Amazon has announced a new program where it will disburse a million $5 tips to delivery drivers when U.S. customers ask their Alexa device to “thank my driver.”
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“Now, we’ll provide customers with the opportunity to say thanks each and every day—with the help of Alexa,” the company said in a release Wednesday.
Per Bloomberg, the announcement comes on the same day that Washington D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine filed a lawsuit related to a Federal Trade Commission settlement from 2021, in which the agency contended Amazon withheld tips from Amazon Flex — who bring goods for programs like AmazonFresh, a grocery retailer. (The recovered tips were already disbursed.)
Related: ‘It’s Just A Poke in The Eye’: Amazon Warehouse Workers Slam Small, Hourly Raises
Amazon has faced a fair amount of labor agitation from its warehouse workers, but it is reportedly much more difficult for its drivers to organize, particularly those who work in its third-party delivery partner services.
How can Alexa tip my Amazon driver?
Here’s how the program works: Amazon set aside a million $5 tips for drivers. Customers can use any Alexa-enabled device (Echo, Echo Show) or the Amazon shopping mobile apps to ask it to thank the driver.
The company will then give the driver who dropped off your most recent package $5 as an expression of thanks. Customers can theoretically ask Alexa as many times as they want, but the company will only fund a million of the tips for a total of $5 million.
After that, it will just be a way to tell your driver, “Thank you.”
Amazon described the effort as a way to reward “everyday heroes” i.e., its drivers. “While this thank-you is another moment for us to express our gratitude, it certainly will not be the last, and we look forward to finding additional opportunities to celebrate the drivers who deliver smiles for customers,” the company wrote.
As part of the program, the company will also give the five drivers who got the most thank-you’s $10,000 for them and $10,000 to a charity of their choosing.
Amazon drivers have reportedly faced a plethora of harsh conditions from having to pee in water bottles to injuries to intense delivery targets.
The company also pushed back on the D.C. suit in a statement to Bloomberg. “This lawsuit involves a practice we changed three years ago and is without merit. All of the customer tips at issue were already paid to drivers as part of a settlement last year with the FTC,” the spokesperson wrote via email.
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