Amazon might be smart enough to deliver packages in the evenings when people are home, something FedEx and UPS just can't quite get their heads around.
Amazon Flex
171–180 of 475 posts
Re: Amazon Flex
#172I've got a suspicion that Amazon has been trialling/building this in the UK since their purchase of Yodel, perhaps earlier. A number of times some bloke in a car has turned up and delivered me a package. No uniform, no branding. Just a phone running Amazon software. I can't say it's the greatest experience.
No uniform? The least Amazon could do is send their drivers a hat and a sticker, or something.
The delivery-person on the picture on the linked webpage is definitely wearing a branded jacket.
Re: Amazon Flex
#173I've got a suspicion that Amazon has been trialling/building this in the UK since their purchase of Yodel, perhaps earlier. A number of times some bloke in a car has turned up and delivered me a package. No uniform, no branding. Just a phone running Amazon software. I can't say it's the greatest experience.
Yodel use self employed drivers, probably in a similar way to flex, but I doubt they get as much money - £30 to £50 a day - not sure how many parcels that entails. http://yodel.broadbeantech.com/jobs/view/4467/
You supply the fuel... If you take into account the wear and tear on your car and the cost of refueling, this is like minimum wage levels of income.
I'd be interested to read an account of someone who has actually done this "job"* (*technically self-employed, therefore treated like "unemployed" to most financial institutions and don't receive normal benefits like holiday time).
Re: Amazon Flex
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed, but the point is that man-made bread > industrial bread in the end. It's not because you can automate something that it create better goods in the end. If that was the case we would replace cooks with robots for a long time as well. And of course the list goes on for many, many other professions. It's obvious that the ones who predict massive automation of most jobs are thinking WAY AHEAD of their life. It's…
It's also more expensive, and I am fine with industrial bread. I know many, many people who only buy their break from the supermarket and that is all industrialized. Bakeries still exist, but many less do than several years ago. For automation to be a success it doesn't have to replace 100% of the market, and it's unlikely for it to ever truly reach 100% for the reasons you mention. But that's fine, it'll just slowly…
Good, then I agree with you.
Then I hope you will also agree that "extinction" is too strong of a word, and we use it too often around here while in reality most jobs have a hard time disappearing completely, if at all.
On top of that, not sure about where you live, but some supermarkets also have reversed their trend about industrial bread and hire "baker-workers" who actually bake bread on-site (from industrial paste) instead of it being purely delivered for consumption, which is slightly better and fresher, and require human workers.
Re: Amazon Flex
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
We've had packages delivered by an individual similar to survelx, and the guy clearly smokes in his car as the package stinks of smoke and it even penetrates the items inside on occasion (clothing). Issue here is that he's not bound by company policy of smoking in a company vehicle, so he's free to smoke away.
It'd be valuable for you to complain to Amazon when that happens. They probably can't get feedback on a service like this except through complaints like that.
Complaining about YODEL in the UK is like spitting in the ocean or saying "Comcast sucks" in the US. Everyone knows it, but yet it continues. Amazon UK has a permanent discussion thread titled "Yodel sucks" that is just stories about how Yodel lost/stolen/damaged/etc people's packages.
Here is today's 44 post discussion:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/forum/amazon/ref=cm_cd_tfp_ef_tft_tp...
Re: Amazon Flex
#176Sounds a lot like LaserShip which Amazon already uses sometimes here on the east coast. Minimally trained people delivering last mile packages using their own vehicle. Results are.... mixed.
Here in Michigan, I've had quite a number of packages delivered by a company called Prestige. Similar thing: "independent contractors" using their own vehicles. Same mixed results.
Re: Amazon Flex
#177I'm surprised they aren't launching with cyclists too. Maybe they don't know the size of the backpack / basket that the delivery person has? I kinda just bike around Toronto for fun / exercise (up to 100kms in a day) and if I didn't have to alter my bike I could consider doing it. Plus it is faster in many parts of the city to bike than to take car or transit.
Aside from that it seems like a horrible waste of non-renewal energy source to let someone drive to an address just to deliver one package.
I wonder... we know two things, one is that an electric motors can get around 90%+ efficiency. The human body I can't recall exactly but if I remember correctly it's centered around 20% or so for most exercises.
Two is that 1 m2 of a solar panel converts around 15-20% of insolation to electricity, whereas 1 m2 of random plants gets about ±0.5%, most crops around 2% and the top performer is sugarcane which is still at just 8%. Typical diet however would probably be 2% efficient crops, a lot of which is then wasted before it gets on your plate, not in the least due to a lot of agricultural output going towards animals who turn it into 'meat-energy' in another inefficient process known as life with food-conversion rates of anywhere between 1.5 feed for 1 poultry, to up to 20 to 1 for cattle.
Lastly while we have regeneration capacity in our feet when say running, when cycling downhill or breaking we regenerate nothing, whereas electric motors can have 20-40% electric regeneration efficiencies when going downhill or breaking.
In short, electric bikes and likely small electric vehicles in general probably beat cycling in terms of energy. Of course this is a pretty narrow perspective. One can argue that solar panels and electric bicycles require massive investments which is an opportunity cost for other energy-efficient processes. One can argue that the cyclists fuelled by food will reduce their other activity (e.g. going to the gym) and thus don't expand any excess energy, or that most electric vehicles today wouldn't be powered by the sun, whereas the vast majority of food (excluding some greenhouses, hydroponics and pot installations) today is. But it's also pretty clear that powering the world with plants (excluding oil etc) doesn't make sense in the long run at significant scale.
Re: Amazon Flex
#178[deleted]
Re: Amazon Flex
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
E-commerce companies have 2 points of contact with the customer - the website and the courier. It makes no sense whatsoever to me why there's this ongoing race to the bottom on the courier side of things while companies spend more and more on the website side. I suppose at that point they already have your money, so what if this delivery experience is awful? Yodel are worse than useless, and I can't see this being mu…
What I don't understand, is why I can't pick my delivery slot for free. Everybody has jobs. Everybody finds it annoying to buy something on line. You never know when it's going to turn up. You have to take a day off, and hope your driver is competent at his job. Why can't you just say "I'll be at home on Thursday after 5pm. Call me on #555-333-9999 if you have any issues". Courier delivers the package after 5pm on Th…
You will be able to do this once Amazon Flex is built out (or Uber Delivery et al). Delivery drivers will make more money for delivering after normal ~9-5pm type hours.
Re: Amazon Flex
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's also more expensive, and I am fine with industrial bread. I know many, many people who only buy their break from the supermarket and that is all industrialized. Bakeries still exist, but many less do than several years ago. For automation to be a success it doesn't have to replace 100% of the market, and it's unlikely for it to ever truly reach 100% for the reasons you mention. But that's fine, it'll just slowly…
Good, then I agree with you. Then I hope you will also agree that "extinction" is too strong of a word, and we use it too often around here while in reality most jobs have a hard time disappearing completely, if at all. On top of that, not sure about where you live, but some supermarkets also have reversed their trend about industrial bread and hire "baker-workers" who actually bake bread on-site (from industrial pas…
To be fair, I never did use the word extinction. I used deprecated and obsolete, which I stand by. Deprecated jobs may still exist because some people prefer it that way, they'll just become specialists. And they may also be obsolete for the primary market, but as we already discussed some people prefer a higher quality which these specialists might provide.
I'm from the Netherlands, and I haven't heard about the industrial paste thing. I don't think it happens, but maybe it does. In any case, if they do do that, there is no doubt in my mind that they need less workers to perform these tasks than to bake the bread from scratch. So that is still a win for automation.