Amazon Looking To Abandon UPS, FedEx In Favor of Its Own Delivery Service (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A report by The Wall Street Journal claims that Amazon is building its own shipping service to replace FedEx and UPS, giving it more control over its packages and possibly allowing it to ship packages from other retailers. Amazon has said its own delivery services would be meant to increase its capacity during busier times of the year, like the upcoming holiday season. However, "current and former Amazon managers and business partners" claim that the company's plans are bigger than that. The initiative dubbed "Consume the City" will eventually let Amazon "haul and deliver" its own packages and those of other retailers and consumers. That delivery network would also directly compete with the likes of UPS and FedEx. It makes sense that Amazon would want to sell, ship, and deliver orders on its own. The report estimates that the company spent $11.5 billion on shipping just last year, amounting to 10.8 percent of sales. The shipping process is currently a bit convoluted: packages from Amazon warehouses get sent to one of two shipping routes, either FedEx or UPS, or to a sorting facility that lumps all packages with similar zip codes together. FedEx and UPS handle its shipments and deliver them to customers, while the packages at the sorting facilities either get delivered via USPS or by Amazon employees themselves. If Amazon were to have control over its shipments over longer distances, it's estimated that the company could save about $3 per package -- about $1.1 billion annually.
These shitty courier companies that don't give a shit about the receiver as long as they keep their big contracts finally have to get off their ass and stop being shitty.
See the Amazon trucks everywhere.
Perhaps it will be the final death knell of the USPS as well. So much of their current business relies on Amazon deliveries. Good riddance.
If this is actually implemented will be interesting to see how much they save in a few years-- especially as they will end up re-building the existing infrastructure.
The article didn't mentioned it but I'm also curious if they start using their own electric vehicles as well? (Similar to how Google has backup DC power to their servers.)
i.e.
It will also be interesting to see how Fedex and UPS respond to this.
I wonder if Amazon will pass along any savings to customers?
Uber took away the taxi driver jobs, but I didn't say anything because I wasn't a taxi driver. ...
Amazon took away independent courier jobs, but I didn't say anything because I wasn't a courier.
You know how this ends
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
But I'll believe it when I see it. UPS, FEDEX and USPS carry millions of packages. Amazon would have to buy a truck to replace every single UPS, FEDEX and USPS truck out there and staff them. Plus the back end infrastructure (warehouses, long haul freight, air planes). It would take decades for someone the size of Amazon to wean themselves off of the big three.
Amazon said they were considering using drones to deliver packages, so using their own employees ... tomato / tomato.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Well, maybe. You don't save $ by having "control over your shipments", you'd save by making your shipping system more efficient than alternative shippers. FedEx & UPS are pretty darn good at it and have a lot of experience. Trying to break into that game would be costly and maybe foolhardy. Just the fleet management alone could be enough to eat up any "savings". Selling the service to other companies in addition to delivering your own stuff might work albeit not immediately profitable.
It might work out but I think you'd have to throw a lot of money at it to prime the pump.
I have stocks in both UPS and FedEx. Thumpo!
I purchased both of them during the dot-com bubble. I was itching to get in on the "dot com profits", but did feel the companies were overvalued. My reasoning was that the Internet as a whole would continue to grow, but that existing companies were individually too unpredictable.
Thus, I looked for stocks that would grow as a side-effect of the Internet rather than direct Internet stocks. I cannot say all my stock picks were good decisions, but this set in particular mostly was.
Table-ized A.I.
Hard to understand how we have not applied historical norms of Monopoly to Amazon, Google, Facebook etc...
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
the only reason they could "save money" over companies that have been perfecting supply chain logistics for 30+ years is that they would destroy wages. and the only way to do that is to destroy the unions.
dont let them lie to you and tell you it is anything else.
Fuck FedEx and definitely FUCK ONTRAC.
I see the amazon white vans everywhere in Chicago area. Generic white van with magnetic amazon logo on the side. They ones I have seen drive like maniacs, really fast through narrow parking lots. I just assumed they hired in a similar manner to uber, i.e. , anyone with a drivers license can be a delivery truck.
Somehow they managed to crush and warp a massive steel PC case of mine. Forklift accident I guess?
Having worked as a USPS employee, I can say that it is the most backward, non-functional business entity I've ever seen. They mess up literally everything - paychecks, deliveries, sorting, spelling employees names correctly, badges, scheduling - literally everything. From an efficiency standpoint, USPS going under would be a good thing. And if Amazon quits using them, they will sink. Any employee of the USPS that knows what's going on will tell you that securing Amazon contracts is the only reason USPS is still around.
That said, USPS employs a lot of people. If they sink, all of those people will be out of a job, and that's a bad thing no matter how you slice it.
IMO, the best case scenario is a very likely one: Amazon takes over the USPS either in a management capacity or outright acquires it. Many people think this will happen at some point. Already a large part of USPS policy has been changed, and is dictated by the Amazon contract requirements. More than a few employees jokingly refer to the USPS as the APS (Amazon Postal Service)
I have a friend who works for Amazon complaining about having to sign for a (very low cost) shipment he got through UPS from Amazon. Then he said he couldn't wait for Amazon to have their own delivery service so he wouldn't have to do such ridiculous things anymore. He clearly did not realize that the reason the UPS driver needed his signature was because AMAZON chose the "signature required" option when they shipped it.
Amazon is going to do the same thing in many ways, request that UPS or Fedex do something which is inconvenient for their customer and then use it to make the customer prefer the Amazon shipping service (similar to the sorts of things they did to make people think Prime was a great deal).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I find that FedEx is usually pretty good; I get that Amazon could save themselves a lot of money by doing their own delivery, but they might want to maintain a relationship with FedEx, for times when delivery volume exceeds current capacity or when other factors compromise their own fleet's ability to deliver. As for UPS, well, it's like that other common brown thing - it stinks, and nobody likes it. If Amazon flushes them, good riddance.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
I dunno about you guys in the US, but for Brazil, this would possibly make me consider buying again from Amazon.
I've got scammed and ripped off by both Fedex and UPS here in Brazil. It's not a problem for US citizens to worry about, but both companies charge some crazy unjustified service taxes for everything they bring here. I can't imagine an Amazon based delivery service being any worse. Though it'll probably take a long time, if it ever happens, that Amazon would bring something like that here... Brazil has even worse challenges to any company trying to replace the national postal service here.
Now the shipping/logistics folks get to join in on the fun of being actively hated by your employer!
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
For some reason they seem to hire people who can't read an address, let alone get out of their fucking car.
Delivery #1 - Phone call from Washington DC number, girl who can't speak English asks for wrong name, asks if I live at address that is incorrect. Once I figure out who the hell it is, I say correct address they say ok. (It's an apartment, there's a fricking buzzer) 1 hour later I get call from same number, I tell her to buzz the door, she doesn't, says she's outside. I go outside and she's half a block down buzzing the wrong building. (our buildings are clearly marked with the number on it) FFS lady!
Delivery #2 - Another call from DC number, dude says he's outside. I go outside, and dude is parked in the middle of the street blocking traffic, opens his door and passes the box to me from the seat of his car.
These people are wearing Amazon badges/clothing. It's a wonder they managed to get dressed in the morning.
FYI - I get packages _all the time_ and FedEx, UPS, and USPS - even DHL has never had a single problem delivering to me.
If Amazon wants to SAVE money on shipping, how about they pay attention to the size of boxes and packing material in comparison to the original item purchased?
https://www.buzzfeed.com/moren...
This makes me wish I'd taken pics of the packaging for the two circle batteries i just received for my key fobs for my car, because that shit was ridiculous!
"Passing along the savings" = further underselling their competitors/increasing their marketshare/increasing their customers' dependence on them/increasing the number of orders.
Shit, the whole point is this.
Fedex has an enormous airfleet. I'm sure they are able to buy planes at prices other people can only dream of. Similarly UPS has a fleet of over 100K vehicles, which can be bought at a great discount (present supplier seems to be Daimler-Benz).
I doubt Amazon can get anywhere close to those savings by going on their own.
If Amazon's service winds up even vaguely resembling their favorite go-to delivery whore these days, OnTrac, I hope it dies in an inferno. Amazon likes to always specify no-sig-required with all of its deliveries now. Amazon does this to please the carrier and get a discount, because only one delivery attempt is ever required. Since the package will be simply left unattended if no immediate response to the delivery is apparent, this results in package theft, among other things. The Machiavellian behavior of some delivery drivers, ESPECIALLY those of OnTrac, to exploit this no-sig-required condition leads to some to the "other" consequences, like drivers dropping heavy packages six feet over a locked gate onto concrete on a rainy day (personal anecdote, happened twice).
You're confused. They're a software company!
I've wondered if UPS is called brown not just because of uniforms and trucks, but the packages seem to arrive broken and covered in mud.
Amazon has been doing this in the Pacific Northwest for several months already.
And until recently, you could always tell an "Amazon" delivery because the packages were left out in the rain, thrown over the fence, dropped in the middle of the driveway, or otherwise mishandled by lazy-ass delivery people. But I suspect they've gotten a lot of complaints, because the last couple of Amazon-delivered packages were left at our actual door - what a concept!
#DeleteChrome
Especially after UPS does silly things like this: http://imgur.com/gallery/ZrZea
Especially after UPS does silly things like this:
Hey UPS, enlighten me...
I'm getting a taste of Amazon's own delivery service and I am unimpressed. I'm a Prime subscriber. I just placed a $100 order on Monday for several items, most of them Prime eligible. Some of these Prime eligible items originate 45 minute drive from where I live, so why is Amazon, using its own delivery service, taking until Friday to deliver? Prime is 2-day, not 4-day, delivery. Based on the size of the order I could have gotten free shipping without even being a Prime member, and probably gotten about the same level of service, too.
As a Prime member of Amazon, I get free two-day shipping. Of the last five things I ordered from Amazon, three were delivered by Amazon Fulfillment, Amazon's in-house shipping service. I've lived at the same address for more than 20 years, and of those five packages, guess which three were NOT delivered to my house, but to my neighbor's? The three sent through Amazon Fulfillment. If they're going to replace FedEx and UPS, then they're going to have to do a bit better job.
Trump has a dead squirrel on his head. He thinks people think it's real hair. He's as delusional as his voters. Soon to be President Elect Clinton will revel in his failure.
Artical 1, Section 8.
Well, technically, it just empowers Congress to establish Post Offices... I guess it doesn't say they HAVE to.
I don't care what you say, I liked that book, "The Postman".
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
You make a good point.
On the other hand, UPS and FedEx are deisgned for any customer to send any type of package from anywhere to anywhere, using any of many services. Amazon's will be designed for only Amazon to send packages from the places they choose, and they need not deliver everywhere - they can have UPS deliver to small towns for them. Amazon doesn't need to ship those cookies grandma made for you and she's shipping from Tiny Town, Colorado, paying by check. Amazon Shipping will have one customer sending packages, and sending only from Amazon's warehouses, using the standardized box sizes that Amazon chooses.
There may be enough differences that although Amazon can't make a better retail shipping company, they can make one that works better FOR AMAZON, for some packages. You may have seen the back of a UPS truck looks a bit chaotic because there are all these different sizes and shapes of boxes. On Amazon trucks, they'll all fit neatly and efficiently on the shelf, with one medium box being exactly same the same size as two small boxes.
Nice to see the Planet Express guys getting work.
Three hours and 90-odd comments before this, and no Futurama? Hell, Bezos probably doesn't care about the costs, so long as he cures his crippling bone-itis.
Sweet bacteria of Liberia, what this place has become.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
You did not read the synopsis:
"The initiative dubbed "Consume the City" will eventually let Amazon "haul and deliver" its own packages and those of other retailers and consumers. That delivery network would also directly compete with the likes of UPS and FedEx."
It will ship Grandma's cookies to you.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
I honestly do not recall the last time I got an Amazon package via UPS (and never FedEx). And this is in a decent sized suburbia. For at least two years now, probably longer, everything arrives by USPS and frankly they are just as reliable as was UPS, perhaps more so.
is the option where *I* as the paying customer get to control how packages are delivered to me, and by which service.
And I am happy to pay the associated shipping costs for my choice - I never asked for "free shipping"
I cannot order from Amazon at all, ever, because shipping is "pot luck" and I *MUST* know how something will be shipped BEFORE placing any order.
UPS CAN NOT deliver to me, PERIOD. I can accept FedEx, but need to list a different delivery address. Or I can go with USPS to my home address (preferred)
Amazon REFUSES to let the customer specify a carrier, or even INFORM which carrier will be used, until after you submit your order including payment information. Until they change that I must refuse to order anything from Amazon.
They think they can use Independent Contractors to get out of kinds of costs like.
Commercial insurance
Minimum wage
Cell phone reimbursement meanly (CA and other places)
Over time
car / truck / van expenses reimbursement and inspections
CDL's for drivers
Lost / stolen stuff.
Workers comp
Hours on duty for drivers
Perhaps the very first self-driving vehicles would rather deliver packages than people? I do not think quadrocopters are reasonable delivery methods esp. considering battery technology but a surface vehicles combined with somewhat automated (or at least standard) mailboxes, why not?
4wdloop
I spend thousands of pounds purchasing things from Amazon. whenever a order does not turn up in time I cancel it. I live a stone throw away from Amazon.
Amazon delivery drivers are good.. they are all basically cheap labour from Eastern European countries they have to carry a tracking device so Amazon, can track them at all times. The other companies are absolute bastards.
I have 5 CCTV cameras, security systems around my property linked to the Internet so I can monitor my property from work. It has motion detection and its sensitivity is set from 1 to 9 so you can set the distance of its motion detection, to stop it from recording trees, swaying in the wind.
A black man from UPS, says he won't deliver to my place any more because he doesn't like to be "under surveillance"
I now only get deliveries from Amazon deliveries, which is always the next day.. No more pretending that they tried to deliver and "failed to deliver because they got no answer" nonsense.
CCTV as minutes hours times and dates you enter in what time they say they tried to deliver and you send them the video clip of a high definition video from your secure Internet storage by switching that clip of video to public viewing.
They already did this in the UK about 6 months ago, replacing the existing couriers with Amazon Logistics. Which incidentally, is a plain white van, here anyway.
Where before you could track your package and get told within an hour when it'd turn up and get regular updates (unless it was a cheap item which they sent via Royal Mail), now you're told on the day that it's out for delivery and that's the extent of the "tracking". It can turn up any time that day. Be careful what you wish for, as I find this a step backwards. They're also more strict in my experience - if you get something like a mobile phone, they insist that YOU are there in person with ID. So that means you have to get a day off work to wait for it and can't just have your family member who's already at home receive it, or if you get it delivered to work they have to track you down (so in places like mine where you could be anywhere in the factory and they have to wait for you to respond to a call out, they'll be less inclined to continue allowing personal deliveries)
I can only go by the UK version of course, the US policies and systems could be completely different.
On the plus side, you tend to know audibly when your package has turned up. Obviously a carrier is a carrier, they all do much the same thing, but there is something unique about the exact noise of the sliding van door, the amount of time they seem to need to rummage around looking for your package, and the "bleep!" of the barcode scan they do just before they ring the bell. It wouldn't surprise me if they trademarked the "Amazon Delivery Noise Pattern" :)
It doesn't necessarily make sense at all.
An airline might spend a third of its revenue on POL, but that doesn't mean it "makes sense" to dig wells & build a refinery.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I would be interesting to see if they save any money here as well, considering UPS operates on about a 7-8% profit margin. Considering Amazon is such a large customer I would be willing to bet they make far less profit on Amazon shipments. Not a lot of room for savings unless they believe they have a new better way of doing shipping.
UPS had an operating profit of around 13% last year according to their annual report. That is plenty of margin to make it worthwhile for Amazon to want to vertically integrate their shipping.
Several considerations:
1) Amazon's retail business is a low margin business to begin with and they compete significantly on price - even a few percent can matter a lot. Walmart has margins of around 2-3% for comparison. If Amazon can eliminate the margin leakage to UPS that goes straight to their bottom line.
2) Integrating vertically has the benefit of having better control over the service you provide to customers. It is almost always harder to coordinate with an outside company than to deal with another internal division.
3) Amazon developing their own shipping service allows them to expand their business beyond shipping stuff sold through their own website. They could very conceivably capture business from UPS and FedEx and USPS. This creates a whole new revenue stream for them and diversifies the company somewhat.
UPS has a revenue of about $60 billion per year, while Amazon pays about $5 billion in yearly shipping costs. This puts them in an entirely different order of magnitude as far as scale goes. This makes it even less likely Amazon would save a lot of money.
You're looking at it the wrong way. The question is whether Amazon's freight service can reach minimum efficient scale in order to compete effectively. They don't necessarily have to match UPS in size to achieve comparable cost efficiency. Bear in mind as well that any shipments they do themselves they could in theory provide at or even below cost in order to scale Amazon's freight business AND that is revenue and profit not available to UPS/FedEx. Even if they don't try to make a profit on the freight at first it allows them to offer better pricing to customers (thus increasing retail revenue) and makes it even harder than it already is to compete in online shopping with them. Amazon also has the advantage that they can play UPS and FedEx against each other while they build their freight services.
Frankly it's kind of a no brainer for Amazon to get into the freight business in some form or fashion because vertical integration makes sense for them in a lot of ways. I also expect them to try to get into the office supply business (think Staples) and industrial supply business (think Grainger) in the near future in a big way. I think Amazon would kick the ass of the incumbents in those industries.
You don't save $ by having "control over your shipments", you'd save by making your shipping system more efficient than alternative shippers. FedEx & UPS are pretty darn good at it and have a lot of experience.
Untrue on both counts. First off any time Amazon (or anyone else) ships via UPS or FedEx they are experiencing margin leakage to the tune of something like 8-13% which is actually quite a lot of margin in a low margin industry. That is money that could stay within the company if Amazon could vertically integrate. It's highly unlikely that for a substantial portion of Amazon's customer base that they couldn't save money by taking over at least a portion of the freight themselves. They certainly save money on back haul shipments they do themselves today and they could easily tackle the last mile problem piecemeal by offering Amazon delivery in dense population centers first. They don't have to replicate the entire UPS network from day one.
Trying to break into that game would be costly and maybe foolhardy. Just the fleet management alone could be enough to eat up any "savings".
As long as Amazon can achieve minimum efficient scale (look it up) on their freight services they would not be at a disadvantage. It's actually fairly routine for large companies like Walmart to have their own fleet of transport vehicles because it saves them money.
It might work out but I think you'd have to throw a lot of money at it to prime the pump.
Of course it would be a huge investment. But Amazon has the resources to do it and they are their own customer for the service so they don't have to sell the service to anyone else immediately. Furthermore they don't even really have to make a profit on the freight services. They could build their retail business by merely providing freight at cost which would allow them to sell products at lower costs to customers thus capturing more marketshare and making it harder still to compete with them online.
FedEx and UPS are bit players. USPS is the big gorilla in the room.
Not in package shipping they aren't. USPS is small potatoes in the package shipping business. In Q2 2016 USPS shipped $1.2billion in packages. UPS had revenues 10X that amount over the same period the vast majority of which was in package shipments.
In a week, USPS moves more than UPS does in a year. FedEx is smaller. It takes USPS just 3 days to do the same.
You are comparing letters with packages. Not a meaningful comparison. In theory USPS could compete strongly in package delivery but they haven't been effective at it to date.
Amazon's network may be big, but they won't be UPS/FedEx big.
They don't have to be as big as the third party couriers networks. Amazon doesn't have to roll out delivery everywhere all at once to be efficient at it. They could simply start with population centers like NYC and back haul. Over time they build it up AND they have a guaranteed customer unlike the freight couriers.
Their intent was pretty obvious.
If you didn't see this coming when Amazon bought a Boeing 767 and labeled it Prime Air, then you weren't awake.
Of course that's only a single aircraft. That won't replace dozens of Fed Ex and UPS aircraft, two global fleets of (500,000) vehicles and the unprecedented U.S. Postal Service rolling ~50,000 Grumman LLVs on Sunday mornings.
But every torrent starts with a single drop. Or 767 as the case may be.
i ignore any product that has 'fulfilled by Amazon' as the only shipping option. I detest private couriers with their policy of "left with a neighbour" idiocy - packages just dumped with anyone. At least with standard mail if no-one's around to collect it simply returned to the local sorting office for later collection
In London (and lots of the UK I believe), most of my packages are sent by Amazon Logistics.
All Prime deliveries that aren't bulky seem to come through them. Large items still use normal courier firms, or if it isn't an Amazon sold item.
About half the time I'd get a better experience with Royal Mail..
Amazon Logistics is run like Uber - random drivers sign up, go fill their car with packages, and then drop them off on the day. You get no surety as to the time (7am-10pm is the helpful window they give you). Mine have mostly come 5-7pm. The courier firms will often have an app that will give me notifications, or sms me a one hour delivery window, which is a much much better experience.
Luckily there is an Amazon Parcel Point box just next to me, so I've been able to switch most things that would come via Amazon Logistics to there.
With all that said, this is the Amazon/Bezos model. Launch it fast, get it out there, see if it can work in a city or two. Then they scale at unbelievable speed, while continuing to iterate on the product, improving it slowly but surely, or just killing it early and walking away. Bezos has big picture, long term planning, for most everything he does.
I'm always discovering new Amazon services, AmazonFresh (which is launching meal kits like everyone else now), Prime Now (now also delivering from restaurants), Amazon Pantry, Amazon Tickets (West End or Broadway show tickets - only just discovered this the other day!), etc.
--Q
Of all the stuff I've ordered from amazon (reasonably large number 2-3 packages a week ) The only packages deliveries I constantly have issues
with are those from "Amazon Logistics"
Back to the future of monopolizing the entire supply chain.
So a company famous for paying little to no taxes just because they supposedly operate at a very low profit level despite huge revenue plans to shift their shipping from companies that at least pay some taxes to a subsidy that will not. Shipping enormous amounts of goods over infrastructure payed with taxes. Hello?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Why can't my favorite brewery deliver to my door? Laws were created to keep things even but the distributors end up being owned or at least directed by the big brewing companies.
In this case, I feel that delivery companies will fight this and it will be stopped. At the very least, Amazon's delivery company will end up with a name other than Amazon to make the lawmakers happy. They will probably only be able to deliver a certain percentage of their own packages. They will probably end up using other carriers for rural or other dispersed areas.
This ain’t exactly news. Amazon has been not so quietly building out their transportation network for years.
They bought a regional delivery company around ten years ago and last winter they bought a not so regional one: http://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazons-delivery-ambitions-take-on-industry-giants/
If you’re an Amazon customer in a market covered by Prime Now, you’ve probably already noticed that they are using the same people who deliver for Prime Now to deliver regular 2-day orders.
Hell, they even flew one of their Prime-branded delivery aircraft in Seattle’s Sea Fair show this year.
So, yeah, I don’t think UPS or FedEx is at all blind-sided by this. They may have no answer for it and it'll likely represents a major loss of revenue for both companies, but I’m sure they’ve seen this coming for years.
In Canada, in any area where there is a big Amazon warehouse, they already ship everything themselves.
If you order anything stocked by Amazon themselves in the Vancouver area for instance, it will get delivered by an Amazon-branded truck from their warehouse in Surrey.
What's missing is any long-distance shipping.
Great!
No more lost packages! This is the way to go! I really wish Amazon takes over every business, or in another words, I really hope every company copies Amazon model, where customer is really first. The happiest day of my life will be when I can finally quit my ISP for something with a service like Amazon. Google is trying but too slow...... ZZZzzz
Amazon's in-house shipping is terrible. They've already rolled this out to some cities. Horribly untrained people delivering packages. 5 of 6 AMZL_US shipped packages, of mine, were delayed in September alone. If they do this, I will cancel Amazon Prime. https://www.reddit.com/r/amazo...
I've had 4 major issues in the past 6 months regarding my Prime membership and every single one was caused by their pathetic excuse for a delivery service. This last one I had looked into 2 days after it was supposed to be delivered - they stated they had found the "lost" package and it would be delivered the next day. Guess what? I finally had them cancel the order, reorder and and they refunded an overnight shipping cost since they had overrun delivery by a full week at this point.
Last I ordered from staples they were using their own shipping service.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!