Amazon did not respond to a request for comment on this article. The objective, White said, was to make it so onerous for the retailer to do business outside of Amazon that it would throw up its hands and let Amazon manage everything. Ironically, if Amazon had agreed to offer pickups, matched the retailer's current cost on price or even came in somewhat higher, and waived the 98.5 percent on-time delivery requirement because it would have end-to-end control of the business at issue, the retailer might have turned over all its traffic to Amazon, thus ending a long and deep relationship with its 3PL, White said. Instead, the retailer continued its relationships with the 3PL and USPS, and for a period of time used a local courier to deliver packages to a more centralized USPS distribution center in order to avoid the problems at the local hub. The retailer has retained its Prime Merchant status, although it has been a herculean battle with Amazon to keep it, White said.