The issue concerns Amazon’s Prime membership, which costs consumers $139 per year or $14.99 per month for fast deliveries—including one-day, two-day, and same-day shipments.
The lawsuit alleges that in mid-2022, Amazon created a delivery “exclusion” on two low-income ZIP codes in the district - 20019 and 20020—and began relying exclusively on third-party delivery services such as UPS and the U.S. Postal Service rather than its own delivery systems.
Amazon says it made the change based on concerns about driver safety.
Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said: “There have been specific and targeted acts against drivers delivering Amazon packages” in the two ZIP codes and the company changed to “put the safety of delivery drivers first.”
“We made the deliberate choice to adjust our operations, including delivery routes and times, for the sole reason of protecting the safety of drivers,” Nantel said.
“The claims made by the attorney general, that our business practices are somehow discriminatory or deceptive, are categorically false.”
That might be well and good, however the District of Columbia’s attorney general’s office said the company never told Prime members in the two ZIP codes about the change and trousered the money they were getting.
The lawsuit says Amazon also did not tell new customers about the exclusions when they signed up for Prime memberships.
“Amazon is charging tens of thousands of hard-working Ward 7 and 8 residents for an expedited delivery service it promises but does not provide,” District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb said in a statement.
“While Amazon has every right to make operational changes, it cannot covertly decide that a dollar in one ZIP code is worth less than a dollar in another,” Schwalb said.
The lawsuit says Amazon has nearly 50,000 Prime members living in the two ZIP codes, representing almost half the population. Prime members in those neighbourhoods have ordered more than 4.5 million packages in the past four years and are more likely to rely on Amazon since they have fewer services and retail stores nearby, the city said. The area is also a notorious food desert.
The district says that in 2021, before Amazon implemented its delivery “exclusion,” more than 72 per cent of Prime packages in the impacted ZIP codes were delivered within two days. But last year, according to the complaint, it was only 24 per cent.
Meanwhile, the district’s lawsuit says Prime members who lived in other parts of the city received two-day deliveries 75 per cent of the time. Amazon was also improving its delivery speeds nationwide.
When some customers in the city complained about the slower deliveries, Amazon concealed the reason for the delays and “deceptively implied” that the delays “were simply due to natural fluctuations in shipping circumstances, rather than a decision by Amazon,” the lawsuit says.
District officials asked the court to issue an order prohibiting Amazon from “engaging in unfair or deceptive practices.” They also want the company to pay restitution or damages to affected Prime members and civil penalties.
This isn’t the first time Amazon has been accused of offering slower deliveries to some places where Black people make up most of the households.
In 2016, American news outlet Bloomberg published an investigation that said Black residents of cities like Atlanta and Chicago were about half as likely as white residents to live in neighbourhoods with access to Amazon’s same-day delivery service.
Amazon’s restaurant delivery service—which the company shut down five years ago—excluded some neighbourhoods in Washington, including one of the ZIP codes mentioned in the district’s lawsuit.
