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Amazon shortchanged drivers $61.7M in tips
- peteretep 6y ago> (Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post) Maybe it's only a veneer of independence, but I like that WashPo is reporting on this.
- nerpderp82 6y agoI came for the, "ha ha hah ha!". I know, did Bezos just pay for "street cred" for his WaPo? If the same writer follows up with, "Space Wenis, retirement project for Bezos to see new heights" then I know that the WaPo is an independent journalistic organization.
- eli 6y agoJeff Bezos isn't reviewing or approving articles in the Washington Post. It's as independent from its ownership as any media organization.
- peteretep 6y ago> It's as independent from its ownership as any media organization You forgot the words “should be” at the end there; most media organisations are very far from editorially independent from their owners.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- peteretep 6y ago> The FTC alleges Amazon changed the way it paid drivers in late 2016, lowering the hourly rate and then used customer tips to make up the difference. Amazon continued to tell drivers they were receiving all of their tips, even after receiving hundreds of complaints from drivers, the agency said. How is this not simply theft? Why does this attract civil charges and not criminal ones?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- darwinwhy 6y ago> when Amazon steals $62 million from its employees it's "misrepresenting drivers' tips", when Amazon employees steal $130,000 of products from Amazon it's a "theft ring" ~ https://twitter.com/CitationsPod/status/1356779651885133825 https://twitter.com/CitationsPod/status/1356779651885133825
- jdavis703 6y agoIt’s not considered a big crime because crime is largely a social construct. For example the news is happy to hype stories about recurring car break ins, but is then quiet about wage theft and other white collar crimes.
- potiuper 6y ago"Law precludes the agency from additionally fining the company." Does it also preclude criminal charges? This still seems to be theft of interest.
- shkkmo 6y agoAfaik, the FTC is a civil agency and if criminal charges are warranted another agency handles bringing charges.
- xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago>This still seems to be theft of interest. Forget "theft of interest", it's just plain theft. A thief doesn't get to apologize, give back what they stole, and then walk away. If you or I committed theft on this scale we'd be in prison for decades.
- fireeyed 6y agoThis is why I tip in cash. Instacart, Doordash & Amazon peas in a pod when it comes to stealing tips from hourly wage earners.
- naebother 6y agoAlways tip cash. > Amazon agreed to pay the regulator $61.7 million, the amount the FTC claims the company shorted its drivers in tips over a 2½ year period. Can the common man also get this kind of generous treatment from the law - just pay back what you stole and move on?
- lostlogin 6y agoThe article mentions that the payment goes to the drivers, which is better than it just going to the FTC. It’s unlikely that the drivers are a rich bunch, the stolen money and interest with a penalty percentage would seem a minimum reasonable penalty.
- nerpderp82 6y agoI'll gotten gains need to be fined at some integer multiple >= 2.
- josefx 6y agoThat just means they have to get away with it two out of three times. Make it >= 50 and add in some jail time for whoever signed of on it.
- xirbeosbwo1234 6y agoThis is grand larceny thousands of times over. An appropriate minimum penalty is fifteen years in prison for Bezos and anyone else in on the conspiracy.
- bagacrap 6y agothe legal fees and reputational damage make it not exactly free
- monster_group 6y agoStill a lot better than going to prison for multiple years which is what common man would face for stealing.
- ryanwhitney 6y agoPrevious: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26003836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26003836 I appreciated samizdis’ comment, which I’ll just copy in full: FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra has also put out a statement [1], titled Regarding the Deception of Delivery Drivers by Amazon.com Commission File No. 1923123 Some extracts: > In total, Amazon stole nearly one-third of drivers’ tips to pad its own bottom line. ... > ... Amazon executives chose not to alter the practice, instead viewing drivers’ complaints as a “PR risk,” which they sought to contain through deception. ... > Today’s order provides substantial redress to the families victimized by Amazon’s anticompetitive deception. However, this cannot be the only action we take to protect workers and families from dominant middlemen. ... > I also agree with Acting Chairwoman Slaughter and Commissioner Phillips that preying on workers justifies punitive measures far beyond the restitution provided here, and I believe the FTC should act now to deploy dormant authorities to trigger civil penalties and other relief in cases like this one. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements/1587003/20200102_final_rchopra_statement_v2.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements...
- 0goel0 6y agoI am truly amazed that the world's (top, second?) richest man runs a company that cleared $7.2 billion during a global pandemic year, but had to steal $62m to make its books look clean. Whoever participated this should lose their jobs, and be prosecuted. Really scummy move!
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y agoTheir whole business is based on testing the limits of how much you can squeeze out of people using the very advantage of being a huge company.
- imgabe 6y agoJust do away with tips. It's a terrible and stupid system. If you want to do it as a customer, go ahead, but it should never be considered as part of the employee's compensation. If people aren't willing to do the job for the hourly wage alone with no tips, raise the wage until they are.
- Noos 6y agoI'm sure famously low margin, high risk places like restaurants can easily raise employee wages anywhere form 2 to 6 fold. As I said downthread, all a restaurant has to pay is $2.13 an hour if they make enough tips to earn an effective wage of over $7.25 an hr in a week. That's $290 a week for 40 hours of work pretax. For a tech comparison look at Amazon's Mechanical Turk. It probably is closer to the $2.13 minimum wage in practice than the $7.25 one for what I hear. Now imagine they had to raise what they paid to make sure its an effective $15 an hour based on spending an hour. You think it would still exist? Would you pay that much? Or is it's value proposition precisely because you can pay them shit wages overall?
- boulos 6y agoTo be clear, in California the tipped minimum wage is at least $13/hr state wide (and $14/hr for businesses with 25 employees or more). I believe in San Francisco, it’s also just strictly the same as minimum wage of $16.07/hr (and again for larger businesses, Healthy SF medical coverage is also mandatory [Edit: actually, providing coverage is, not Healthy SF, that’s just the cheapest coverage and so very common], and usually passed onto patrons as a 4% fee on their bill, though this isn’t dictated by statute). So your universe already exists: every restaurant in the state of California already ensures a minimum wage more than 6x the federal minimum.
- etchalon 6y agoAnd … California still has restaurants? I'm told that's impossible. Raising the minimum wage will cause all businesses to close.
- viburnum 6y agoThe word is “stole”
- notananthem 6y agoStole.. Amazon stole $62M from employees
- Cyclone_ 6y agoKind of weird that the law prevents the agency from additionally charging the company. If you screw someone over, why should you not pay them some extra compensation for the trouble they've gone through?
- ilaksh 6y agoIf Bezos knew about this then he should be held responsible for theft on a massive scale. At some point, the legal system has to stop protecting worker exploitation. These types of things should be criminal matters.
- dannyw 6y agoThe legal system is designed to protect the ruling class, with a thin veneer of justice. The system is working as intended.
- msiyer 6y agoIs this is what is known as trickle-down economy? Down and up being perspectives, I am happy to announce that the system works.
- slumpt_ 6y agoFunny word, shortchanged. “Amazon stole 61.7M in tips from their own drivers.” That’s better.
- wscott 6y ago"The government decided it should just be a loan instead."
- mullingitover 6y agoI would love to see the federal minimum wage exemptions for tipped workers removed. We're all of course going to roast Amazon for this unethical practice, but thousands upon thousands of businesses operate the same skimming operation on tipped workers in states that allow it.
- neilv 6y agoOne of the few things in 2020 that I felt good about was being able to tip the Amazon Fresh delivery drivers. Now I hear that those essential workers, who helped save me and my neighbors from Covid, were getting cheated out of tips, intentionally, by higher-ups at Amazon. And I'm guessing the money meant a lot more to someone who's delivering groceries in a pandemic, than it does to a trillion-dollar corporation. And presumably the higher-ups knew that. Making the drivers whole, and expressing contrition, seems like repaying maybe 10-fold the amount stolen, plus interest, is a start. That's from the corporate side, but corrective action shouldn't stop there. Are we going to see a criminal investigation, and possible charges against individuals who knew what was going on, yet didn't correct or report it?
- billynomates111 6y agoThe solution is to stop using Amazon products. The company is hugely exploitative in many ways - we should stop being surprised and just spend our money elsewhere.
- sitkack 6y agoCrimes need to be handled by the justice system. That is part of the a-solution for people that use Amazon and want to feel better about themselves. But when corporations commit crimes, the people inside responsible need to face justice, not just making whole the harm they have done. These are real crimes and need to be punished. A few people voting with their dollars does nothing.
- billynomates111 6y agoOf course, but in my opinion you have no right to complain about how a company behaves if you're aware of how they behave and continue to give them your money. In addition, a lot of the terrible stuff Amazon does is not illegal but still reprehensible.
- sitkack 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- salamanderman 6y agoStay classy, Amazon
- baby 6y agoIf you’re in San Francisco there are a lot of restaurants that do not accept tips. Check Zazie, for example. But there are a bunch of lists out there. If you are tipping, you are part of the problem.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- EnderWT 6y agoThe biggest part of the story to me is that Amazon is not paying a single cent in fines. They are only paying the amount owed to the drivers. It's a shame a company can get away with this without facing a penalty.
- simonh 6y agohe FTC chairman said this about the ruling, and it looks like they are pushing forward with punitive measures as well: > Today’s order provides substantial redress to the families victimized by Amazon’s anticompetitive deception. However, this cannot be the only action we take to protect workers and families from dominant middlemen. ...
- worik 6y agoI stopped using Amazon a decade ago. So I cannot boycot the rotters
- underseacables 6y agoWhen you think tipping, remember it’s origins in feudal Europe, and American slavery. “the Pullman Company, which hired newly freed African American men as porters. Rather than paying them a real wage, Pullman provided the black porters with just a meager pittance, forcing them to rely on tips from their white clientele for most of their pay.” https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/07/17/william-barber-tipping-racist-past-227361 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/07/17/william-b...
- akira2501 6y agoI'm not sure that its fair to claim that tipping has origins in American Slavery. In the Pullman case, the workers eventually formed the first major African American union and successfully won better pay from the railroads, in 1918. There's also Wikipedia's suggestion that tipping as a way to make up for lower wages as a wider practice came about as a result of Prohibitions effect on Hotels and Restaurants. [1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratuity#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratuity#History
- lopegwapo 6y agoffs, the whole discussion just went on a tangent around tipping culture wherein the real issue here is about stealing. customer transacted that money for the driver, but it was used elsewhere. that's the issue here not tipping.
- 0goel0 6y agoI don't think gig economy is working for the hard-working workers. We were doing Instacart delivery of groceries until we found out that they punished workers for demanding -- get this -- a livable wage and common decency [0][1]. Doordash has been caught stealing tips too [2]. All of them (Uber, Lyft etc) spent $200m to ensure that their workers would not get a living wage and health benefits [3]. With every passing month, I'm realizing that the gig economy works only when the worker class is exploited, and the exploitation is opaque from the customer. [0] Instacart can go f*ck itself - we'll go pick up our own groceries. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/21/instacart-is-eliminating-the-jobs-of-unionized-workers/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/21/instacart-is-eliminating-t... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/nyregion/doordash-tip-policy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/nyregion/doordash-tip-pol... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_22
- sampo 6y ago> I don't think gig economy is working for the hard-working workers. We were doing Instacart delivery of groceries until we found out that they punished workers for demanding -- get this -- a livable wage and common decency [0][1]. Doordash has been caught stealing tips too [2]. All of them (Uber, Lyft etc) spent $200m to ensure that their workers would not get a living wage and health benefits [3]. You have only established that American companies steal from their gig workers. But maybe a Chinese, European or Japanese company could make gig economy work more honestly?
- 0goel0 6y agoHave they?
- imnotlost 6y agoThe con is strong in America, always was, always will be. Just read about wage theft, it's sickening.
- mouzogu 6y agoI never use the tipping option in delivery/taxi apps because I don't trust them. Prefer to give a tip directly when I can otherwise not.
- Fogest 6y agoWhen I drove for Uber for a brief period I almost never got cash tips. Before they introduced the tipping option in the app I maybe got tips in cash 5-10% of the time. When Uber added tipping I did find I got tipped a bit more than I did in the past and cash dipped to almost never. Now to be fair I am in Canada and we are a lot more digital when it comes to payment. I know America still has a decent amount of cash usage, but I know many people here don't carry cash on them, especially younger people. I found that one of the few times I'd get a "tip" in cash was when someone asked if I was okay waiting for them to run into a convenience store on their way home, or for me to go to another destination that wasn't put into Uber after the first drop-off. And that worked for me, I'd much rather take cash and cut out Uber of taking a huge chunk of that extra.
- Garlef 6y agoAmazon revenue 2019: 280.5 billion USD Still they feel that they need to steal 0.062 billion USD from their employees? Why?
- astura 6y agoGreed.
- tudorconstantin 6y agoRemember: "shortchanged" is just an euphemism for "stealing" here.
- tjansen 6y agoI understand (and generally agree to) the arguments that people should be paid a living wage, and tipping after the transaction doesn't have any effect on an individual level. But I wonder what's the effect on service quality on general? Are there any studies on this? Asking because here in Germany, service is often terrible, at least in casual restaurants. Like it's not uncommon to spend more time waiting than eating. You come in, you wait 10 minutes before they find out (you're usually not seated), get your menus, wait another 10 minutes until they come back. You get your food, and sometimes you can be glad if you ever see them again. If you want to pay and don't have another 15 minutes, go to the counter. I often prefer going to self-service restaurants because it is less of a hassle. Going to a restaurant in a 60 minute lunch break is a challenge. Also, tipping is uncommon. I just wonder whether there is any correlation.
- nixass 6y agoWhy would you need to be seated? Casual restaurants in Europe are normally free to set wherever you want. The menus are normally at the table, waiter acknowledges you by offering drinks and by the time he's back you're ready to order food. I don't wanna assume but US customers seem very spoiled
- tjansen 6y agoI don't need to be seated, but when they seat you, the staff already knows that you there. If you just sit at a table, it often happens that they don't even notice you. Especially if they didn't clean the table yet and it looks like you've just finished.
- dagw 6y agoI don't wanna assume but US customers seem very spoiled If you think that expecting your first drinks order to be on the table within 20 minutes of walking in the door is being "spoiled" then you have pretty low standards.
- nixass 6y agoAnecdotal. I mane my conclusion in previous post.
- ignoramous 6y agoReminds me of the time the team I worked with allegedly short-changed Discover, an advertiser with Amazon. The story went... people who reported it internally got fired: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8600716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8600716 Usually, I have seen these things happen due to bugs (or worse, wanting to game metrics); and because Amazon can be ruthless with data determining a lot of decisions, very few (not all), especially at the top, are willing to admit incorrect metrics that might jeopardize their standing with the leadership. You're what you measure.
- cheriot 6y ago> Amazon agreed to pay the regulator $61.7 million, the amount the FTC claims the company shorted its drivers ... Law precludes the agency from additionally fining the company WTF. The penalty is not getting to keep the stolen money? American labor law is embarrassing.
- heimatau 6y ago61.7M. It's a shame that the opportunity costs aren't included, fairly unjust.
- rory_isAdonk 6y agowait, you guys tip delivery men and women? laughs in European. seriously though, how is this STILL a thing?
- cccc4all 6y agoAmazon is getting too big as a business. It needs to be broken up by anti-trust rules. It's not afraid to break common good business practices, because it's too big to fail and punish with normal business backlash. The politician are mainly bought off by Amazon and company. Pulling these kind of shenanigans is simply cost of doing business. When they get caught, they just shrug and pull some other shenanigans.
- fancyfredbot 6y agoThis is disgusting. What's worse is that I really like using Amazon and don't really want to stop, even knowing they did this. I wish I could pay an extra 10% to get the same service but without the evil.
- nojvek 6y agoI very much liked that the Uber app didn’t ask for Tips. It felt like a feature. I wish I didn’t have to tip at restaurants. On top of the 11% tax it feels like a 15% tax. So US restaurants are like Airbnb with their hidden fees of 45% on top of sticker price. As an Australian I am used to paying the sticker price.
- brbsix 6y agoThis sort of behavior is so widespread, I now just assume that it is a given with any delivery service. This is why I only ever tip with cash, despite it usually being forbidden to do so.
- okprod 6y agoPre-COVID some restaurants in the US had started moving away from tips (and adjusting wages). In Japan it's very refreshing to not be expected to tip.
- thotsBgone 6y agoEvery time you would tip $10, go give it to a homeless person instead. Your money will be spent more effectively, and you won't support the tipping mind-virus.