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Amazon Bows To Pressure To Bring Same-Day Deliveries To Poor Areas (fortune.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: After pressure from lawmakers, Amazon is revamping its same-day delivery service in response to complaints that it failed to provide service to poor, minority neighborhoods. The retail giant said it would bring its same-day delivery service to all Zip Codes in the 27 cities where its offered, not just in the wealthier areas, according to a Bloomberg report on Friday.

2 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Redlining... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Amazon isn't in the delivery business. They're in the retail business.

    You haven't been keeping up with the news.

    But some analysts believe that Amazon is putting together the pieces across the globe to launch a package-delivery service that will one day compete with UPS, FedEx and others. In addition to the Colis Prive deal, Amazon acquired the right to purchase 4.2 percent of Yodel, a United Kingdom parcel-delivery company, in 2014. Last month, Amazon announced adding thousands of trucks to its U.S. fleet to handle the growing load of packages it is shipping.

    http://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazons-delivery-ambitions-take-on-industry-giants/

  2. Re:Redlining... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 3, Informative

    My memory is fuzzy but I think some people call this concept free market capitalism.

    It's called redlining in the financial industry, where banks don't open branch offices in poorer neighborhoods and those residents pay outrageous interest charges to payday lenders because they don't have access to basic banking services. Bernie Sanders had proposed letting the postal service offer basic banking services to all Americans. Something that the post office used to do a long time ago.

    In fact, Sanders's idea is quite sensible. "Postal banking"—which just means that post offices run savings accounts, cash checks, and perform other basic financial services—is common in most of Asia and Europe, and only about 7 percent of the world's national postal systems don't offer some bank-like services. Postal banking is a really good way to reach people who haven't had access to standard savings accounts. One estimate figures that more than 1 billion people have used post offices for making deposits.

    http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/bernie-sanders-lets-turn-post-offices-into-banks/411589/