Amazon calls the police to arrest someone? The government raids FBA warehouses

Recently we have been talking about Amazon because of its highlight moment during the epidemic this year. Now all parties are closely watching Amazon's every move. If there are any mistakes, it will easily be caught by consumers or government agencies. Amazon's recent actions will be relatively low-key, and try not to attract too much attention and discussion.

However, things went against Amazon's wishes. Even though Amazon wanted to keep a low profile, some people did not allow it to do so. Last week, an Amazon FBA warehouse (code: DTW1) in Michigan was raided by two congressmen. Amazon refused to allow the congressmen to enter the warehouse and even called the police!

This is actually very outrageous, because Amazon had issued an open invitation in May this year, inviting two Democratic congressmen, Rashida Tlaib and Debbie Dingell, to visit Amazon's related facilities. At that time, Amazon was questioned by the outside world for its lax epidemic prevention work in its warehouses and the outbreak of infections in its logistics facilities. The invitation at that time was definitely to invite congressmen to confirm Amazon's epidemic prevention work on site, so as to restore its reputation.

However, what was unexpected was that although the two congressmen agreed to visit at the time, they waited for a full four months, and then suddenly came to DTW1 on their own and asked to enter the warehouse for a visit.

In the past four months, the US epidemic has gone from the first wave to the second wave, and Amazon has also experienced a surge in stock market value, setting a historical record. In other words, Amazon's performance in these four months was indeed too outstanding, which attracted the attention of various institutions and government officials. In addition, the poor response of the company at the first hearing at the end of July has further exacerbated the distrust of Amazon by relevant institutions.

So when two Democratic congressmen suddenly came to check on the warehouse four months later, the DTW1 staff was really confused and had to turn the congressmen away. This obvious refusal showed that something shady was going on in the warehouse, so the two congressmen refused to give in and confronted Amazon staff at the warehouse door for more than an hour and a half. In the end, Amazon called the police and asked the congressmen to leave the FBA warehouse.

Two Democratic congressmen later tweeted that during the one and a half hour standoff, they could clearly see through the window of the facility (DTW1) that many internal staff were scrambling to clean up the area visible to the congressmen . Then, during the shift change, hundreds of workers entered the warehouse to exchange their positions, but many of them bypassed the temperature check at the door, and Amazon's epidemic prevention work at the entrance was ineffective.

What's more serious is that the two congressmen collected a large amount of evidence such as records, reports, videos and photos, all of which reflected the negligence of Amazon warehouses in epidemic prevention work. They said that they were still sorting out the information and planned to release it to the media soon.

Amazon is currently preparing for Primeday, a critical juncture. A wave of negative news about its negligence in epidemic prevention at this time is very unfavorable . Not only will it have to face the criticism from consumers, employees and the government again as it did in April and May, but it may also need to strengthen the overall epidemic prevention work in the warehouse again.

Warehouse epidemic prevention work is inversely proportional to order processing efficiency. Epidemic prevention work requires employees to maintain social distancing, and fixed cleaning procedures, etc., will seriously reduce the warehouse's processing capacity. If this matter is not handled properly, Amazon may be forced to sacrifice its transportation capacity to save its reputation for anti-epidemic work under pressure from society and government agencies.

We have analyzed before that epidemic prevention has always been the biggest stumbling block for Amazon to improve its warehouse processing capacity. No matter how the warehouse is optimized, the existence of epidemic prevention will limit a warehouse from returning to its pre-epidemic processing capacity. So the only way to solve the current logistics dilemma is to open more warehouses and add more FBA operation centers.

This countermeasure is also what Amazon has been doing in the past few months. At the same time that the two congressmen broke the negative news about the warehouse's epidemic prevention work, Amazon was still announcing the commissioning of a new warehouse.

The new FBA warehouse in Bremerton is expected to open for business at the end of this month. It covers an area of ​​approximately 10,869 square meters. It has passed the relevant review and approval of the City of Bremerton and obtained a business license issued by the government.

So although Amazon did not directly respond to the negative news brought by the two congressmen, it has actually done a lot of work behind the scenes to reduce this impact. As long as Amazon's FBA operation centers open enough and fast enough , and get the support of local governments, the impact of some negative epidemic prevention news on the overall FBA capacity will be small enough.

Therefore, everyone can pay attention to whether the information released by subsequent congressmen can cause a big enough fluctuation, and focus more on the recent peak season.