Following the judgement of a French court on Tuesday, we have to temporarily suspend operations in our Fulfilment Centres in France. This is in spite of the huge investment we made in additional safety measures to keep our hard-working, dedicated colleagues safe, while ensuring they had continued employment at this difficult time. Our FC operations are complex and varied, and with the punitive 1M euro per incident fines imposed by the court, the risk was too high. We remain perplexed by the court’s decision, which was made in spite of the overwhelming evidence we provided about the safety measures we have implemented, and have launched an appeal.

Good, good...

Expect more countries to stop Amazon operations, the fight has began and Amazon must be purged.

Jeff Bezos, world’s richest man, asks public to donate to Amazon relief fund

“How is your company worth over a TRILLION dollars and you want the public to donate to an employee relief fund?! As if Amazon can’t pay their employees themselves,” one frustrated consumer wrote on Twitter.

Amazon is worth $1tn, and Mr Bezos is worth an estimated $114bn, making him the world's richest man. In 2018, the company reported an income of $11bn but paid $0 into federal taxes.

As the pandemic continues and more consumers turn to the e-commerce site to stock up on necessary essentials, the company is anticipated to post an even larger income this year. But it is still asking for consumers to contribute to its fund if they would like.

We are not and have not asked for donations and the Amazon Relief Fund has been funded by Amazon with an initial donation of $25 million. The structure to operate a fund like this, which hundreds of companies do through the same third-party, requires the program to be open to public contributions but we are not soliciting those contributions in any way,” a spokesperson with Amazon told The Independent.

https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-fury-worlds-richest-man-173301947.html

Amazon has been processing from 10% to 40% more packages than normal for this time of year, according to an employee tally at one delivery center. The company’s website had 639,330,722 visits for the week of March 9, according to data from Comscore, up 32% from the year earlier.

From Feb. 20 to March 23, Amazon’s sales of toilet paper increased 186% from the year-earlier period, according to analytics firm CommerceIQ, which said that before the coronavirus hit it had forecast a 7% increase for the period. CommerceIQ said sales of cough and cold medicine grew by 862%, compared with a forecast growth rate of 110%, and children’s vitamins by 287%, compared with a forecast rate of 49%.

And this will no go away, this ten sof thousands of small businesses who will return and won't see their old clients.

Amazon is one of the main sponsors of current psyco saga.

As the coronavirus pandemic unfolds and communities everywhere prepare for the worst, Amazon workers have become crucial in getting people their food, water, and sanitation supplies. We have seen an increase in the volume of such goods, placing a greater strain on workers. Yet despite larger workloads, Amazon continues to enforce and raise productivity quotas. At the same time, many workers have been shocked to discover the company has been illegally denying them paid sick leave.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfNxRiOtKkPDoCi3iUe6XPyM0rzYzXezaSc4soA-3jX9SGpOw/viewform

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Communications Workers of America, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, Service Employees International Union, and Change to Win submit this Petition requesting that the Federal Trade Commission initiate an investigation of Amazon.com, Inc., pursuant to the agency’s powers under Section 6(b) of the Federal Trade Commission Act. Amazon’s multiple roles as marketplace, retailer, and logistics and cloud computing provider enable and incentivize its anti-competitive practices, and the company’s dominance allows it to squeeze profit from and reduce choice among workers, consumers, merchants, and competitors. The legality of Amazon’s practices, the scope of its power, and the adequacy of existing regulation have prompted investigations by regulators around the world, but in many instances the company has responded to these investigations insufficiently or refused to respond entirely. As a result, many of Amazon’s most concerning practices remain opaque.

Petitioners call on the FTC to launch an investigation of Amazon’s anti-competitive behavior.

http://www.changetowin.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Petition-for-Investigation-of-Amazon.pdf

It is long time overdue.

2020 must become year of attack on Amazon. And beginning of its fall.

Since opening in September 2018, Amazon’s massive fulfillment center on New York’s Staten Island has garnered a reputation as grueling and unsafe, even among a logistics network broadly criticized as such. Now, leaked company documents reveal that injury rates at the warehouse, known as JFK8, are over three times the industry average. What’s unclear is if these numbers are at all anomalous compared to Amazon’s other facilities.

https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-amazons-own-numbers-reveal-staggering-injury-1840025032

Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Amazon has deliberately tweaked its product-search algorithm to more prominently feature products that are more profitable for Amazon, including its own in-house brands.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-changed-search-algorithm-in-ways-that-boost-its-own-products-11568645345

Btw, Aliexpress is doing it much longer and the more valuable customer you are - the worse offers (for your side!) they will present. And contrary to Amazon they will entirely remove best offers from search result.

Amazon Dash Buttons will stop working on August 31st

Idea had been little strange, but now Amazon behaves more and more like Google.

Amazon started offering tours twice a day at 46 of more than 250 sites worldwide. (Previously they were offered only a few times a month at five sites.) Anybody can sign up online, as I did, without signing a nondisclosure agreement or promising to keep what they see to themselves. “Come see the magic,” the website suggests. “Tour one of our fulfillment centers and see first-hand how we deliver to you.” There is, this suggests, nothing to hide.

https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/6/26/18758599/amazon-fulfillment-center-tour-robots-workers

Surprise

Amazon is set to purge many of its small suppliers over the next few months. The purge could shatter the generally favorable relationship between Amazon and many of its long-time vendors, as we first discussed last month when we reported that Amazon was accused of "crushing" its merchants by undercutting products with its own.

The move is supposed to help cut costs and focus wholesale purchasing on large brands like Procter & Gamble, Sony and Lego. Amazon wants to ensure that the company has adequate supplies of "must-have" merchandise that will help it compete with companies like Target and Walmart. As a result, bulk orders for thousands of smaller suppliers may dry up over the next few months.

It also means that many smaller retailers that have relied on Amazon for a steady stream of orders will have to win sales one shopper at a time on the platform's marketplace. This marks one of the large shifts in Amazon strategy since it opened the site up to independent sellers nearly 2 decades ago.

Who could have known. Now sheep showed to wolf that sells well and can be used for their real purpose... special dinner food.

When the world starts decoupling, soon enough, big guns will be pulled out, and eventually real ones. But we are all humans, so we keep repeating history, it seems.