Campaigners lambast Amazon with crowdfunded spoof advert to deter Christmas sales

Amazon Anonymous van drove through central London emblazoned with the line: ‘Enjoy unlimited instant tax dodging subsidised by government hand-outs. Anywhere, anytime’

Anti-Amazon campaigners drove a van through central London yesterday that was emblazoned with a crowdfunded, fake Amazon advert attacking the online retailer’s alleged tax avoidance. Booksellers have championed the now annual movement, which aims to deter shoppers from the online giant in the lead up to Christmas.

Mimicking the Amazon Prime ad, the Amazon Anonymous van bore the lines: “Amazon tax dodge. Enjoy unlimited instant tax dodging subsidised by government hand-outs. Anywhere, anytime.” The “advert” added: “Amazon UK paid just £11.9mn tax on sales of £5.3bn last year”, and directed passersby to the campaigners’ website.

Amazon Anonymous, which describes itself as a group of former Amazon customers who are “angry at the company’s treatment of its workforce and its alleged tax avoidance”, called on customers last Christmas to “take the Amazon Free Challenge” and buy their Christmas presents elsewhere. In 2014, over 40,000 people signed up to the challenge, the campaigners say.

This year, the campaigners asked supporters to contribute between £3 and £5 to their anti-Amazon movement, and raised just over £3,500 to fund yesterday’s van. It circled Amazon’s headquarters in Holborn, and drove through central London, where campaigner Bex Hay said it “went down really well”.

“The driver had to keep stopping for people to take selfies. Outside Amazon HQ, loads of Amazon workers came out to take pictures as well,” she said.

Hay said that the team at Amazon Anonymous wanted to make their campaign “really visible and to show it to Christmas shoppers, who might not know what Amazon is up to”. Already, 8,000 people have signed up to go Amazon-free this Christmas, which the campaigners estimate will take £1.13m away from Amazon’s Christmas sales.

The campaigners point to the fact that in 2012-13, Amazon’s main UK subsidiary paid £3.2m in tax, on UK sales of £4.2bn, while in 2013-14, it paid £4.2m in tax on sales of £4.3bn.

In May, however, Amazon announced a change to its tax structure, which means that its UK retail sales will be booked through the UK, with the resulting profits taxed by HMRC. The company said at the time that “we regularly review our business structure to ensure that we are able to best serve our customers and provide additional products and services. More than two years ago, we began the process of establishing local country branches of Amazon EU Sarl, our primary retail operating company in Europe.”
Amazon Anonymous claimed the change as a victory, saying on their website that “last year, 40,000 of us went Amazon Free for Christmas, taking over £5m away from them. As a result they agreed to pay more tax in the UK. But it’s still pitiful compared to the profits they squirrel away in tax havens.”

Amazon Anonymous is also preparing to publish a series of further testimonies from disgruntled Amazon workers in the UK, said Hay. The campaigners have almost 200,000 signatories to a petition calling on the internet retailer to pay its staff the living wage – £9.15 an hour in London, and £7.85 an hour elsewhere in the UK – and to treat them better. Hay said that an article this summer in the New York Times, which saw employees lay out the “bruising” environment in Amazon’s Seattle offices, brought the petition an extra 100,000 signatures.

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In September, Amazon announced the creation of 700 new permanent jobs at its fulfilment centres, saying that “all permanent Amazon associates start on £7.20 an hour or above”, with the rate increasing “by at least 11 percent over their first two years of employment, by which time all employees earn £8 an hour and above”. The retailer has also introduced public tours of its warehouses, and John Tagawa, Amazon’s vice president of UK FC operations, said the 700 new jobs came with “competitive wages and comprehensive benefits starting on day one”. “Amazon has a dedicated and enthusiastic workforce who play a crucial role in delivering a first rate level of service for our customers,” said Tagawa in September.

But campaigner Jo Beardsmore said that shopping at Amazon might be “cheap, but it comes at a high price … firstly for their staff, who are treated like robots, and secondly for the UK, as tax for the NHS and much-loved public services is squirreled away offshore.

“As customers we need to tell them that if they don’t treat their workers properly, and if they keep dodging tax, we won’t give them our cash,” said Beardsmore. “There’s plenty of better companies and local shops who do contribute properly to society, and we’ll be providing boycotters with plenty of tips to do just that.”

Last year, Amazon Anonymous took on the online giant by adding a book called ‘Living Wage for Amazon Workers’ to the Amazon bookstore, selling for £7.65, the then living wage outside of London. They also created an alternative shopping guide that included a list of independent booksellers, selected on the basis of where they registered their tax returns and how they treated their workers.

More recently, Amazon attracted further ire from booksellers when it launched its first physical bookstore in Seattle, ripping a page out of the book of the numerous high street bookstores that went out of business in the wake of the website’s notorious price slashing.

Independent bookseller Peter Donaldson, of Colchester’s Red Lion Books, said that the anti-Amazon movement “might be a pretty small dent in Amazon’s sales, but it does benefit us”.

Many customers, he said, tell him that they choose to shop at Red Lion Books, “partly because they wish to maintain a vibrant high street alive at the heart of our town. And like most independents, we engage with our local community not just through books. There’s the weekly philosophy discussion group, the knit and natter group, local artists exhibiting in our gallery area and so on.”

“And in bookshops you also find booksellers,” added Donaldson. “Real live human beings ready to help and advise. Yes, on Amazon you may have the ‘people who bought this also bought’ indicators, but would you rather be helped by an algorithm or a book-loving human being?”