Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Named the "Most Reputable Company"
An anonymous reader writes "Amazon has been named the most reputable company in the US this year (up from 21st place last year), according to the sixth annual list of the 150 Most Reputable Companies from advisory firm Reputation Institute (RI), in partnership with Forbes Media. The list is based on RI's US RepTrak Pulse Study, which measures trust, esteem, admiration, and good feelings consumers have towards the largest 150 companies based on revenue in the US. The ratings are analyzed from nearly 33,000 online consumer responses taken in January and February."
At some point, we have to figure out how e-tailers can and should responsibly collect sales taxes. Amazon could be helping that process, instead of fighting it tooth and nail.
At some point, we have to figure out how e-tailers can and should responsibly collect sales taxes. Amazon could be helping that process, instead of fighting it tooth and nail.
One of Amazon's advantages is that they don't require sales taxes, which can often result in the product costing less even with shipping charges. Once they are required to collect sales taxes they'll lose that price advantage and will likely lose sales because of it. It is not in their corporate interest to 'help' in the process.
...to make me regret closing my account in protest at the treatment of Wikileaks.
Fuck Amazon.
you had me at #!
I'd mod this one "+5 Funny".
Amazon really is a great company to buy from. I have been purchasing from them more than any other etaler now it seems. I have even replaced some items that we would buy at Target or Costco and purchase them from now. I have had to deal with customer service a few times and it has been a pleasurable experience. I also stand with amazon as far as sales taxes go. I also run a small business online and I cant collect taxes from hundreds of counties across the US. I could be for a flat national sales tax maybe though.
I just ran across a book the other day that cost more on amazon.ca than on amazon.com. Not sure how that works. There is no duty. The difference in shipping costs of the printed book should be moot especially where I am, within fifty miles of Niagara Falls. And to top it off, the Canadian dollar has been worth more than the U.S. dollar for the past few months. Amazon had no good reason to charge almost ten dollars more to Canadians for the same book. Not very reputable if you ask me. But since they bought bookpool.com a few years ago, they're the only real game in town.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Howcome they didn't rate in the top half on their own poll?
Being "reputable" means not always placing your profit interests first and foremost. Besides, if they actively negotiate with these states they may find a solution acceptable to those states, that actually does not sting as bad as expected. And, anyways, many other e-tailers collect those taxes and still manage to prosper.
While it is disheartening that Amazon shafted WikiLeaks, they are free to do as they wish with their private enterprise; most likely the decision was made by those with a financial stake in the company, not by those with a strong sense of idealism regarding freedom of speech. There very likely would have been no issue in the eyes of Amazon's stakeholders if their government weren't so heavy-handed and secretive.
So, I say don't shoot the messenger. Amazon does incredible things and has contributed a great deal to the evolution and adoption of improved technology in business through their various services and open source efforts. It is a narrow mind that cannot take the good with the bad in a world run by balding apes.
First, it's pretty hard for people to get an unfavorable opinion of Amazon from anything that doesn't happen directly to them (as opposed to, say, BP getting unfavorables based on Deepwater Horizon from people who live nowhere near the Gulf of Mexico). Second, their customer service is pretty good. My wife's Kindle, which I bought about two years ago, had an untimely meeting with a Diet Coke back in October. I had bought the extended warranty, which came with a one-time we-don't-care-why-it-died replacement clause, mainly because her electronics have a surprisingly high rate of mysterious death. Despite the fact that the warranty is technically sold by another company, not Amazon, I got ZERO runaround - instead I was seamlessly transferred from Kindle support to the warranty processing people, who pulled up all the necessary information. The replacement stopped erasing its screen properly this week, so I called Amazon again yesterday - and again, got a no-hassle experience (the only stupid hoop to jump through was that they wanted me to reboot it once). The replacement's replacement will be here tomorrow. And they've paid the shipping both ways, every time, even including a prepaid shipping label so that all I have to do is drop it off at a post office.
Customer service, in short, works.
There's not really any negotiation to be done with the states. The states believe that Amazon should collect and forward sales taxes for them, despite receiving no services from those states. Amazon thinks that lacking a physical presence in a state exempts them from that. There's not really a compromise position where they collect half the tax, or something. And as long as Amazon keeps its presence out of those states, they'll keep winning - there's no way to enforce a judgement against them, even in a court ruled that the state had standing to sue them.
The most reputable company is among the most tax-evading
I've seen all sorts of scams running on Amazon and they don't give a fuck. A few examples that I've seen so far:
Counterfeit items.
Products advertised as £0.01 with the actual cost in a fake shipping charge.
There are hundreds of thousands of "books" which are actually auto generated pamphlets consisting of a main Wikipedia article and some linked articles, selling for £30+ and almost all rated 1 star by anyone who bought one. (Search for Betascript on amazon)
Crap watches selling for £10, supposedly reduced from £50 or whatever. I know someone who bought one of these thinking she was getting a bargain but the watch was barely worth £5 let alone £50.
I'd also include Amazon themselves automatically charging £50 for prime after the free trial. It was stated in the terms but they must have made millions from people who didn't notice.
And at no extra charge it comes with the complementary erasing of controversial material!
Amazon pays for police and fire protection for their warehouses via the property taxes. And it's not their responsibility to pay for the locals' education, it's the parents' responsibility.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
I've about had it with companies this big looking to get out of paying taxes. We've got a congress that wants to cut a supplemental nutrition program for infants and pregnant women in poverty so Amazon can skip out on taxes, pay lobbyists and provide unfair competition to mom and pop bookstores.
I say fuck 'em. I've got no problem paying taxes and I've got no problem paying the stiff sales tax we've got here in Chicago. They like to use the nice internet the government made for them but they don't want to give anything back. Meanwhile, Borders is closing stores and the little bookstores where I shop can't even make ends meet.
You are welcome on my lawn.
And it's none of the state's business to collect taxes on something I bought from another state, which is Amazon's completely valid argument. One could argue that they should be collecting taxes on the state from which the item is shipping since there's the obvious physical presence (this would more closely mimic what happens when I buy an item at retail), but I think sales tax is bullshit to begin with since the state is providing no value to either the buyer or the seller, other than merely existing.
Actually, Use Tax is applicable to products purchased out of state when no sales tax was collected (in states that have sales and/or use taxes).
The "150 Most Reputable Companies" from a sample size of 150? Seems more like "the largest 150 companies sorted by reputation".
In this case, the tax avoiders are the citizens who order things off the internet without paying their proper use tax. Not Amazon - at most, their duty is to collect the tax, not to pay it.
Incidentally, to the extent that the Internet is something "the government made for them", it's a product of the federal government - which does not collect sales tax.
Despite your (somewhat painful) libertarian trolling, you kinda missed the point. clem.dickey was talking about Amazon assisting their customers in avoiding the payment of taxes through locally-operating vendors who presumably would be subject to the sales tax.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
I remember when the incident you're talking about with Texas came up. Wasn't it the case that Texas basically invited them to come to TX in the first place with the promise of no sales tax, and then turned around a couple of years later and reversed course?
Even if not, the problem is the fundamental structure of Sales tax - not Amazon's unwillingness to pay it. No company that does business online wants to collect sales tax, and I'll tell you why, as a small business, I am interested in Amazon's case: because if Amazon has to collect tax for not just all 50 states but every county in every state where sales tax is variable (and sometimes even on the local level), you've just driven up the cost of business to the point where it is no longer feasible to start an online business in your garage/bedroom/basement because you need very sophisticated software to handle the collection side and an accounting team to handle the payment side: small business owners like me already have to learn a lot about accounting (which is fine, and even perversely fun sometimes) but if we had to file returns with every state with which we did business? omgwtfbbq.
If you left it up to me, I'd replace sales tax entirely with a Federal sales tax that had a state reimbursement system. I don't mind collecting tax and passing it on to the government for you. I mind having to spend twice my annual gross income calculating and then delivering that tax to every state in the union.
A virtual "store" is the transaction between customer and shopper. When that book or CD shows up on my doorstep, me, the book or CD, the guy in brown pants bringing the book or CD up the stairs, his truck, the street, streetlights and police to keep those streets safe are certainly a "physical presence".
Do you believe that a lack of "physical presence" should exempt a corporation from all taxes? Or a lack of "physical presence" should exempt them from all laws?
I admit that I was wrong-headed about Amazon and sales tax. But not because they lack a "physical presence".
You are welcome on my lawn.
I've never ever ever never ever taken the lack of sales tax into account when buying stuff from Amazon or not. It's about the availability, the price, and the ease of shopping.