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    Amazon Sued Over Slow Deliveries to Low-Income Areas

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    The District of Columbia’s attorney general said the company deliberately outsourced Prime member deliveries in certain ZIP codes.The attorney general of the District of Columbia sued Amazon on Wednesday, accusing it of violating consumer protection laws by making slower deliveries to Prime members in historically lower-income neighborhoods.In one of the first complaints of its kind, which was filed with the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb said Amazon had deliberately and secretly stopped its fastest delivery service to the nearly 50,000 Prime subscribers in certain ZIP codes that were lower-income neighborhoods.According to the lawsuit, Amazon has used third parties like United Parcel Service and the Postal Service to make Prime deliveries in those areas for the past two years. That resulted in slower deliveries than those made by Amazon’s own delivery drivers, who serve other Washington residents.Amazon “cannot covertly decide that a dollar in one ZIP code is worth less than a dollar in another,” Mr. Schwalb said in a statement. “We’re suing to stop this deceptive conduct and make sure District residents get what they’re paying for.”Amazon told Mr. Schwalb that it had made the change because of safety concerns in those neighborhoods, the attorney general said. He said the company had violated consumer protection laws by failing to disclose the change to consumers.Amazon said that it disagreed that it had deceived customers and that it had informed Prime subscribers in those areas about each stage of the delivery process. The company said it tried to work with the office of the attorney general to support crime prevention and improve safety for drivers in those areas.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      With Discounts on Offer, Shoppers Seem to Bite

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      Early data on online spending this week shows consumers are being drawn to discounts. A clearer picture of Black Friday sales, including in-store spending, will emerge in the days ahead.For weeks, businesses have been sending consumers endless offers of discounts on all sorts of items. Finally, on this long weekend, it appears that consumers bit.Preliminary data released on Friday suggests that Americans took advantage of big deals on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, opening their wallets, though they were selective about what they bought.Consumers spent $7.9 billion in online shopping on Friday, an increase of 8.2 percent compared with last year, according to incomplete numbers from Adobe Analytics. That’s on top of $6.1 billion online on Thanksgiving Day, around 9 percent more than the previous year. The increases were driven by large discounts on items like toys, electronics and apparel. These numbers offer an early look at how the holiday shopping season has gone so far. The Adobe data doesn’t include in-store buying. Mastercard will release data that includes in-store sales on Saturday, and the National Retail Federation is set to update its figures on the holiday shopping season next week.Ahead of the holiday weekend, as retailers issued forecasts for the coming months, they painted a picture of shoppers who have grown choosy, holding off on large purchases after years of faster-than-usual price increases and with interest rates still high.“Consumers have been waiting all of 2024 for this moment to buy the goods they want and need at a lower price, and they seem to be pleased with the discounts they’re seeing this week,” said Caila Schwartz, the director of consumer insights at Salesforce, which also tracks spending data.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Meta Fined $840 Million in Europe for Boosting Marketplace Unfairly

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      Meta said it would appeal the decision by the European Union, which said the company had abused its dominance in social networking to strengthen its shopping and classified ads service.​The European Union on Thursday fined Meta roughly $840 million for breaking competition laws with Facebook Marketplace, its shopping and classified ads platform, the latest action by regulators trying to limit the ability of tech giants to expand into new product areas.In issuing the 800 million euro fine, European regulators said Meta had given itself an unfair advantage over rival services by bundling Marketplace into Facebook’s wider social network, providing it with immediate access to millions of potential users. They added that Meta had abused its dominance in online advertising to impose unfair business terms on rival shopping services, allowing it to collect data that could be used to strengthen Marketplace.European regulators, led by Margrethe Vestager, the E.U. competition chief, have for years sought to limit the ability of tech companies to use their power in one area, like social networking, to gain a foothold in new markets such as shopping. Authorities in Europe have also accused Apple of using its dominance in smartphones to bolster music and payment services.In linking Marketplace to Facebook’s social network, the company gave itself “advantages that other online classified ads service providers could not match,” Ms. Vestager said in a statement. “This is illegal under E.U. antitrust rules. Meta must now stop this behavior.”The company said it would appeal the decision, setting up a legal battle that could drag out for years. Meta said Marketplace, introduced in 2016, was created in response to consumer demand and had not hindered competition from companies such as eBay and Vinted.On Marketplace, people buy, sell and trade items with others, including furniture, clothing, sports equipment, cars and home goods.“Facebook users can choose whether or not to engage with Marketplace, and many don’t,” the company said in a statement. “The reality is that people use Facebook Marketplace because they want to, not because they have to.”Meta has been a target of efforts on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean to crimp the power of the largest technology companies. Last year, the company was fined 1.2 billion euros, or about $1.26 billion, for violating regional data protection rules. In the United States, the company is being sued by the Federal Trade Commission for antitrust violations.Whether the United States and Europe will stay aligned on tech regulation with President-elect Donald J. Trump returning to office is an open question. Some of his supporters, including Vice President-elect JD Vance, have raised concerns about the power of Silicon Valley firms like Meta and Google, while others have pushed for less regulation.The European Union started the Marketplace investigation in 2019. In 2023, the company reached a settlement with British regulators on a similar case, but was unable to find an agreement with E.U. authorities. More

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      Bitcoin price hits six-week high after Trump backs cryptocurrency

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      Bitcoin has hit its highest level in more than six weeks after Donald Trump said at the weekend he would end the “persecution” of the crypto industry if he wins the US presidential election.The cryptocurrency’s price rose by more than 3% on Monday to peak at about $69,745, the highest since 12 June when the currency changed hands at more than $69,800.The increase comes after supportive comments from Trump at the Bitcoin 2024 convention in Nashville, Tennessee, where he said on Saturday he would make the US the world’s cryptocurrency leader and embrace a more pro-bitcoin stance than his rival, Kamala Harris.The former president said: “I pledge to the bitcoin community that the day I take the oath of office, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s anti-crypto crusade will be over … If we don’t embrace crypto and bitcoin technology, China will, other countries will. They’ll dominate, and we cannot let China dominate. They are making too much progress as it is.”He also said he would sack the chair of the US financial watchdog the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), on the first day of his presidency if he won the election. “On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler,” Trump said, to cheers of approval from the audience.Gensler is a noted sceptic about cryptocurrencies, despite aiding them in January by approving exchange-traded funds (ETFs) – a basket of assets that can be bought and sold like shares on an exchange – that track the price of bitcoin.The SEC chair said in a statement approving the ETFs that bitcoin was a “speculative, volatile” asset used for illegal activities including ransomware and terrorist financing. Since 2023 the SEC has launched more than 40 crypto-related enforcement actions.Speaking at the bitcoin convention, Trump said he would establish a crypto presidential advisory council and create a national “stockpile” of bitcoin using cryptocurrency the US government held that was largely seized in law enforcement actions.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Never sell your bitcoin,” Trump said. “If I am elected, it will be the policy of my administration, the United States of America, to keep 100% of all the bitcoin the US government currently holds or acquires into the future.”The Financial Times also reported on Saturday that Harris’s advisers had approached top crypto companies to try to “reset” the relationship between the Democratic party and the sector. Approaches had been made to the Coinbase crypto exchange, the stablecoin company Circle and the blockchain payments group Ripple Labs, the FT said. More

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      Target Tests an A.I. Tool to Help Its Workers Aid Shoppers

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      The retailer is rolling out a chatbot to help workers answer questions from shoppers — and workers.Target is the latest retailer to put generative artificial intelligence tools in the hands of its workers, with the goal of improving the in-store experience for employees and shoppers.On Thursday, the retailer said it had built a chatbot, called Store Companion, that would appear as an app on a store worker’s hand-held device. The chatbot can provide guidance on tasks like rebooting a cash register or enrolling a customer in the retailer’s loyalty program. The idea is to give workers “confidence to serve our guests,” Brett Craig, Target’s chief information officer, said in an interview.Target is testing the device in 400 stores and plans to make the app available to most workers across its nearly 2,000 locations by August.As the retail industry experiments with generative A.I., some see its potential to eventually make in-store shopping feel more like online shopping, said Roy Singh, the global head of Bain & Co’s advanced analytics practice who works with retailers on generative A.I. initiatives.Retailers have personalized online shopping for customers with things like predictive technology, which suggests items to buy. Shoppers also see e-commerce as more convenient than having to walk in a store and track down workers. The Target app is meant to help workers assist shoppers with their questions faster.Mr. Craig is often asked if these sorts of tools will replace workers, he said. “I believe the relationship between people and technology is so very important,” he said. “We’re here to make sure that they get the right tools to do their work.”Walmart recently expanded access to the A.I. tool it had started using in its corporate offices last summer for use in its retail stores, rolling it out to 13,000 managers of its Sam’s Club stores.While there is significant investment and hype around generative A.I., some retailers have also rolled back experiments with the technology that have failed.“We are still in that growth curve — learning, failing and relearning — and trying to get through adoption at scale,” said Duleep Rodrigo, who leads the U.S. consumer and retail sector for KPMG. More

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      Teamsters Struggle to Unionize Amazon and FedEx Delivery Workers

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      The Teamsters union has made little headway in organizing workers at Amazon and FedEx despite wage and other gains it secured at UPS last year.Last year, two unions representing workers at three large automakers and UPS negotiated new labor contracts that included big raises and other gains. Leaders of the unions — the United Automobile Workers and the Teamsters — hoped the wins would help them organize workers across their industry.The U.A.W. won one vote to unionize a Volkswagen factory in Tennessee last month and lost one this month at two Mercedes-Benz plants in Alabama. The Teamsters have made even less progress at UPS’s big nonunion rivals in the delivery business, Amazon and FedEx.Polling shows that public support for unions is the highest it has been in decades. But labor experts said structural forces would make it hard for labor groups to increase their membership, which is the lowest it has been as a percentage of the total work force in decades. Unions also face stiff opposition from many employers and conservative political leaders.The Teamsters provide an instructive case study. Many of the workers doing deliveries for Amazon and FedEx work for contractors, typically small and medium-size businesses that can be hard to organize. And delivery workers employed directly by FedEx in its Express business are governed by a labor law that requires unions to organize all similar workers at the company nationally at once — a tougher standard than the one that applies to organizing employees at automakers, UPS and other employers.Some labor experts also said the Teamsters had not made as forceful a push as the U.A.W. to organize nonunion workers after securing a new contract with UPS.“You didn’t have that energy that you saw with the U.A.W.’s leaders,” said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociologist who studies labor at Washington University in St. Louis.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      E-Commerce and the Influencer Economy

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      How internet shopping became choked with junk. People are bombarded online each day with ads for newfangled products that promise dramatic life improvements. Modish tumblers. Sleek pans. Miraculous cleaning solutions. Overblown air purifiers. Just click this link and — voilà! Productivity. Happiness. Nirvana.Don’t buy it.Wirecutter, The Times’s product recommendation service, tests many of the wares that clog Americans’ social media feeds. And while our testers do like some, these products are often built on empty promises. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain how e-commerce, a $6 trillion global industry, became choked with junk.Paid to sellOnline shopping can expose people to a greasy influencer economy. Influencers often join affiliate-revenue networks, such as Amazon’s. When an influencer’s follower clicks a link and buys something, the influencer makes money. That’s why people on your social media feed are crowing about their 10 favorite Amazon finds or talking about how an expensive gizmo has changed their life.Many influencers have another incentive: Brands pay them to hawk stuff. Some people with large followings make deals for tens of thousands of dollars per post. Then, when enough people like or share a post, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube algorithms push it to more people. The result is a blizzard of gadgets.Consider these spin scrubbers, pitched online as the solution to all of your cleaning woes. “In videos, these devices churn up rings of soap suds, implying they are lifting away all the filth beneath them,” writes Ellen Airhart, Wirecutter’s cleaning expert.In reality, they’re the worst cleaning tools we’ve ever tested. Ellen spent six hours trying to scour a soap-scum-covered shower and a toothpaste-crusted sink with two spin scrubbers popular on TikTok. They splattered water everywhere and often cost upward of $50. Instead, Ellen recommends a humble $1 sponge.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Teacher Secretly Sold His Students’ Art on Mugs and Shirts, Lawsuit Says

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      Parents of a dozen students at a school near Montreal accused an art teacher in a lawsuit of reproducing portraits from a class assignment and putting them on items that he offered for sale online.In January, students at a junior high school outside Montreal received an assignment to draw a classmate or a self-portrait in the style of Jean-Michel Basquiat.“The challenge is to make an original artwork in Basquiat’s style; not to copy one of his images,” the teacher, Mario Perron, wrote to his students on the junior campus at Westwood High School in St.-Lazare, Quebec. “I am very familiar with Basquiat’s work and will return copied work, because it is considered plagiarism.”The assignment was titled “Creepy Portrait.”Basquiat was a worthy subject: He was the influential Brooklyn-born artist of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent who was known for a brief career in which he innovated with graffiti and other types of improvisational pieces. He died at 27 in 1988.But parents of some students who completed the assignment were shocked to find that Mr. Perron had copied the portraits and was offering mugs, cushions, bags, apparel and other items for sale online bearing reproductions of the artwork, according to a class-action lawsuit filed last week in Quebec Superior Court.Joel DeBellefeuille, who learned what was happening from his 13-year-old son, Jax, accused Mr. Perron in an interview of perpetrating a “premeditated” scheme. A portrait of Jax by one of his classmates was among the student artwork being offered for sale, he said. “I freaked out,” Mr. DeBellefeuille said. “I was full of emotions. Still now, it’s really unbelievable.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Has the Luxury E-Commerce Bubble Burst?

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      After implosions by Farfetch and MatchesFashion — and with other blowouts possible — the future for online fashion retailers looks uncertain.Rosh Mahtani, the founder of the jewelry brand Alighieri, is celebrating the 10th anniversary of her company this year. Her handmade gold-plated pieces, inspired by Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” made her a winner of the Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design and a mainstay of luxury e-commerce vendors.During Paris Fashion Week last month, buyers came to her showroom to select stock for the upcoming season, including MatchesFashion, a leading multibrand fashion retailer that is responsible for about half a million pounds, or $630,000, of Alighieri’s projected revenues. But there was a problem.“They had owed me 70,000 pounds [about $88,000] in unpaid invoices since October and had been asking for discounts on those bills,” Ms. Mahtani said last week. It made her uneasy, even if such bargaining was increasingly commonplace for independent brands like hers. Still, she said, she wasn’t quaking in her boots.“The team made a selection, and we talked about a capsule collection for the summer,” she said. “I don’t think any of us had a sense of what would come next.”Days later, MatchesFashion was put into administration (the British term for bankruptcy). Its owner, Frasers Group, which bought the company in December for about 52 million pounds, or $66 million, now said the operation was not commercially viable. Overnight, almost half of the staff was fired from a company that had been valued at $1 billion when it was sold to Apax Partners in 2017. Today, 200 brands are owed money and cannot access unsold inventory, and a furious customer base rages online about accessing orders or making returns.Rosh Mahtani, founder of cult jewelry label Alighieri, was owed substantial sums by MatchesFashion when the retailer was put into administration earlier this month.via Alighieri JewelryWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More