>> I called Amazon and they of course speak of them like they are some completely separate affiliate that has nothing to do with them.
This by design:
Amazon has repeatedly said in court that it is not responsible for the actions of its contractors, citing agreements that require them, as one puts it, to “defend, indemnify and hold harmless Amazon.” Just last week, an operations manager for Amazon testified in Chicago that it signs such agreements with all its “delivery service partners,” who assume the liability and the responsibility for legal costs. The agreements cover “all loss or damage to personal property or bodily harm including death.”
Amazon vigilantly enforces the terms of those agreements. In New Jersey, when a contractor’s insurer failed to pay Amazon’s legal bills in a suit brought by a physician injured in a crash, Amazon sued to force the insurer to pick up the tab. In California, the company sued contractors, telling courts that any damages arising from crashes there should be billed to the delivery companies.
The whole article was pretty shocking to read. I rarely, if ever buy stuff on Amazon now that I know how they've attempted to wall themselves off from responsibility of what happens with these companies.
If you or I hire a company to ship a package, we are not generally responsible if the driver the shipper hires runs someone over. This same construct should apply at scale.
You're right in principle. This is definitely the case if I ask the company to deliver a package, for a price that they name (or negotiate), and I then hand over the package and money and let them do their thing.
The issue here is that Amazon is very strictly controlling the drivers, without (directly) employing them. By gig-economy voodoo they try to have it both ways.
It does apply at scale. If one company were to “hire [another] company to ship a package”, there would be no question that the delivery company would be liable if their driver did something negligent. If they meddled in the delivery company’s affairs, specified almost every aspect of their operations, entered into a sole-source agreement that forbids the delivery company from working for other customers, then that is an entirely different matter.
Why? Is this just an assertion that there is no difference between big and small things, and that a single mistake is the same as building your business model on mistakes?
Yes but when does it end when someone is working exclusively for your company to your exact specifications. It would be as if I opened a restaurant and my cook was a totally separate subsidiary called "My Restaurant's Cook LLC". I am sorry your food was bad or they poisoned you. They are a completely unrelated sub entity that cooks food to my specifications with my uniform exclusively for me.
So please take up any complaints with your service with them and not our restaurant.
If you hire a contractor to perform work on your house, and during their contract they happen to burn down one neighbor's house and destroy the wall of a separate neighbor's house - you will not be liable for their actions.
If you think that Amazon should be liable for the actions of their contracted drivers, you would likewise be liable for burning down and destroying your neighbor's houses.
The “homeowner” here is analogous to an outside investor in Amazon (like me) who has no operational role in the company. The entity who directs the the manner in which subcontractors work, like Amazon does with its delivery companies, is acting as the general contractor and will most surely be named in a lawsuit if anything they did or did not do plausibly contributed to the fire.
This by design:
Amazon has repeatedly said in court that it is not responsible for the actions of its contractors, citing agreements that require them, as one puts it, to “defend, indemnify and hold harmless Amazon.” Just last week, an operations manager for Amazon testified in Chicago that it signs such agreements with all its “delivery service partners,” who assume the liability and the responsibility for legal costs. The agreements cover “all loss or damage to personal property or bodily harm including death.”
Amazon vigilantly enforces the terms of those agreements. In New Jersey, when a contractor’s insurer failed to pay Amazon’s legal bills in a suit brought by a physician injured in a crash, Amazon sued to force the insurer to pick up the tab. In California, the company sued contractors, telling courts that any damages arising from crashes there should be billed to the delivery companies.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/us/amazon-delivery-driver...
The whole article was pretty shocking to read. I rarely, if ever buy stuff on Amazon now that I know how they've attempted to wall themselves off from responsibility of what happens with these companies.