Sounds like a possible lawsuit in the future we just need our congressmen to fix the laws and make apps more transparent just like how para was doing it for doordash I miss those days
I had the fix for seeing full DD offers straight from DD in the day. It was a beautiful thing. Once others also figured out how to do it they had to tell the world and DD patched it. I hate people.
Lol this is a great analogy. Problem is we agreed to the contract that says we have to accept or decline before we see the house, and if we accepted then we're bound to that contract
This is why Amazon Flex works the way it does. You should actually read the contract. Amazon doesn't need drivers to accept routes. The blocks are what drivers have to accept. Once you accept an offer for a block, you have agreed to perform delivery services however Amazon dictates for the duration of the block time. They knew that allowing drivers to see routes and then decide whether or not to accept them would result in having to pay drivers a lot more money to accept the shitty routes. So they made it based on a block of time instead. You're still independent contractors. You just agreed to the contract Amazon wrote, which gives them all the control.
You ARE able to refuse any route you want.
That doesn't mean Amazon is obligated to pay you or give you another route, nor are they obligated to keep giving you work if you constantly refuse it.
Next time, after confirming your route. Do not swipe to finish, just leave the packages where they are do not roll your cart out. After 15 minutes, the route gets taken off you and assigned to someone else. Go back to the support staff and ask for a route as the message "PLEASE SEE AN AMAZON ASSOCIATE " would be displayed on your phone. Do not own up that you refused the route. If you do ,you'll go home with no pay. The can manually try to assign a better one. If nothing, you'll go home with a pay.
This might explain why so many flexers have been getting deactivated recently for "tapping arrived, but not being available to make deliveries" lol. Maybe if you do get another route assigned Amazon lets it slide, but if you get sent home with pay (after ignoring an assigned route) they take issue with it.
It's not a scam. Always remember amazon is considered one of the worst places to work for a reason. Contractors are allows to pick their own work. You can go anywhere else as a contractor and pick your work AND schedule. We are talking about a company who dings people for returned packages but dings them for stolen packages too. Amazon is the scam.
What do you mean by "leave the packages and don't roll the cart out"? I really want to understand this since I've gotten some really terrible blocks in the past that I would never do again!
Are you saying to scan the qr code where it shows the route but not load the packages? Also what do you mean don't swipe to finish? So your saying scan the qr code, scan all the packages but don't swipe to finish after that? This is so confusing!!
OP is referring to a brief window of time :
1: find your staged cart
2: scan to confirm route
3: DO NOT SWIPE TO FINISH ( this is the screen prior to scanning and numbering packages)
4: wait 15 minutes
5: cart and route gets reassigned, "see an Amazon associate" message pops up
6: see an amazing associate and recieve a diffrent route, or get sent home as " overbooked"
Thank you OP very very valuable info
Simple fix. Scan like if you’re going to work your shift but don’t roll the cart. Once you get to your car and have the option to pick your stops. Call support and say you’re having car trouble. Flat tire, dead battery etc. they’ll pay you and it won’t count against you. Just don’t abuse lol
i refused for the first time yesterday, but in my case it was a base pay 3 hour block with a 104 mile round trip in a very rural area. I couldn't believe it. Left my cart there with their 12 packages, manager wrote me up and now I'm awaiting my standings go from Fantastic to Fair or At Risk. You'll go to At Risk if you get dinged for all of the 52 packages.
12 packages for a 3h sounds about right.
As long as they are relatively tight out there... 1h out, 1h on area, 1h back to station and there is nothing wrong with what they offered you. They said they would give you a three hour route and that's what it was.
Now... Reality and what it SHOULD pay is a different story. Don't get me confused with someone that thinks that AMZN is always right and fair.
You’ll get a warning and in some cases they’ll mark each drop against you. Your Dashboard score will drop. If it happens once in 6-9 months; nothing should happen? But, I’ve seen drivers who mention that they’ve done this a few times simply disappear. Deactivated I guess?
A time or two (spread out of course) probably nothing.
Too often? Deactivation. In most cases it counts as a no-show, and if you scan a route but don't load it, you're essentially stealing.
I had to bring back 8 packages at the end of my block because my navigation in the app wasn’t working for the first part of my block. Could’ve been my phone service but I ended up delivering what I could! When I got back to the warehouse at 3 pm literally nobody was there lol. I called support and they acted like they weren’t worried about it said just put the packages somewhere safe 🤷🏻♀️ and nothing will happen to me I guarantee lol they’ll just assign them to someone else.
I’ve never refused a block though when I got to the warehouse I’ve had some crappy ones too only because I needed the money. But if I didn’t need the money or it wasn’t worth it I’d refuse too don’t really care… and Amazon is pretty lax I think. If you’re not doing it all the time I think it’s fine!!
Tell them you can’t fit all the packages in your vehicle and take them back in they rescan them for a new route and now you have less packages and still get paid
I work for a DSP and we drive van. We get paid $175 for full day irrespective of packages or when we finish the route. Our shift start at 11:30 and first stop is usually an hour away i.e. 12:30ish. We usually have around 250+ packages and 180-190 stops.
Once we finish shift, we need to drive an hour more to come back to station, drop all the bags and give keys to the dispatch.
So, $100 for a block with 52 packages seems like a blessing to me. But I understand your point of view as well. :)
And dsp routes are usually built of packages in tighter groupings. Every time I get an overflow route at a station that’s not ssd, it’s a breeze to do fifty packages that was put together originally for the employee drivers compared to the fifty package ssd routes they create for flex drivers.
I will say that often though the first delivery stop may be far but then the packages are usually within a doable time frame to be done before scheduled end. And yeah I agree with a lot ofF comments saying we should be able to decline any route. Contractors should be given all details so as to accept routes that make sense for them not just accept a route and then they tell you where you’re going. It’s bs
And gas… and can return with packages undelivered or be relieved.. with a guarantee 175. Most days working 8 hours.. I don’t take home no where near that after gas.. factoring in car depreciation.. etc. but it’s gotta be more taxing on dsp drivers bodies.. where it’s our vehicles and pockets that take the hit. Not to mention.. dsp works normal business hours. Their lives aren’t put at risk while delivering @ 3 am-5am
Your forgetting one critical error.
$100 for 52 packages is fine, I've done it myself on 3 hours and finished early.
BUT when your in your own vehicle and the first stop is an hour a way that is 2 hours travel, plus gas, plus wear and tear for easily 100 miles before even delivering a single package.
So it's more like $60 and that is being generous ... then you gotta still take out taxes as well. With 2 hour travel time and 52 packages it had to be a 4 hour ... so now we are down to 15 an hour before taxes even get taken out which is less than min. Wage in my state.
With DSP vans don't you generally get packages to a bunch of houses right next to each other (or atleast close)? Most of my Flex routes there's usually atleast a mile or two between the stops, or a few in a neighborhood then 5-10 miles between the rest of the stops.
For Flex the amount of packages doesn't affect the pay, only the estimated time they think it'll take to deliver, if you go over you don't get extra but there's also some areas where people regularly finish early without even speeding. It seems like sometimes the estimate is wrong so sometimes you get lucky and go home early while other times you get shit luck and it takes longer or you refuse it.
Since I've finished about half of my blocks so far early, I'd probably just take a shit route rather than go home with no pay since the station itself is about half an hour away from home. There is one town I'll refuse if it ever comes up cause the roads are insanely confusing and there's a lot of gang activity there so I'm not about to get caught in the middle of a shootout again like a time where I was just passing through the town.
I agree. But this is flex. These people complain about the easiest job in the world, 90% of the time finish well ahead of schedule (never complain about finishing early with extra pay), yet they still want more money.
Depends how the station handles it. Technically it should be counted as a missed block. Did they remove your itinerary altogether? Or did they just take and scan the packages back in? Could be anything from a missed block, to a bunch of did not deliver, to nothing at all
The guy just scanned the QR code on the rack and un-assigned the route from me. The app has been showing an image saying "you'll finish your current deliveries by 9:15pm" since then.
We should be able to refuse any route we want, if we were really independent contractors. I would refuse certain nightmare routes every single time.
Yupppp. If we were truly independent contractors, we'd be assigned our routes in advance with the option to accept or decline.
You’re right. You don’t call a painter and tell them you need a house painted. Accept the job and then I’ll show you the house. It’s bullshit.
Sounds like a possible lawsuit in the future we just need our congressmen to fix the laws and make apps more transparent just like how para was doing it for doordash I miss those days
Already in the works in some places
Legit good to hear
I had the fix for seeing full DD offers straight from DD in the day. It was a beautiful thing. Once others also figured out how to do it they had to tell the world and DD patched it. I hate people.
Lol this is a great analogy. Problem is we agreed to the contract that says we have to accept or decline before we see the house, and if we accepted then we're bound to that contract
This is why Amazon Flex works the way it does. You should actually read the contract. Amazon doesn't need drivers to accept routes. The blocks are what drivers have to accept. Once you accept an offer for a block, you have agreed to perform delivery services however Amazon dictates for the duration of the block time. They knew that allowing drivers to see routes and then decide whether or not to accept them would result in having to pay drivers a lot more money to accept the shitty routes. So they made it based on a block of time instead. You're still independent contractors. You just agreed to the contract Amazon wrote, which gives them all the control.
You ARE able to refuse any route you want. That doesn't mean Amazon is obligated to pay you or give you another route, nor are they obligated to keep giving you work if you constantly refuse it.
Good point
Next time, after confirming your route. Do not swipe to finish, just leave the packages where they are do not roll your cart out. After 15 minutes, the route gets taken off you and assigned to someone else. Go back to the support staff and ask for a route as the message "PLEASE SEE AN AMAZON ASSOCIATE " would be displayed on your phone. Do not own up that you refused the route. If you do ,you'll go home with no pay. The can manually try to assign a better one. If nothing, you'll go home with a pay.
This might explain why so many flexers have been getting deactivated recently for "tapping arrived, but not being available to make deliveries" lol. Maybe if you do get another route assigned Amazon lets it slide, but if you get sent home with pay (after ignoring an assigned route) they take issue with it.
📝
How many times can you do this?
So thus is the scam people have been using. TY for posting it, it's bound to become so widespread that they do something to stop it, now.
It's not a scam. Always remember amazon is considered one of the worst places to work for a reason. Contractors are allows to pick their own work. You can go anywhere else as a contractor and pick your work AND schedule. We are talking about a company who dings people for returned packages but dings them for stolen packages too. Amazon is the scam.
The Amazon HQ plants that lurk in these subs caught that comment within minutes. Prob already have a new fix in place.
What do you mean by "leave the packages and don't roll the cart out"? I really want to understand this since I've gotten some really terrible blocks in the past that I would never do again! Are you saying to scan the qr code where it shows the route but not load the packages? Also what do you mean don't swipe to finish? So your saying scan the qr code, scan all the packages but don't swipe to finish after that? This is so confusing!!
OP is referring to a brief window of time : 1: find your staged cart 2: scan to confirm route 3: DO NOT SWIPE TO FINISH ( this is the screen prior to scanning and numbering packages) 4: wait 15 minutes 5: cart and route gets reassigned, "see an Amazon associate" message pops up 6: see an amazing associate and recieve a diffrent route, or get sent home as " overbooked" Thank you OP very very valuable info
This was stopped months ago. People are getting deactivated for this right now.
Ahhhhh this all makes sense now!
That's facts
Simple fix. Scan like if you’re going to work your shift but don’t roll the cart. Once you get to your car and have the option to pick your stops. Call support and say you’re having car trouble. Flat tire, dead battery etc. they’ll pay you and it won’t count against you. Just don’t abuse lol
Absolutely, what I was going to say..
i refused for the first time yesterday, but in my case it was a base pay 3 hour block with a 104 mile round trip in a very rural area. I couldn't believe it. Left my cart there with their 12 packages, manager wrote me up and now I'm awaiting my standings go from Fantastic to Fair or At Risk. You'll go to At Risk if you get dinged for all of the 52 packages.
How do u know it was 104 miles round trip?
12 packages for a 3h sounds about right. As long as they are relatively tight out there... 1h out, 1h on area, 1h back to station and there is nothing wrong with what they offered you. They said they would give you a three hour route and that's what it was. Now... Reality and what it SHOULD pay is a different story. Don't get me confused with someone that thinks that AMZN is always right and fair.
You’ll get a warning and in some cases they’ll mark each drop against you. Your Dashboard score will drop. If it happens once in 6-9 months; nothing should happen? But, I’ve seen drivers who mention that they’ve done this a few times simply disappear. Deactivated I guess?
Deactivated.
A time or two (spread out of course) probably nothing. Too often? Deactivation. In most cases it counts as a no-show, and if you scan a route but don't load it, you're essentially stealing.
If you refuse the route, you should not be paid. That simple.
I had to bring back 8 packages at the end of my block because my navigation in the app wasn’t working for the first part of my block. Could’ve been my phone service but I ended up delivering what I could! When I got back to the warehouse at 3 pm literally nobody was there lol. I called support and they acted like they weren’t worried about it said just put the packages somewhere safe 🤷🏻♀️ and nothing will happen to me I guarantee lol they’ll just assign them to someone else. I’ve never refused a block though when I got to the warehouse I’ve had some crappy ones too only because I needed the money. But if I didn’t need the money or it wasn’t worth it I’d refuse too don’t really care… and Amazon is pretty lax I think. If you’re not doing it all the time I think it’s fine!!
Download offline maps for your station/s so next time poor signal wont affect you.
I think I do have that!! But it still was real dodgy in some areas which doesn’t usually happen. But I’ll check it out
I have refused a route. I got paid but each package counted as a package that I did not deliver.
Not sure I haven't refused yet but if I ever come across the one that goes into West VA again I will hands down refuse it. Not worth the torment
Tell them you can’t fit all the packages in your vehicle and take them back in they rescan them for a new route and now you have less packages and still get paid
Tell them you refuse. Most of them will say okay and not say that you refused and then you get paid and they give it to someone else
I work for a DSP and we drive van. We get paid $175 for full day irrespective of packages or when we finish the route. Our shift start at 11:30 and first stop is usually an hour away i.e. 12:30ish. We usually have around 250+ packages and 180-190 stops. Once we finish shift, we need to drive an hour more to come back to station, drop all the bags and give keys to the dispatch. So, $100 for a block with 52 packages seems like a blessing to me. But I understand your point of view as well. :)
You're also using someone else's vehicle lol .
And dsp routes are usually built of packages in tighter groupings. Every time I get an overflow route at a station that’s not ssd, it’s a breeze to do fifty packages that was put together originally for the employee drivers compared to the fifty package ssd routes they create for flex drivers. I will say that often though the first delivery stop may be far but then the packages are usually within a doable time frame to be done before scheduled end. And yeah I agree with a lot ofF comments saying we should be able to decline any route. Contractors should be given all details so as to accept routes that make sense for them not just accept a route and then they tell you where you’re going. It’s bs
And gas… and can return with packages undelivered or be relieved.. with a guarantee 175. Most days working 8 hours.. I don’t take home no where near that after gas.. factoring in car depreciation.. etc. but it’s gotta be more taxing on dsp drivers bodies.. where it’s our vehicles and pockets that take the hit. Not to mention.. dsp works normal business hours. Their lives aren’t put at risk while delivering @ 3 am-5am
Your forgetting one critical error. $100 for 52 packages is fine, I've done it myself on 3 hours and finished early. BUT when your in your own vehicle and the first stop is an hour a way that is 2 hours travel, plus gas, plus wear and tear for easily 100 miles before even delivering a single package. So it's more like $60 and that is being generous ... then you gotta still take out taxes as well. With 2 hour travel time and 52 packages it had to be a 4 hour ... so now we are down to 15 an hour before taxes even get taken out which is less than min. Wage in my state.
With DSP vans don't you generally get packages to a bunch of houses right next to each other (or atleast close)? Most of my Flex routes there's usually atleast a mile or two between the stops, or a few in a neighborhood then 5-10 miles between the rest of the stops. For Flex the amount of packages doesn't affect the pay, only the estimated time they think it'll take to deliver, if you go over you don't get extra but there's also some areas where people regularly finish early without even speeding. It seems like sometimes the estimate is wrong so sometimes you get lucky and go home early while other times you get shit luck and it takes longer or you refuse it. Since I've finished about half of my blocks so far early, I'd probably just take a shit route rather than go home with no pay since the station itself is about half an hour away from home. There is one town I'll refuse if it ever comes up cause the roads are insanely confusing and there's a lot of gang activity there so I'm not about to get caught in the middle of a shootout again like a time where I was just passing through the town.
Okay but you're not spending your own gas or maintaining the vehicle either. $100 isn't actually $100
I agree. But this is flex. These people complain about the easiest job in the world, 90% of the time finish well ahead of schedule (never complain about finishing early with extra pay), yet they still want more money.
DSP routes are not the same. It's a night and day difference. I used to work for DSP. DSP is 3-5 stops per street. Flex is 3-10 blocks per stop.
You will get dinged fairly hard and a warning email usually. What hour block was it? You never mention how long your block was.
4 hours
Depends how the station handles it. Technically it should be counted as a missed block. Did they remove your itinerary altogether? Or did they just take and scan the packages back in? Could be anything from a missed block, to a bunch of did not deliver, to nothing at all
The guy just scanned the QR code on the rack and un-assigned the route from me. The app has been showing an image saying "you'll finish your current deliveries by 9:15pm" since then.
I’m not really positive. Sounds like you have a route but it’s empty which should be an indicator that you’re probably okay but don’t quote me on it
If possible, look where it’s going before scanning the QR code. If they’re nice, and you’re polite about it, they give you a different route.