Amazon Profits Drop 28% As It Strives For One-Day Deliveries (cnn.com) 60
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...
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...
Amazon is a race to the bottom (Score:1)
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').
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Re:Amazon is a race to the bottom (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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.
That only applies to the programmers (Score:2)
FDR says you're wrong (Score:3)
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.
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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.
Re: Amazon is a race to the bottom (Score:2)
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.
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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!
Re: Amazon is a race to the bottom (Score:1)
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I don't know, it seems all 3 categories are doing really, really well these days. The economy is booming, Amazon hiring 100k people just to keep their customers happy is a good thing and will force Walmart to do the same thing. These people are working at $18/h+ much higher than the minimum wages even California and New York is setting.
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Long term thinking (Score:5, Informative)
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.
It's probably not 1 day deliveries. Smoke screen (Score:1)
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
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Malls are closing because of companies like Amazon, lucky them!
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Amazon is using private couriers to fulfill their needs which breeds mom-n-pop businesses all across the country. This is a good thing for other small businesses too as we can now get short-order deliveries at lower cost. We've always had 1 and 0-day delivery locally, car repair shops and restaurants do it all the time but it was relatively expensive because the courier had people sitting around for 30% of the time just in case, with Amazon, they can simply fill in that time by bidding on outstanding orders
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What are you smoking? They lost money for nearly two decades.
Re:Long term thinking (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Bezos still have... (Score:2)
Headline has no substance (Score:1)
Amazon delivery drivers (Score:2)
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I'm sure you never had to manage people paid hourly, they are guaranteed two 15m break and at least a 30m break every 8h period. If they work longer, another 30m break and then more 15m breaks every 4 hours.
Commercial drivers have stricter regulations as how long they can drive and the breaks they have to take.
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And if they are interrupted then the break time resets and they get another full break period.
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Can't imagine not having one day delivery. (Score:3)
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.
Dry tears (Score:1)
I am crying dry tears for the shareholders now their profit is down to only $2.1 billion.
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And just think, that is still several times more than the con artist is worth after 40 years in real estate.
Your mileage may vary (Score:2)
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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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)
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?
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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 can't wait 1 day! (Score:2)
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.
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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
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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 shippng (Score:2)
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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.
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One day (Score:2)
Dodgy goods salesmen (Score:2)
Remember when you could find "informal" market stalls or buy stuff off the back of a lorry in the street, no questions asked? Usually counterfeit, stolen goods, or grey market goods? Well, nowadays they get Amazon to deliver it to you & they use every scam under the sun while they're at it. I have too many bad experiences, even while trying my best to perform due diligence on vendors. Same goes with Ebay. Neither company follows the consumer protection laws in the countries I've lived in so I've had to
Stop (Score:3)
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.