Amazon has been accused of secretly slowing down Prime deliveries in low-income parts of the District of Columbia and then lying to customers who complained.
In a lawsuit filed on Wednesday, DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb alleged that Amazon violated a local consumer protection law by overcharging approximately 48,000 “historically underserved” people in “two ZIP codes east of the Anacostia River”—20019 and 20020—by millions after “secretly” changing how delivery services work in these areas.
According to Schwalb’s press release, Amazon switched from using its in-house delivery service for the last mile of deliveries to these DC ZIP codes sometime in mid-2022 to “exclusively” using third-party services. These third-party services—such as USPS or UPS—are “often slower” than Amazon delivery drivers, and “Amazon knew” the switch “would result in significantly slower deliveries for residents living in these two ZIP codes yet it never informed existing or prospective Prime members living there of that exclusion,” the release said.