Amazon Launches 'Flex,' a Crowdsourced Delivery Service

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday September 29, 2015 @08:37AM from the for-when-you-need-a-book,-a-sewing-machine,-and-a-trombone-in-60-minutes-or-less dept.

sckirklan writes: Amazon has rolled out a new service called Amazon Flex. It lets people sign up to deliver packages using their mobile phone and their car, earning $18-25/hr while doing so. Think Uber, but for package delivery. Their goal is to fully support one-hour delivery within certain cities. The service is available in Seattle to start, and it'll soon expand to Manhattan, Baltimore, Miami, Dallas, Austin, Chicago, Indianapolis, Atlanta, and Portland. No news on what they think of bicycle couriers, but given their focus on being green, I'd imagine something is in the works.

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Figure out independent contractor vs employee? by geschbacher79 · 2015-09-29 08:45 · Score: 5, Interesting

It'll be interesting to see if they solve Uber's problem in California, where their drivers existed in a grey area of employment, with courts deciding they were employees (and thus entitled to expenses) rather than independent contractors. Interesting that the list of cities mentioned so far avoids California, even though SF and LA would be ideal cities for this. I'm guessing they'll construct their driver contracts with extremely thoroughly reviewed legal definitions to avoid having these drivers classified as employees.