Customer reviews on Amazon are skewed by racial bias

Customer feedback helps Amazon.com Inc. determine how much to pay the driver's employer and whether they will keep their jobs when a delivery driver drops off a package at someone's home.

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By doing so, Amazon is trusting its customers to provide honest feedback. What if the person has a bias against the driver?

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For Amazon delivery companies who hire Black, Latino, and Asian drivers, that prospect is a cause for great concern. They claim that their employees of color consistently receive negative client feedback compared to their White counterparts. The proprietors of the delivery company believe racial bias is at blame because the condition affects some of their most productive workers.

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The delivery contractors claim that they have spoken with numerous Amazon supervisors about their worries. The subject has also been discussed on Ignite, a website that Amazon created for delivery contractors to exchange tips and talk about difficulties. The contractors claim that although Amazon staff members keep an eye on the site and occasionally join, they have never taken part in discussions about potential racial bias. The business has also allegedly not taken any action to resolve the problem.

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Eight current and former Amazon delivery contractors who work in Los Angeles, Seattle, Georgia, Northern California, and the Northeast described the same pattern in their interviews: drivers of color receive lower ratings, especially when placed in areas where their race or ethnicity is more noticeable. The contractors' suspicions are in line with decades of academic studies showing how prejudice against people of different races, genders, and ages affects how customers view service providers like waiters and taxi drivers. Companies have been accused for years of not doing enough to stop prejudice from influencing customer feedback, but they are constantly gathering more of this type of information.

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“When you allow your customers such a great deal of control over the delivery process, you are assuming that they are coming from a good-natured position,” said an Amazon contractor in Northern California, who requested anonymity to protect his relationship with Amazon. “It's that flaw that causes the problem.”

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The company hasn't overlooked the problem, according to Amazon spokesperson Maria Boschetti, who didn't dispute that racial bias is influencing driver customer reviews. In a statement sent to Trade Algo via email, she stated, "We take any such concerns seriously and investigate any credible complaint—reviewing all relevant information, then taking appropriate action based on the facts available to us. According to Boschetti, Amazon stops delivering products to clients who are abusive or might be a danger to drivers. She added that no demographic information regarding drivers is gathered or kept by the business.

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Amazon is hardly the only tech company accused of allowing racism to influence how it does business. The company Uber Technologies Inc. was sued for allegedly letting minority drivers go based on customer reviews. The plaintiffs failed to demonstrate discrimination, a federal judge ruled in March, but they were given time to revise their complaint. Since its inception, Airbnb Inc. has fought to end host discrimination against African Americans who are eager to rent vacation homes. The company enacted a number of safeguards in response to a lawsuit brought by a Black man alleging such prejudice, including holding off on showing hosts a prospective renter's photo until after they had accepted their booking.

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But, detractors contend that Amazon hasn't gone far enough to identify data collection gaps. Internet vendors have long complained that unfair or malicious customer reviews can result in their removal from the company's web store. According to a Trade Algo investigation, Amazon's algorithms were penalizing delivery workers for delays they had little control over and failing to account for real-world situations like terrible weather, bad roads, and traffic.

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The claimed racial bias by delivery contractors is covert and challenging to spot in any one response. When a consumer gives a negative review, a selection of checkable options appears, including non-specific options like "driver was unprofessional" and "driver did not follow my delivery instructions" that don't need any supporting evidence. The racial disparity, though, is evident when Amazon combines the comments to determine scores, according to the business owners.

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According to NiCole Buchanan, a psychology professor at Michigan State University, this type of feedback is vulnerable to "implicit bias" from clients who might be more tolerant of tiny mistakes made by those who resemble them and assess those viewed as outsiders more harshly. Rarely does someone intentionally act in a racist manner, according to her. "Everything is done very delicately."

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“It can be challenging to hold employers accountable because you need to demonstrate that the feedback is negatively affecting drivers of color disproportionately,” according to Dallan Flake, a law professor at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. Additionally, he added, punitive damages are not allowed under the law. Flake, who has long researched prejudice in customer reviews, said that while Amazon isn't immune to litigation, they probably aren't concerned about being the target of a significant class-action case. If driver feedback scores increase, "they have no incentive to do anything that in the end might cost them."

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In 2018, Amazon introduced its "delivery service partner" initiative, enabling aspiring entrepreneurs to establish their own companies. Some 275,000 drivers are now part of the program, which now includes more than 3,000 contractors worldwide. Although not technically the drivers' employer, Amazon keeps an eye on them via cameras, car sensors, and smartphone apps. The technology records how frequently a motorist speeds or makes insufficient stops, as well as whether they are belted in and whether they turn off the engine when they stop. Each delivery company is given a score by Amazon depending on a variety of factors, such as the number of deliveries actually made, safety records, and client feedback.

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The delivery contractors claim that the issue with using customer reviews to establish overall scores is that the majority of individuals choose not to leave a review. Contractors say that feedback rates of 1% or less are typical, meaning that a company that sends out tens of thousands of parcels each week will only get feedback from a small number of customers—perhaps only a few hundred. They claim that as a result, a small group of people has an excessive impact on test scores.

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What delivery contractors are paid depends heavily on the scorecards. To qualify for bonuses, students must obtain high grades, which frequently determines whether they turn a profit. According to the contractors, who claim that Amazon has little incentive to improve the method because it saves the corporation money, low marks can be catastrophic to the bottom line. In addition, the contractors claim they lack the authority to compel Amazon to make any adjustments.

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One delivery company owner in the Atlanta metropolitan area said, "You can't tell an 800-pound gorilla they didn't think this through when they put it together. Because it's to their advantage, they don't want to hear about it.”

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The scorecards also aid in selecting which drivers get hired, promoted, or fired. Four contractors indicated that despite their suspicions of racial bias, some delivery companies may discipline drivers with low ratings out of fear that Amazon may terminate their contracts. According to them, delivery companies who are concerned about their overall rankings may even terminate drivers or refrain from employing individuals of race.

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Amazon contract drivers have no means of understanding how their work is being judged because they are unaware of which consumers post ratings. But, a number of drivers of color told Trade Algo that they have come across various levels of animosity while doing their rounds.

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Before being hurt in a crash in December, Veronica Saxon had been a Michigan-based Amazon delivery driver for almost a year. According to Saxon, a Black woman, her experience with racism on the job was the first. She claimed that as she approached a house to leave a package on the door, a guy and his kid pulled firearms on her. The dispatcher never sent Saxon back to that area since she had been promised by her employer that such occurrences were uncommon. A White woman followed her for four hours while Saxon was making deliveries a few months later, she said.

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Saxon recalled, "She said she was just making sure everything was good. After four hours, I snapped a picture of her license plate and warned the woman that I would contact the police if she continued to follow me.”

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Given the myriad of factors, she claimed that drivers often struggle to understand why consumers provide negative comments. Saxon, who claimed to have bit twice while doing Amazon deliveries, noted that some people might be racist, while others would be irate that you urged them to leash their loose dog.

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"It may or may not be racism,” she remarked. Many warned me against delivering to homes with Trump flags when I first started my job, but they ended up being some of my friendliest clients who chatted with me and gave me snacks and drinks.”

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Another Black driver who has been delivering items for Amazon in Atlanta for three years noted that racism is a constant worry for drivers, particularly in gated communities with a large White community.

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The driver, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is still employed by an Amazon delivery company, claimed that Amazon is aware of what is happening. "It benefits Amazon if we receive more bad than good feedback because they may use it to deny us bonus money and raises," the employee said.

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Some White customers object when he takes a picture of an item on their porch as required by Amazon to confirm successful delivery. He's been bitten twice because some homeowners let their dogs out as he approaches. Others request to see his ID. Such exchanges don't occur in Black and Latino communities, he added, so I just point to my Amazon hat and Amazon van and ask if they want to see ID from their mailman.

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The driver claimed that his supervisor had brought up racism with staff members and urged them to record every event so they could tell Amazon all the specifics.

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Racism "becomes the norm because we deal with it every day and expect it," he claimed. "You can sense it when you deliver in a White community. People merely ogle. They don't wave, smile, or do anything else. The intent of the stare-down is to suggest to you that you don't belong.

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An ex-Amazon employee who is aware of the contract-driver program's design suggested that the business could do more to address prejudice in driver evaluations, such as reworking the feedback system to prioritize helpful suggestions and reduce potentially offensive or pointless criticism.

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This person expressed, on the condition that they remain anonymous for the sake of protecting professional relationships, that if Amazon is going to score people, discipline people, and fire people, they have to make sure that the product is right first. “They don't think about things like bias when they are making decisions. This isn't a part of our DNA. This is just a matter of making the machine work as efficiently as possible. There aren't any considerations for the human cases."

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It can be difficult to identify skewed client feedback. Aniket Bera, a computer science professor at Purdue University, claimed that given Amazon's knowledge of consumer behavior, it should be in a better position than most to deal with the problem. He declared, "The corporation has enough data to at least partially fix the issue. "If they don't, it's because it's too expensive from a business standpoint,"

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For the time being, delivery companies are attempting to get past the more overt prejudice that their staff members encounter. They provide drivers with routes where they won't stick out as much. They alert Amazon about instances of pulled triggers and other forms of intimidation. A delivery contractor who attended a training session held at a firm facility in Los Angeles reported that instructors—co-owners—emphasized safety and advised newcomers to be aware of the ethnic and racial mix of their regions and to make personnel assignments accordingly.