Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz denounced today the online retail giant Amazon.com following a report by Bloomberg for failure to provide equal services to areas of New York City with high minority populations.
Over the last few years Amazon has unveiled and rapidly expanded its “Prime Free Same-Day” service, which is currently available in over 27 major cities across the U.S. The service allows Amazon’s “Prime” customers to order retail items from the company’s website and have them delivered to their doorstep within hours. However, according to the Bloomberg report, “Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?,” authored by David Ingold & Spencer Soper, several major cities, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, New York and Washington D.C., all have non-white areas that do not have access to the “Prime Free Same-Day” service. In New York, for example, the underserved areas include the entirety of the Bronx and parts of eastern Queens.
“This is simply outrageous,” said Assemblyman Dinowitz, who chairs the Assembly Committee on Consumer Affairs and Protection. “I find it completely implausible that Amazon is able to offer same-day delivery service from Manhattan all the way down to Philadelphia, but can’t manage to offer the same service to a single neighborhood in the Bronx, a borough which has seen one of the fastest economic growth spurts in New York City history over the last seven years. It’s a real slap in the face to the 1.4 million proud Bronxites who might want to do business with Amazon.”
According to the report, a spokesman for Amazon claimed that the Bronx is “difficult to reach because the warehouses that serve the area are in New Jersey,” seemingly unaware of the fact that the George Washington Bridge connects I-95 directly to the Cross Bronx Expressway.
“This practice is nothing short of de facto segregation, and I think it merits serious investigation by the New York State Attorney General’s office, the State Division of Consumer Protection, and the U.S. Attorney,” said Assemblyman Dinowitz. “Frankly, I’m disappointed. Amazon offers a wonderful service and has always been a champion of equal pricing policies regardless of race, age, gender, or region, but to say that it’s a coincidence that predominantly non-white neighborhoods have been excluded from accessing this service is a little ridiculous. Whether we’re talking about the Bronx in New York, or the south-side of Chicago, or Roxbury in Boston, Amazon’s failure to overcome decades of institutionalized segregation is a harsh reminder that we still have a long way to go before all American’s have the same opportunities.”
