It costs a lot to ship it from store to store to try to get it to sell (based on their inventory metrics they want to place that product in stores that will be able to sell that product). Not all stores carry enough (or at all) of the item you want to buy. Brick and mortar could return, but we still have that problem of stocking stores.
I proposed an option I could see happening if it somehow became the norm to tip your delivery drivers. Maybe we would see drive thru pickup services.
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…that’s just shipping cost? you already pay extra for that.
To add to this; the shipping costs of “free shipping” Chinese webshops are paid by the Universal Postal Union (UPU) because China is considered a 3rd world country and it’s a way of helping them. For bigger local webshops, the costs of cheap or “free shipping” are mostly because they get a bulk discount and move the shipping cost into their profit margins. (That’s why it’s minimum $20 for example). So even with free shipping, shipping costs are always being paid, and the deliverers should be able to get paid a fair wage.
Tipping somebody that is just doing their job is stupid. One should tip because somebody doing their job did more than their job, or because you want to lessen the workload, like rounding up for convenience.
I would argue that shopping for a person is different than straight delivery. Depending on the shopping, I could be convinced that tipping could be appropriate.
The least you could do is type correctly so the rest of us don’t have to waste time reading your last sentence three times to work out what the hell you mean
just advertisment for Amazon - now people will talk about them and share this ad on social media :/
Exactly. I never would’ve heard of this country if not for the stupid promotion. Now I’m going to spend their $5
Is there an option for “Request Amazon to pay drivers decently and improve working conditions?”
Nope, just a “illegally suppress unions” button.
“At no cost to you… for now”
For some time now I’ve been very successful at not buying anything from Amazon.
yeah, I only use it for bullshit now, like 200 mini plastic ducks I can leave all around work
If you’re willing to wait 2 weeks for shipping (with an added shipping cost of $0.40) you can just order that stuff directly from Aliexpress and cut out the middle man.
you know what, honestly, youre right
for bullshit like that i should
theyre taking two weeks to ship anyways 🙄
I’ve been considering this as my New Years Resolution. I’m ashamed that I might be too weak to go through with it. The convenience is just so…manipulative and infantilizing. I am perfectly capable of buying anything I need from a physical store front.
Yeah, buying from physical stores also helps your local economy. Otherwise there’s eBay and Aliexe (spelling?)
Try sorting results by ‘price low to high’ and then watch as it completely ignores you - no - laughs in your fucking face - as it gives you results in whatever goddamn order it so desires.
It might make it easier to give it up if you can fully realize that Amazon is now 100% in the business of fucking you over.
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
If you need something you can still search for it using Google. Sometimes manufacturers even have lists of companies who sell their stuff. You can buy from some other retailer.
And if Amazon is a lot cheaper or the only option, then you suck it up to living in a fully-evolved capitalistic hell scape and buy it from Bezos.
Yeah, my husband and I stopped using Amazon years ago, and this is what we did. You can just Google anything you need to buy and then order it straight from the manufacturer.
This year I did dip my toe back into Amazon because I discovered we get a free Prime account through our cell phone provider, but I only use it for when I need something guaranteed delivery by a certain date. For everything else, I just go to a store’s web site.
I usually completely forget I even have an account when I’m searching for stuff I need to buy.
Can any driver confirm they get the extra pay?
Or is this just propaganda to make the buyer feel good?
Don’t think it worked for me 😞
That sucks. I wonder if 3rd party drivers can’t participate or if there are regional limitations?
My guess is the funds have dried up already for this year.
The first 2 million thank-yous given will include $5 to the delivery driver at no cost to the customer. After that, customers can continue to thank their driver via the feature all year round, and drivers are able to see the number of times they are thanked within their app.
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/transportation/alexa-thank-my-driver-feature
Just worked for me
Worked for me
And me just now.
Worked for me and then immediately after my boyfriend tried and he got the same message as the most recent posted screenshot
Looks like USPS delivered items are not eligible for the $5.00
Makes sense. Amazon won’t know who your regular postie is.
Possibly? I think my last delivery was via USPS which might not be able to qualify since they’re government employees.
Shame I refuse to use Amazon. I’ll pay more to get it somewhere else.
Aww, that’s sweet, Bezos is paying these personally, right?
Right??
Cool but in all seriousness try not using amazon and using ethical alternatives if you can afford it.
Been using ebay more and I like it. Although one of my previous ebay order went through Amazon because the asshole seller just purchased it in amazon and sent it to me. They profited what? $2
Ive had some really bad problems with eBay and is actually why I went back to amazon.
One item was taking a long time to ship with no label made, I contacted the seller and told me that things were super busy in Japan. I gave him the benefit of a doubt and I checked in another month later, I asked him just to refund it, h but he kept delaying and eventually I just tried to go to eBay customer service. THERE IS NO CUSTOMER SERVICE. There are only automated menus for you to click through for different options, and since at this point it was longer than 3 months I couldn’t do anything to get a refund, despite zero evidence of shipping being provided.
I have had to refund some stuff from amazon from time to time and a couple other issues, but those are always sorted promptly, especially after speaking to customer service. The complete lack of any human to speak to on ebay gives me zero confidence buying from there.
I got scammed on a gpu once. It was a too good to be true listing and the seller only had like 1 review and yet I still bought it. Contacted ebay and they refunded me fairly quickly.
I think you can use Amazon as a distributor if you are keeping your inventory at their warehouses. They handle all the logistics. It‘s called „fulfilment by amazon“.
Worked for me
I thought this was a shitpost but I tried it and it worked. What a weird way to hide a tip.
Amazon drivers (the ones in budget or Amazon cans, not flex in personal cars) do okish. I just quit working for a third party company Amazon uses to shield them from liability and unions because it’s miserable work but the pay was $22.50 which isn’t too bad. The workload is crazy, it’s all rush rush rush, and they don’t care about you at all though so fuck them and Amazon. The drivers would appreciate the tip, they’re generally hardworking and decent people.
My friend delivered for Amazon for awhile and he had a regular delivery of 50 pounds of dog food that he had to carry up several flights of stairs. I was thinking about him, and all the times in my life when an unexpected fiver would have been useful, so I’m glad you commented.
Your comment reads like you wrote it bouncing down a bumpy road and had to post it quick before you went off the cliff.
Ha, sounds like you might have delivered in rural areas like I did.
IIRC when Amazon Fresh was a thing, they were encouraging tips, but they were caught using the tips to cover some of the hourly wages.
Texas schools need $X funding. The Texas Lottery was meant to add $Y dollars to education. The lottery was sold to the public as meaning schools would be funded to the tune of $(X + Y) each year.
Instead, the state funds $(X - Y). Instead of supplementing education funds, the lottery supplants it. And it’s the exact same thing with tipping culture.
(I’d bet this is how most state lotteries which fund education operate.)
Chiming in to say it’s the same in VA. I’m reasonably confident it’s the same everywhere.
