Amazon Flex delivery service joins the "on-demand economy"
Amazon is officially taking on the likes of Uber and Postmates with a new delivery service, Amazon Flex, launching in Seattle. According to the website, Amazon Flex is advertising for drivers who will be paid﻿ $18–25 per hour for ﻿delivering packages to users of Amazon Prime Now, using their own cars and phones. Drivers can sign up for to work in two, four, or eight hour shifts via a mobile app. This is interesting as the model is very similar to Postmates, which Amazon looked at buying earlier this year, but apparently decided to build its own service and directly compete. The service is currently only available in Seattle, but the plan is to roll it out in other﻿ American cities soon.
It will be interesting to see how Amazon copes with the ongoing backlash against the sharing economy, whose workers do not usually receive full-time employee status and benefits such as paid leave and health care. Amazon Flex workers will be classified as contractors, and thus, Amazon will be opening itself up to the criticism, and legal dramas, as ﻿experienced by Uber and others.

If you think there's not enough self-employed driving gigs in today's Uber-style economy, Amazon has some news for you. Starting Tuesday in the company's home base of Seattle, the online shopping giant will begin paying people "$18-25 per hour" to deliver Amazon Prime Now packages out of their own cars.

The program, dubbed "Amazon Flex," will eventually launch in a number of major markets, including New York, Dallas, Chicago, Miami, Baltimore, Austin, Indianapolis, Portland, and Atlanta—in short, major Amazon Prime Now markets. Notably, no Californian cities are included in the list, though we can't be sure whether that's because of "sharing" economy pitfalls such as litigation filed by San Francisco Uber drivers about benefits they may be entitled to due to "employee" status.

According to the program's site, participating delivery men and women must own cars, have valid drivers' licenses, be over the age of 21, pass a background check, and own an Android smartphone.

Advertisement

Should they be approved, drivers will be given access to Amazon's proprietary delivery app, which they can use to choose delivery shifts as short as two hours or as long as 12. When they're on the clock, Flexers will be directed to "a location near you" to pick up packages that must then be delivered in a "local radius" whose size is based on the length of your shift.

While the program's announcement page includes a signup form and a lengthy FAQ, a few key details remain missing. How exactly do drivers maximize the amount of money they make per hour? What happens if a driver fails to deliver a package within the Amazon Prime Now hour? How many drivers has the program already signed up? We have reached out to Amazon with those questions, and this report will be updated if we receive a response. (Full disclosure: I have put my name into Amazon Flex's hat for potentially participating in the Seattle program, but we don't know if participating drivers must sign a nondisclosure agreement before becoming Flexers.)