Amazon will pay $8.25 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the District of Columbia over delivery practices affecting customers in two majority-Black neighborhoods.
The settlement calls for $7.25 million in refunds to roughly 69,000 D.C. customers and a $1 million penalty paid to the District, according to D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb’s office. Amazon will also change its business practices under the agreement.
The dispute centered on ZIP codes 20019 and 20020, which cover portions of Wards
7 and 8 east of the Anacostia River. The lawsuit alleged Amazon excluded those ZIP codes from its in-house delivery network beginning in 2022 while continuing to charge residents the standard Prime membership price.Customers in the affected ZIP codes had placed approximately 4.5 million Amazon orders since 2020, reports AfroTech. Prime membership currently costs $14.99 per month or $139 annually. The District alleged customers were not adequately informed that Amazon had shifted deliveries in the area to third-party carriers, including UPS and the U.S. Postal Service, contributing to longer delivery times.
Amazon has denied that the changes were discriminatory or deceptive and attributed the operational shift to safety concerns involving delivery drivers.
“There have been specific and targeted acts against drivers delivering Amazon packages,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a statement explaining that the company made changes to “put the safety of delivery drivers first.” She added, “The safety of our customers and the drivers delivering to them has always guided our operational decisions — full stop,” reports AfroTech
. She added that drivers faced “specific, documented safety threats” in the affected ZIP codes and said Amazon adjusted operations to protect them while continuing deliveries through other carriers. “However, claims that our practices, at any point, were deceptive are false,” Nantel said.Amazon also said the settlement does not constitute an admission of wrongdoing. The company said conditions have improved and that packages in the affected communities are
again being delivered through Amazon’s Delivery Service Partners and Amazon Flex delivery partners. Meanwhile, for affected Prime customers, the agreement puts millions of dollars back in consumers’ hands while requiring Amazon to alter practices tied to its delivery operations.RELATED CONTENT: Amazon Workers Depend On Food Stamps As Labor’s Share Of The Economy Hits A Record Low