Amazon £7bn sales, but no tax! Should we boycott Amazon this Christmas?

Olza23

Morales and business dont mix

Treevo

Olza23 wrote: »

Morales and business dont mix

That's racist.

scroogeboy

C_Mababejive wrote: »

I will not be boycotting amazon since they are acting within the law and provide an excellent service and great value.

Strange that you then object to current UK land ownership - that's within the law as far as I know

Re Amazon - "within the law"

I agree - unless HMRC wins a case against them. On the other hand, they operate off a .co.uk domain name, employ loads of people here, are UK VAT registered, are doing business here - so there is presumably a case for HMRC arguing that they are liable to Corporation Tax

I see Amazon as a very efficient business, which has been very successful. But their purchase of rivals such as Book Depository and Abebooks shows what their underlying intentions are. So while there's still some degree of choice, I'll go elsewhere if I can

silkcutblue

I stopped using Starbucks. I may well curtail my Amazon spending, too.

Good thread.

techno12

I won't boycott them (even though I'm not pleased that they're avoiding tax, but it's within the law, and it's tax on profits so their turnover is irrelevant).

Reason? They have the best customer service I've ever encountered (along with Lakeland). Not many retailers would give me a full refund for shoes that started letting in water after 11 months of near-daily use.

After that (I wrote the email to their CS dept, not expecting anything), they've captured me as a customer for life and they're pretty much my first port of call for anything, especially now that I've discovered camelcamelcamel so that I can check if I'm getting the best price, as they do vary most prices near-daily it seems.

Xebnotlaw_2

Their tax evasion is only part of the reason I didn't use Amazon this year... My father runs a toy company online and used to use Amazon for the majority of his sales, as well as his website. In October they changed the rules to say that those selling toys/games could only have a margin of error at around 2%*. This means that any returns/refunds/mistakes (sometimes just through the fault of the checkout system) would all count against him. In November he was told that he would not be able to trade on Amazon in December due to having 2.2%* errors... The majority of which are Amazon not updating the stock quick enough anyway.
He was told that if he wanted to send all the stock over to Amazon they could sell it for him. Of course, they would want to do that!
Last year, £14,000 worth of sales came from Amazon to my Dad's company. He was basically left in the lurch over Christmas.
Amazon destroy small businesses as well as avoiding tax and I, for one, shall never be using them again!

*This may not be the exact percentage but is an example. I know it was a very small amount anyway!

armyknife

Xebnotlaw wrote: »

Their tax evasion is only part of the reason I didn't use Amazon this year... My father runs a toy company online and used to use Amazon for the majority of his sales, as well as his website. In October they changed the rules to say that those selling toys/games could only have a margin of error at around 2%*. This means that any returns/refunds/mistakes (sometimes just through the fault of the checkout system) would all count against him. In November he was told that he would not be able to trade on Amazon in December due to having 2.2%* errors... The majority of which are Amazon not updating the stock quick enough anyway.
He was told that if he wanted to send all the stock over to Amazon they could sell it for him. Of course, they would want to do that!
Last year, £14,000 worth of sales came from Amazon to my Dad's company. He was basically left in the lurch over Christmas.
Amazon destroy small businesses as well as avoiding tax and I, for one, shall never be using them again!

*This may not be the exact percentage but is an example. I know it was a very small amount anyway!

Seems a good enough reason to boycott them.

I've certainly cut back on my amazon expenditure, using WHSmith and John Lewis instead.

Xebnotlaw_2

I ended up using Play for the majority of my online shopping and the rest I did on the high street. You kind of forget what shopping used to be like without Amazon, it's actually not a bad experience!

[Deleted User]

Xebnotlaw wrote: »

I ended up using Play for the majority of my online shopping and the rest I did on the high street. You kind of forget what shopping used to be like without Amazon, it's actually not a bad experience!

Sounds like what I did. Did a bit online using other companies and then the rest in town. And it was a much more pleasant experience standing in a real bookshop chatting to an assistant (who recommended a really good book for my hubby) than sitting in front of a computer.

What has really amazed me is how much money I've SAVED compared to my spending last Christmas. I've just bought much less and it's made me realise what a terrible "amazon habit" I had - far too easy to just click and buy. A lot of the stuff I could have done without. And if I'd had to physically leave the house to buy it, I wouldn't have done.

So, yes, I might have spend a bit extra on some individual items like books (although one book I bought in Tesco was actually cheaper than on Amazon) but overall I bought less things and spent less money.

It wasn't the outcome I expected and now feel annoyed at myself for wasting so much money over the years, and really glad I've stopped!