Amazon Reveals New On-Demand Delivery Service
Amazon is all set to join the 'gig' economy as per the Wall Street Journal.
Amazon.com is launching its new service by the name of Amazon Flex which is a delivery service today in Seattle. The American retailer will be using independent contractors and will be paying them $18 to $25 per hour delivering products to Amazon Prime users. These independent drivers will be using their own cars and phones to communicate with the people and to deliver their products.
Amazon Flex, as per its website, has posted the amount they will be giving to these independent drivers, they will be able to work in either 2, 4 or 8 shifts and they can sign up for that via the company’s website. This service is quite similar to that of Postmates that allow carriers
To differentiate its service from its competitors, at present, Amazon employees will be delivering goods that are being sold on its website. This service is only available for Prime Users for now as they pay an annual fee to have better and faster delivery of items that they pick from Amazon’s marketplace online. This service costs the customers $99 annually; it also gives the customers an option of a two day free delivery of goods. The customers can choose from a variety of 20 million items on the retailer marketplace.
Currently, the Flex service is available in Seattle but the company has stated that it is likely to roll out soon in New York, Dallas, Baltimore, Atlanta, Portland, Chicago and Miami. Although, the American retailer has not made San Francisco its testbed like its rivals did earlier. Since San Francisco is a small market and an easier target, mostly of Amazon’s competitors such as Uber and Shyp launched their service there first and also because they are a number of adopters with a lot of cash.
With its new service, now the retail company controls its own shipping and delivery experience while before the company for orders placed on Amazon Prime, was relying on external shipping and deliverers for their Prime packages. The Wall Street Journal said that the people making the deliveries will be contractors and therefore will not be full-time employees of the company, so that could be a drawback for the workers as well.
The Senior Vice President, Dave Clark said that through this service they have created many opportunities for people to work with the company as there are a number of people who want to work in an on-demand fashion. A Piper Jaffray analyst stated that the service provided by the company of same-day and same hour delivery has the potential to create a completely new retail segment to Amazon “the instant gratification market”.
