Amazon Forbids Crossing State Lines With Rented Textbooks

New submitter Galaga88 writes "In what is probably another attempt to evade charging sales tax, Amazon's terms of use through Warehouse Deals forbids crossing state lines with certain rented textbooks. The penalty for doing so? Retroactive forced purchase of the book. At least it's yours to keep afterwards. 'Some experts believe the policy is another reflection of the extreme lengths to which the company continues to go in order to avoid collecting state sales taxes. But could Amazon’s use restriction and other complicated rental conditions cause problems for students or lead potential textbook renters to take their business elsewhere? It seems like a policy that would be nearly impossible to enforce. But Richard Hershman, vice president of government relations at the National Association of College Stores, points out that if a student has textbooks sent to her home state and ships them back from a different state where she attends college, Amazon could easily note the new shipping location.'"

Comments

Covering butt

[twotailakitsune]

This sounds less like Amazon being evil and trying to hurt people. It sounds like they put that in to cover their butt. They don't have to deal with book makers saying they are "promoting" braking the law.

Re:Covering butt

[Xicor]

no, what they are doing is purposely being difficult in order to avoid dealing with ridiculous lawmaking from our government. they are making a statement saying "see, we can be ridiculous too". and the best thing is? it is legal for them to do so. the issue at hand is that for years, the federal law stated that you only pay sales tax if there is a brick and mortar store(or warehouse) in that state. the government has recently been changing it so that the states can charge sales tax even if there isnt a brick and mortar store. this is bad for amazon, and im sure it is worse for amazon than the profit loss from ppl not wanting to rent books from them. the reason they can offer such a cheap price all the time is that they dont have to have sales tax. with taxes, they will lose a huge portion of their profit.

Re:Covering butt

[pixelpusher220]

the problem is keeping track of tax rates in 3000+ counties plus cities plus other 'special' economic zones.

It's certainly a doable thing, but it ain't easy, nor is there any mechanism for knowing what is the 'correct' tax to charge at a given point.

Next up, is it shipping address? Billing address? what if the tax rates are different between them?

What if the tax rate varies on other factors?

What if my IP says I'm in Sweden, what then?

It's not as easy as collect the tax when there are quite a few permutations that don't tell you when they change.

Re:Covering butt

[mspohr]

Believe it or not, there are people with computers and databases that track this information and it all can be done automatically.
You can obfuscate it if you're trying avoid paying tax or you can just pay the tax.

Re:Covering butt

[makomk]

Believe it or not, there aren't people with computers or databased that track this information. Sales tax regions are geographical constructs don't correspond to particular zip codes or streets or anything useful like that - you can have two houses that are in the same street and zip code but have different sales tax rates. Hell, two halves of the same house can be in different regions with different sales tax rates - try handling that in a sensible way. There's no automated way of mapping from an address to a sales tax region and there's never going to be.

Re:Covering butt

[strength_of_10_men]

Believe it or not, there are indeed companies that do just this.

Something Worth Banning

[CanHasDIY]

I'm sure I'm not alone in being fed the fuck up with corporations taking control of different aspects of our lives via unilateral contracts. I think it's high time we demand such obligations be banned, thus empowering consumers to at least have a little say in how a contract is worded and executed.

Unilateral contract == legalized rape entirely too often.

Legal term: Contract of Adhesion

[rsborg]

See here: http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/contract+of+adhesion

adhesion contract (contract of adhesion) n. a contract (often a signed form) so imbalanced in favor of one party over the other that there is a strong implication it was not freely bargained. Example: a rich landlord dealing with a poor tenant who has no choice and must accept all terms of a lease, no matter how restrictive or burdensome, since the tenant cannot afford to move. An adhesion contract can give the little guy the opportunity to claim in court that the contract with the big shot is invalid. This doctrine should be used and applied more often, but the same big guy-little guy inequity may apply in the ability to afford a trial or find and pay a resourceful lawyer.

In essence, the "lawyer" in this case for students would be a class-action lawyer, and now you understand why major corporations and the wealthy (who, in general control them through stock ownership) hate the idea of class action suits and have done their best to have forced arbitration, banning class actions and the like.

I'd rather we have class actions that slap down these corporations rather than have these sociopaths-by-design run amok. Call me a socialist if you will.

No crossing state lines with textbooks.

[Ukab the Great]

Unless the textbook is 18-years old. Allowances will be made if you're only two or three years younger than the textbook.