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- An Amazon delivery driver in Texas said she was suddenly fired due to tracking algorithms.
- The 42-year-old said her car, containing donated Christmas presents for her kids, was repossessed.
- “I almost lost my house,” Neddra Lira told Bloomberg.
- Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories.
After three years working for Amazon’s contractor delivery service, Amazon Flex, 42-year-old Neddra Lira said she was suddenly fired last October.
As a result, Lira said, her car was repossessed and she stopped paying her mortgage. When the car was repossessed, it had donated Christmas presents inside for her three children, Lira told Bloomberg.
“I nearly lost my house,” she said. Lira’s other job, as a school bus driver, was on hiatus in October 2020 as schools were still mostly remote and pandemic lockdowns remained in place.
Amazon’s Flex program is a contractor position where drivers use their own vehicles. Deliveries routes are chosen through a corresponding app – like Uber or Lyft, but for Amazon package delivery.
Just before her firing, Lira was assessed by Amazon’s Flex app as being in “Great” standing as an employee, screenshots obtained by Bloomberg show – part of the algorithmic tracking of Amazon’s contracted delivery drivers.
Then, on October 2, 2020, Lira said she received an email saying she’d violated the service’s terms and was “no longer eligible to participate in the Amazon Flex program.”
After weeks of emails and appeals, Lira’s case was reviewed and denied by a string of emails from employees she’d never met.
It’s not clear what caused Lira’s firing in the first place, but Amazon Flex drivers speaking with Bloomberg describe tracking issues with Amazon’s algorithms: The inability to account for a long line of Flex drivers outside of the delivery station, for instance, or car maintenance and repair issues that can cause delivery delays.
Amazon representatives didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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