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Amazon Profits Drop 28% As It Strives For One-Day Deliveries (cnn.com) 60

Posted by EditorDavid from the speedy-delivery dept.
An anonymous reader quotes CNN: Amazon said Thursday that its profit for the three months ending in September fell to $2.1 billion from $2.9 billion in the same period a year ago, a decline of nearly 28%, as the company invests heavily to expedite deliveries... The company announced in April that it would spend $800 million in the upcoming quarter to make one-day shipping standard for customers who subscribe to Prime, its membership service. Three months later, Amazon said the actual cost ended up being even higher. The company's shipping costs for the quarter hit $9.6 billion, up 46% from the prior year, as it worked to cut its standard delivery time for Prime in half.

If that wasn't enough, Amazon's headcount grew by nearly 100,000 full-time and part-time employees during the quarter. Amazon held a a career day last month during which it looked to fill more than 30,000 jobs. The new employees will largely work in fulfillment and transportation roles, amid the shift to one-day shipping, CFO Brian Olsavsky said on a call with analysts Thursday...

In a statement with its earnings report on Thursday, CEO Jeff Bezos said the investment will be worthwhile in the long run...
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Amazon Profits Drop 28% As It Strives For One-Day Deliveries More

Amazon Profits Drop 28% As It Strives For One-Day Deliveries

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  • Seriously, Amazon is a race to the bottom for products and employment.

    Whichever product is cheaper gets the sale (most of the time) and whoever is willing to work harder for less gets the job.

    The fact is that Bezos is a billionaire because he pays most of his workers shit wages and plays fast and loose with his suppliers (often known as 'victims').

    • And donâ(TM)t forget evading taxes.
      • What taxes has Amazon evaded?

    • Re:Amazon is a race to the bottom (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Cylix ( 55374 ) on Saturday October 26, 2019 @12:21PM (#59350146) Homepage Journal

      You are an idiot with an agenda.

      One day delivery as a standard is fairly impressive and they are getting closer with their home grown delivery service. At first, I thought it might just be a bargaining chip against the current shipping companies, but it turns out they were serious.

      You want people who put things in boxes to demand a strong wage? That just isn't going to happen. It's putting things in boxes.

      Now if you want to are argue developer wages are awful in comparison to the competitive wage? I would stand behind that one because nearly everyone in the same class pays more in the area. It is honestly either insanity or lack of skill that would keep people there, but sometime people are not motivated by monetary incentive. To each their own. I jumped ship a while ago, but I value compensation over tools.

      • It is honestly either insanity or lack of skill that would keep people there, but sometime people are not motivated by monetary incentive.

        There are only so many companies in the world where you can do things at the scale Amazon and AWS do them. That sort of experience can be worth a lot in money down the line. But I do hear that a lot of people jump ship before the four years required for all their stock grants.

      • See here [duckduckgo.com]

        Is the work valuable to you? Then pay for it. Everyone deserves a decent living, including people who put things in boxes. Menial labor is not now nor was it ever the sole domain of teenagers, so don't use that excuse.

        You can argue that those people inherently lack value as people because of their lack of skills. But I will caution you this: once you diminish the value of one man you diminish the value of _all_ men. That includes yourself. If they're disposable then so are you.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Amazon and a churn and burn company when it comes to employees, that is death for a company over the long term, they will end up with worse and worse workers, as they choose to go elsewhere for more stable employment. Only the desperate will work for Amazon with a track record of churn and burn, eventually Amazon work through the available quality work force and there is nothing left but the dregs and they kill a company.

      • You want people who put things in boxes to demand a strong wage? That just isn't going to happen. It's putting things in boxes.

        Hmm, abysmal working conditions vs your strawman projection of an unrealistically "strong wage." Guess they're just stuck with abysmal working conditions; well done.

    • I assume you never eat at restaurants, don't use Uber/Lyft/Postmates/etc., and never get your hair cut? Because all those jobs pay pretty low hourly wages - typically lower than the average Amazon warehouse worker.
    • Companies invest their profits back into the business to improve their services and offer lower prices: It's a race to the bottom!

      Companies keep the profits or pay them out to investors as dividends: They're just being greedy!

      Whichever product is cheaper gets the sale (most of the time) and whoever is willing to work harder for less gets the job.

      Do you frequently go out of your way to buy more expensive products, and who are you undercutting to keep your job? After all, someone else could get more for it if you wouldn't work so hard or so cheaply!

    • So...Who did it better? Walmart and their public assistance employees, the employees at the mom-n-pops shops they replaced or Amazon with their current incarnation or employee nurturing? Large employers usually get a bad rap regardless of which century they are in (some deservedly).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
      I don't buy the cheapest product. I buy the product I want - and if I don't know what I want, I usually go for the one with the best reviews in its category. While it may be a "race to the bottom" employee-wise, it's certainly not the case of the products. They don't just sell shit. They sell everything. Lots of shit, but the good stuff too, which people are prepared to pay a premium for.

  • Long term thinking (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mostly a lurker ( 634878 ) on Saturday October 26, 2019 @11:58AM (#59350110)

    Amazon is far from a perfect company. Some of their employee policies are reprehensible. However, unlike most large US companies, they have generally been good at aiming for long term success over quarterly results. This looks like another example. There are many purchases for which 24-hour delivery is a huge selling point. Amazon wants to ensure they corner the market on those kinds of purchases. It will lead to many more purchases where longer delivery times would be actually acceptable. In their business, customer service is key. Amazon is aiming to set a standard others cannot match.

    • The real target here is UPS. They are staffing up for deliveries in general. And that creates an infrastructure that can combine their warehouse distribution transport with their delivery transport thus perhaps achieving 1 day delivery in the right locations. Since sales taxes are now collected there's no incentive not to have regional deployment. With Malls closing there's lots of square footage located next to major highways to purchase and by virtue of their massive parking lots have lots of air spac

      • If I order from McMaster-Carr, in stock items ship same day and come the next day, by UPS ground. This is nothing new, IF the warehouse is willing to work with and load the UPS trailers.

        Malls are closing because of companies like Amazon, lucky them!
        • I had a McMaster Carr catalog when I worked for the City of San Diego. Three inches thick, if they didn't have it then it didn't exist. My Dad collected antique tools and used the catalog to check tool prices.. I have a caliper marked the LS Starrett Co. Athol Mass USA Made in U S A 1970's price $15.00 Today's catalog price $51.00
        • and I, as a FedEx Express driver deliver a ton of McMaster-Carr in the outskirts. You just have a MMC warehouse close to you which is nothing "special"
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • What are you smoking? They lost money for nearly two decades.

      • Re:Long term thinking (Score:5, Informative)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Saturday October 26, 2019 @05:09PM (#59350778) Homepage Journal

        Amazon is far from a perfect company. Some of their employee policies are reprehensible. However, unlike most large US companies, they have generally been good at aiming for long term success over quarterly results.

        What are you smoking? They lost money for nearly two decades.

        Congratulations, you just supported his argument. They burned cash to dominate the market, now they're profitable (and massive.) Now they're taking a cut in profits to become even more dominant.

  • ... more than US$100 billion
  • Quarterly profit is prone to swings because it's revenue minus expenses. A change of 28% is completely meaningless, it's a rounding error as far as Amazon's balance sheet is concerned. Expenses went up because of a new initiative, if revenue went down then there would be something to talk about.
  • On an associated subject, anyone else notice that Amazon delivery drivers are reckless as hell?
    • They probably don't get bathroom breaks either. Have you seen how you drive when you've got a full bladder? Guarantee it isn't pretty.
      • That's true. I live in a condo building with a bathroom on the 1st floor near the mailroom. Over half of the Amazon drivers make a pit stop when they deliver a package. So does the mail carrier. UPS and FedEx never do. Of course, UPS and FedEx drivers usually trot from the truck to our door and back, leading me to think that they have a pee bottle in the truck so they can get relief without having to stop.
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
          Nahh, thanks to Fed Ex's affirmative action policy they only hire drivers with kidney failure who need to be plugged into a hemodialysis machine every 3 days but they don't need to pee at all.

  • Can't imagine not having one day delivery. (Score:3)

    by richy freeway ( 623503 ) on Saturday October 26, 2019 @12:48PM (#59350208)

    I'd probably use Amazon a lot less if it wasn't for the fact I can order something on an afternoon and have it turn up next day, even Sunday.

    Having two Amazon lockers within a 5 minute walk is an added bonus, as I don't have to wait around all day for stuff to arrive.

    Without those two things, they're just another online retailer and I'd happily take my business elsewhere.

  • I am crying dry tears for the shareholders now their profit is down to only $2.1 billion.


    • And just think, that is still several times more than the con artist is worth after 40 years in real estate.

  • Nextday delivery has been available here in rainy western Washington for a few years - and I used to think it was great.

    But after time after time of finding Amazon-delivered packages stuffed in trees, tossed over my fence, left sitting on the back of my car, left sitting exposed to the elements right next to the sign which says “please deliver packages to back door” - and documenting with photos and incessantly complaining about it as it happened - I finally got them to flag my account to prefer

    • I've had great experiences with amazon delivery but as you said, it's all about the neighborhood and perhaps quite literally how your property is laid out. I only have a townhouse so there is one single way up to my front door. Everything is left right there.

      I also have a great neighbor that is defacto security as he is retired and always home and sitting on his porch 10 feet from mine.

      Nothing is ever stolen and all my deliveries end up exactly where I want them.

      Perhaps if I tried to get them to take all my

      • You sound like you require more work to delivery a package to then myself and we all pay the same price.

        Nope, it’s just a smallish 1-story rambler (aka ranch) house with a 20-foot driveway which comes up to the side of the house. Going to the back door is a shorter distance than going to the front, and also doesn’t involve going through a gate (which the front door does). The UPS and FedEx guys have delivered to the back door forever (20+ years), and basically by default - my sign requesting “please deliver to the back door” was put up a few years ago, after I started having Amazon del

    • Amazon is like a flea market but with delivery. It's full of people selling knockoff and QC failure electronics. Oh and don't forget the expired food as well. Reviews are padded and not verified. Try reading some, the sellers bank some good reviews and then relist a different product that is garbage. So it accumulates some negatives but the average still isn't bad.

      • Maybe I'm an exception, but I almost always get what I ordered. In those cases where I don't, I'm in chat with Amazon immediately. I always either get a new item shipped out, or a no-return-required refund.

        I've had greater than 99% success with Amazon, even when I buy from resellers. Amazon has always refunded the difference between what my total cost was and what the Amazon reseller refunds. It's why I been buying (and impulse buying) from Amazon for over 20 years.

        • I've had anecdotally similar experience. Amazon generally gets me what I want, and makes up for it financially when I don't. eBay, while I do really love it, has much less in the way of buyer protection. If you didn't scrutinize the photos and assume the absolute worst about the description, too bad.

          I don't particularly want to think about how much I've given the both of them over the years. Shopping for obscure or niche items, especially of a technical nature, is just unbelievably easier.

        • Yeah Amazon replaces it because they figure most people won't bother with returning something cheap and defective. They know exactly what trash is being sold.

        • Same story here, no problems whatsoever for the last decade. Just last month, I had one small, low-cost item fully refunded because it was clearly not the same length as in the vendor's photo. No return required either.

    • Duh (Score:2)

      by DogDude ( 805747 )
      Maybe it’s better where you live. I don’t know why it’s been so consistently awful here, across many many drivers.

      It's consistently awful because people continue to give them money, even when their service is awful. Have you ever considered buying stuff from other companies that provide service that you don't have to consistently bitch about?

    • I once found a missing FedEx delivery on my back porch... of my 2nd floor apartment with no back stair. The package had clearly been frisbeed up there.

      There's nothing magical to separate the contractors for FedEx Ground from the contractors for Amazon Delivery if their management doesn't decide to care about making a difference.

  • I'm willing to drive to some kind of central building in my city where they have a selection of products on display that I can purchase immediately.

    • I'm willing to drive to some kind of central building in my city where they have a selection of products on display that I can purchase immediately.

      If only they did have a selection of products. Usually they have a bunch of crap I don't want, at prices I won't pay for what I don't want. I can drive around all day and not find anything I'm looking for, or I can just look at eBay and Amazon and not only find what I want, but also have a selection of examples to choose from.

      Retail is fundamentally inferior for most kinds of shopping as compared to the internets. That's why retail is dying. We should be cheering, since it's much more efficient to stay home

      • So then people bitch about internet sales destroying retail instead of complaining about the lack of social services to help people transition to other employment (or to a post-employment era.)

        It's great to talk about a Post-employment era, but what about people working for Kellogg's or Quaker?

  • Amazon with reliable 1 day shipping with be death of all retail. In my city they just built a distribution center, I noticed that I 9/10 times I get items no later than next day.

    • I think the death of brick and mortar retail MAY not come with next -day delivery, but it will certainly come with same-day delivery. At that point Amazon will become a direct replacement for NEARLY all local purchases.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
      Good. Retail deserves to die. I really don't see the point in paying 25-50% mark up for the privilege of having to sit in traffic, fight for a parking spot, run out in the rain and deal with store salespeople who are either too busy to look up from their phones/make you feel like you just came to the store to steal stuff/are snotty or sarcastic bastards/bitches. That business model is extinct. Teenage girls will have to find a real job. Shopping mall owners will have to find a different business model. Etc.
  • Except unless you have Amazon Prime, in which your stuff is guaranteed to be at least a week late.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Stop (Score:3)

    by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Sunday October 27, 2019 @07:23AM (#59352036)

    You don't say "To B from A", you say "From A to B". So stop using the "to X from Z" format, I don't know which moran started this bullshit but it makes no sense and it's confusing.

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