In a report first released by the Wall Street Journal, Amazon has made an announcement that it will suspend its recently started delivery service. With big plans of competing with FedEx and UPS, in the United States, the massive online retailer stated they needed to redirect their efforts. With the recent COVID-19 outbreak, they are finding they need their people and capacity directed towards handling the sudden surge of customer orders.
In an email sent to Reuters, confirming the halt in their shipping service, a spokesperson for Amazon said: “We regularly look at a variety of factors across Amazon to make sure we’re set up the right way to best serve our customers.”
Amazon had provided its shipping service to a handful of cities in the US, including Los Angeles. The service handled both non-Amazon and Amazon marketplace packages. With the recent surge in demand for products, Amazon realized they needed to redirect their efforts.
The massive increase in demand has been created by the stay-at-home orders that most of the US are currently under. The reason being to slow down and hopefully stop the current spread of the coronavirus that is sweeping both the US and the rest of the globe.
Before the pandemic outbreak, prime members were guaranteed their packages in one to two days. As it stands now, Amazon is nowhere near able to meet that promise on deliveries, and currently does not know when they will be able to at this point.
With the suspension of Amazon Shipping, for an undetermined amount of time, the company will be better able to focus its efforts on its core business, that of fulfilling their customer’s orders. Amazon had made an announcement in March that it had intended to hire as many as 100,000 additional employees for their warehouses and delivery in the US alone, in an effort to better deal with the online order surges.
FedEx and UPS have both seen their fair share of an increased surge in package shipments. They, too, are working to deal with the influx of parcels, and as such, are feeling the strain. It is pretty much a given that with Amazon suspending its own delivery service, the strain will be felt a bit more, as those parcels will now be handled by one of the two shipping companies.
Is the suspension of Amazon’s shipping service temporary, as stated, or have they learned it is a logistical nightmare?