The most striking gap in Amazonâs same-day service is in Boston, where three ZIP codes encompassing the primarily black neighborhood of Roxbury are excluded from same-day service, while the neighborhoods that surround it on all sides are eligible. âBeing singled out like that and not getting those same services as they do in a 15-minute walk from here is very frustrating,â says Roxbury resident JD Nelson, whoâs been an Amazon Prime member for three years. âItâs not a good thing, and it definitely doesnât make me happy.â Rasberry was excited when Amazon announced Prime Free Same-Day was coming to Washington. But when she entered her ZIP code on the retailerâs website, she was disappointed to find her neighborhood was left out. âI still get two-day shipping, but none of the superfast, convenient delivery services come here,â she says. Rasberry pays the same $99 Prime membership fee as people who live in the cityâs majority-white neighborhoods, but she doesnât get the same benefits. âIf you bring that service to the city,â she says, âyou should offer it to the whole city.â  Thereâs no evidence that Amazon makes decisions on where to deliver based on race. Berman says the ethnic composition of neighborhoods isnât part of the data Amazon examines when drawing up its maps. âWhen it comes to same-day delivery, our goal is to serve as many people as we can, which weâve proven in places like Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, and Philadelphia.â Amazon, he says, has a âradical sensitivityâ to any suggestion that neighborhoods are being singled out by race. âDemographics play no role in it. Zero.â  Amazon says its plan is to focus its same-day service on ZIP codes where thereâs a high concentration of Prime members, and then expand the offering to fill in the gaps over time. âIf you ever look at a map of service for Amazon, it will start out small and end up getting big,â he says.  This is a logical approach from a cost and efficiency perspective: Give areas with the most existing paying members priority access to a new product. Yet in cities where most of those paying members are concentrated in predominantly white parts of town, a solely data-driven calculation that looks at numbers instead of people can reinforce long-entrenched inequality in access to retail services. For people who live in black neighborhoods not served by Amazon, the fact that itâs not deliberate doesnât make much practical difference. âThey are offering different services to other people who donât look like you but live in the same city,â says Rasberry.  Amazon cites several reasons a ZIP code within a city may be excluded: too few Prime members to justify the expense of sending out trucks and drivers, or the area is too far from the closest Amazon warehouse. âDistance matters,â Berman says. âAt some point, with the math involved, we canât make it workâin time, or in cost for the carrier. There is a diminishing return on orders.â In some cases, Amazon says, itâs difficult to find delivery partners willing to serve the area. âWe deliver same day up till 9 p.m.â says Amazon spokesman Scott Stanzel. âThere are a lot of carrier partners. A lot of variables.â  Amazon wonât reveal specifics about how it decides its same-day delivery areasâthe competition would kill for that info, says Berman. Broadly speaking, it comes down to cost. Same-day delivery is expensive to provide, in part because Amazon canât rely on the built-in infrastructure and low negotiated rates of United Parcel Service and the U.S. Postal Service, which shoulder the retailerâs standard and two-day Prime deliveries. To get packages out within hours, Amazon uses a mix of its own drivers, local couriers, and independent contractors making deliveries in their own vehicles through an Uberlike service called Amazon Flex.  Cities where Amazon offers broad one-day coverage appear to have something in common: close proximity to product warehouses, making it less expensive to reach all areas. âItâs not the only variable. Itâs certainly one of them,â says Berman. âIt definitely has an impact if we have a fulfillment center thatâs outside a city, or we have a fulfillment center that happens to be on one side of it.â Amazon declined to reveal the locations of its same-day hubs, so itâs difficult to tell how that works. In same-day cities Amazon hasnât yet surrounded with warehouses, the company must decide which neighborhoods are worth the cost of service and which arenât. Thatâs where things get complicated.
In six big cities, Amazon Prime Same-Day delivery doesn't serve black ZIP codes as well as it does white ones.