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France hates real competition


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Well, they are at it again, trying to preserve the  past in the name of bloody culture. What is wrong with cut price books? Publishing in France is a national mess as is the attitude of the governing class. They really make me sick.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/10135926/France-wants-to-ban-Amazon-from-delivering-discounted-books-for-free.html

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Sorry but I'm not sure on this one. Firstly, I used to love browsing second hand bookshops and it's so hard to find one in the UK now, there was no way they could compete. Browsing online does not give any of the pleasure you got from handling a beautifully bound first edition and the sheer thrill of thinking, This could be mine!

Secondly, where do you stop with price cutting - someone cuts the price, then that becomes the normal price so someone else cuts it again and offers 'free' delivery on top. You can buy a book now for less than the cost of producing it and shipping it. Why should that be possible, why should books be so cheap, apart from the fact that Amazon can do it and are using it as tool for winning over customers? Look at it another way, people will unhesitatingly pay more than the price of a book to go to the cinema and watch a film. The 'price' has got totally out of synch with the 'value'.

Some things in life shouldn't be all about money.
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Yet, under these conditions more and more books are published. Reading has never been cheaper The jeremiahs predicted the death of books, but it was the bookshop which failed to match the changes and writing (not always good, admittedly) has burgeoned.

In fact, publishers are fixing the cost of reading again, particularly in electronic books, though, through such things as Kindle Publishing, they are actually irrelevant. But price should never affect the ability to access books, which under the old system it did and may partly do so again, unfortunately.

Books are once again the cheap pamphlets they ought to be, with some at the top for those who love the feel of the things.

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[quote user="EuroTrash"]Sorry but I'm not sure on this one. [/quote]

One of my pet hates is going into some French homes and seeing so few books, sometimes none. Many French people just cannot afford to buy them.

As for libraries here ... there are some good, some bad and some excellent ones, but it costs to join and just 'cos you pay to join one does not give you automatic access to another one. 'Tis really hard to be a book lover here unless you have lots of dosh; which is why secondhand books are usually very good sellers at Vide Grenier. But, even then, they can be costly as the books' owners have paid a lot of money originally.

Sue

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[quote user="suein56"].

 Many French people just cannot afford to buy them.

[/quote]

And for some, reading and the possession of books is not seen as important. I know of many people, some being teachers, in both England and France for whom reading offers little attraction.

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Euro Trash the debate is about new books and not secondhand books in secondhand book shops.

The extension of this is that France will ban the sale of ebooks because 'high street' whatever that is in French cannot sell them and therefore physical book sales will go down.

Why buy on line - the high street book stores can only hold a certain number of titles so if you want something only just a little out of the ordinary let alone further out of the ordinary then a visit to the shop is required to order it and then another trip to collect it. The on line organisation will likely have a copy and it is with you quickly.

The rest of the world is moving to Internet shopping, looks like France will be behind other countries.

What will the situation be should this law be brought in and instead of people buying from amazon.fr they buy from amazon.co.uk? Or will it be a criminal offence for a person to buy from an organisation that is not in France?

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Personally I would have thought it would be more in Frances interest to close any loopholes that allows Amazon to pay little or no tax in France. The same could be said of the UK and several other countries as well.

They talked at the G8 of action on offshore accounts but tax evasion by corporate companies (Amazon, Google etc) is far bigger than that of individuals and would put much needed revenue into the countries bank account.

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[quote user="Quillan"]

They talked at the G8 of action on offshore accounts but tax evasion by corporate companies (Amazon, Google etc) is far bigger than that of individuals and would put much needed revenue into the countries bank account.

[/quote]Pedants Corner[:)] Technically because what these companies are doing is not against the law it is Tax Avoidance and not Tax Evasion. Morally of course the law should be changed to close these loopholes

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[quote user="Quillan"]

They talked at the G8 of action on offshore accounts but tax evasion by corporate companies (Amazon, Google etc) is far bigger than that of individuals and would put much needed revenue into the countries bank account.

[/quote]

I think Nigel Farage would wholeheartedly agree with you there, Quillan...[Www]

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[quote user="Quillan"]

Personally I would have thought it would be more in Frances interest to close any loopholes that allows Amazon to pay little or no tax in France. The same could be said of the UK and several other countries as well.

They talked at the G8 of action on offshore accounts but tax evasion by corporate companies (Amazon, Google etc) is far bigger than that of individuals and would put much needed revenue into the countries bank account.

[/quote]

Isn't that just a tad rich coming from you Q? how many times are you the poster of goods on Amazon for others. Surely you shouldn't do that, or are you just as happy as others to exploit any loopholes that suit you? I have only bought one thing via Amazon, a book I couldn't obtain anywhere else and that was before I learned of their non payment of taxes loophole call it what you will.  A few days later Amazon contacted me to sell it back to them. That was £140 book to a £5 to buy it back a week later.

France eh, it has an eu cert but they still won't let it in unless it has NF stamped all over it, do they do that with books to?  And we all know what NF really means even in a republic.

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[quote user="Théière"][quote user="Quillan"]

Personally I would have thought it would be more in Frances interest to close any loopholes that allows Amazon to pay little or no tax in France. The same could be said of the UK and several other countries as well.

They talked at the G8 of action on offshore accounts but tax evasion by corporate companies (Amazon, Google etc) is far bigger than that of individuals and would put much needed revenue into the countries bank account.

[/quote]

Isn't that just a tad rich coming from you Q? how many times are you the poster of goods on Amazon for others. Surely you shouldn't do that, or are you just as happy as others to exploit any loopholes that suit you? I have only bought one thing via Amazon, a book I couldn't obtain anywhere else and that was before I learned of their non payment of taxes loophole call it what you will.  A few days later Amazon contacted me to sell it back to them. That was £140 book to a £5 to buy it back a week later.

[/quote]

Its not my fault that governments don't close the loopholes. Meanwhile I am quite happy to buy anything as long as it is not illegal and it saves me money. I can't exactly see Amazon loosing any sleep over the fact you have 'blacklisted' them. I personally am not using any loopholes just buying from a cheaper source that saves me money and judging by those that use these companies millions seem to feel the same way. If on the other hand they were doing something illegal I wouldn't buy from them.

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And precisely why society is the way it is. buy newspapers to read about the unfortunates who get caught for this and that. Post on forums how shocking it all is whilst just doing enough so you don't feel that you're doing anything wrong.

If people were that bothered they wouldn't use these companies, they quite rightly don't want to pay silly prices but a fair price and it cannot be fair if a company doesn't pay what it should against the one down the road that does. People are so quick to moan this supplier has gone out of business or so and so are in financial difficulty whilst supporting companies that seriously bend the rules.

Recently Andy Cant's contact details were removed from a post,  He isn't a member of this forum, it was a 3rd party introduction which do feature on here. When that chap from Screwfix was promoting the website and how to transact business everyone rolled over and it was allowed.  Society has dual standards no matter if your French English pretending to be French or anywhere else so Keep it up france and you will lose in the end because the youngsters are not as blinkered.

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Coming back to books, in some cases the prices are now being rigged by the publishers and in some cases by the publishers and the internet sellers like Apple (US). And remember that France rigs the price too by banning discounting of more than 5%, to protect its kultcha- what a load of pious nonsense.

In those cases there is no fair market so feel free to buy where you like.

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 Paul T wrote .... "The rest of the world is moving to Internet shopping, looks like France will be behind other countries. "

It will take the youth of France to make this change and they will  when they have a credit card of their own . IMO

There is still a fear of using credit cards for internet purchases among lots of older French people I have met. They know that they are paying much more than they need plus the cost of travel to town when added to their purchase when they can get the same thing delivered for free.

My neighbor sees me buy things on line but has told me there is no way their card details will be put on the internet so they shrug and pay up ....

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''................ it cannot be fair if a company doesn't pay what it should against the one down the road that does.''

As I understand it, Amazon pay the amount of tax that they are LEGALLY required to pay in the jurisdictions that they operate in.

As such they cannot be accused of tax evasion or of ''failing to pay what it should''.

If the tax laws are wrong then surely the blame lies with those who make the laws, not with those who obey them.
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[quote user="powerdesal"]'As I understand it, Amazon pay the amount of tax that they are LEGALLY required to pay in the jurisdictions that they operate in. As such they cannot be accused of tax evasion or of ''failing to pay what it should''. If the tax laws are wrong then surely the blame lies with those who make the laws, not with those who obey them.[/quote]

Well that’s the grey area. Amazon has country specific websites like .co.uk, .fr, .de etc so in each country, it could be argued they are aiming their product at that particular country and therefore should pay tax on profits made in that country, in that country. The other side of the coin is they are simply making it easier for people to buy their products because they produce a website in their native language so they can understand yet the goods all come from a central point, which is basically what they do at present.

I would still like to know, by the way, how comes a product can be sold in two EU countries, two Euro countries come to that, yet have such a variance in price if your not paying tax in either country.

I would have thought that in a way the current French system of selling books is in its own way anti competitive and therefore goes against the EU treaty on fair trade and competition. Was there not something about books and Tesco years and years ago when they first started selling them? Didn't they sell them a lot cheaper because they did a deal with publishers over price which resulted in the publishers’ cartel being broken? I used to buy a lot of books in Tesco when I lived in the UK, as cheap as Amazon and you could have a look before buying. The only books I used to buy from bookshops were specialist books to do with my profession.

I agree with you on the current tax laws, they really need to be looked at and the best group to deal with this is the EU parliament. It’s not rocket science, it can work same way as the legal profession. Money paid for goods in a country is put in a holding account for that country, tax is then paid in that country after which the money can be moved to any other country. The EU ‘free trade’ is a good idea and works very well normally but like all things in life people will find a way to tear the bottom out of it for their own gain and these loopholes need to be plugged especially when it is so blatantly obviously they are abusing the system.

 

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[quote user="powerdesal"]''................ it cannot be fair if a company doesn't pay what it should against the one down the road that does.'' As I understand it, Amazon pay the amount of tax that they are LEGALLY required to pay in the jurisdictions that they operate in. As such they cannot be accused of tax evasion or of ''failing to pay what it should''. If the tax laws are wrong then surely the blame lies with those who make the laws, not with those who obey them.[/quote]

Ultimately Steve you are correct.  The tax laws are written by employees of very large accounting companies who are hired by the government to do just such activities. When they finish the project they return to their main duty having just written tax rules etc of finding their corporate clients a route around the tax rules THEY have just written.  In short a bloody joke.  It simply means I cannot do anything wrong until the court finds that I did, the rest is down to the lawyers, Not a great way to have society I think, just playing to the whistle.

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[quote user="Quillan"]

 yet the goods all come from a central point, which is basically what they do at present.

[/quote]

er no, the goods do not come from a single central point but from massive warehouses in each country. The only central thing is that payments are channelled to a central point in Luxembourg.

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There's another reason for using Amazon and similar onlines sites; when you live 50kms from the nearest bookshop it's the sheer convenience of having stuff delivered to your door.

Amazon France seems to have fallen in line with the protectionist measures. To take a popular example, the recent Michael Connelly book (Fifth Witness) in paperback and in French is 21.90€ in the shops, and is available on Amazon FR delivered with the massive discount of 5% 20.81€. According to the newspaper article the French reckon it's being sold at a loss at that price; I just don't believe it. In the UK you can buy is for £3.99 !!! 

Is it any wonder that book sales are poor here? They don't seem to realise that selling books at lower prices will increase sales.

That's why I'm now on Kindle.

 

 

 

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[quote user="PaulT"][quote user="Quillan"]

 yet the goods all come from a central point, which is basically what they do at present.

[/quote]

er no, the goods do not come from a single central point but from massive warehouses in each country. The only central thing is that payments are channelled to a central point in Luxembourg.

[/quote]

Yes, sorry your right. I don't know why I thought that, perhaps I keep seeing the same, non French, sender label on the boxes of Amazon stuff I have bought recently then I remembered I bought from Germany.

Makes an even stronger case that they should pay tax in the countries in which they ship goods. I wonder if the money paid by the consumer goes through a bank account in that country or does it go straight to Luxembourg?

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[quote user="powerdesal"]

If the tax laws are wrong then surely the blame lies with those who make the laws, not with those who obey them.[/quote]

PD, I totally agree. When a member of the government is interviewed on this, they weasel around with how difficult tax laws are to frame without loopholes, etc and how morally, companies should be paying more. Well, fine... simplify the tax laws and enforce them. Since when was paying tax that is not due a moral thing? Whatever, but don't expect that customers should do their job for them by boycotting Amazon, etc.

I wonder whether French people not being motivated by personal book ownership / reading (as observed earlier) is a chicken and egg situation. Books are priced out of the average French person's reach and therefore reading one's own books is a habit not formed or considered worth acquiring.

When the TheBookPeople started up in the UK - with their heavily discounted new books - their titles and distribution methods (brochures in newspapers, phone ordering, online and physical books sold direct into factories and large offices via reps) encouraged and developed a whole new readership group in the UK. Okay a lot of those people who would (they said) never have gone into Waterstones to buy a book were now buying "autobiographies" [:P] by Jordan and her ilk, by footballers and F1 drivers but they were reading. If France had TheBookPeople and similar, perhaps book ownership and readership would increase.

Does anyone know if the Kindle and other ebook readers are doing well in France? Compared to the UK?

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Théière - I was wondering if you buy online from any other stores like Marks and Spencer, Mothercare, Timex, Lacosta for example because if you do they all run on a platform from Amazon. There are many other stores that also run on Amazon platforms since they (Amazon) bought AtoZsoftware years ago. Amazon also own loads of other sites like IMDb which a lot of film buffs use. In fact there are a whole raft of websites and companies Amazon either own or supply the Internet trading software to. Mind you it is a nightmare these days when you buy things in general as it is difficult to discover who actually owns whom and what links one company has with another.
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