Amazon.com is challenging French competition law [amazon's free shipping is illegal in France]

International Herald Tribune ^ | January 14, 2008 | Victoria Shannon

[grundle]

PARIS: The online retailer Amazon.com said Monday that it would pay €1,000 a day in fines, rather than comply with a court ruling upholding French limits on price discounts for books.

The company decided to pay the daily fine worth $1,500 rather than eliminate its offer of free shipping on book purchases, said Xavier Garambois, director of Amazon's French subsidiary.

[mylife]

Free Shipping? No Taxes? we cant have that!

[BlessedBeGod]

Good for them!

[Spktyr]

Simple solution - pull out of the quagmire that is France. Just stop selling there.

Then stage a HUGE media blitz. Come up with an effective campaign to show the people of France how the “establishment” of booksellers doesn’t want them to pay lower prices for books and that they want to keep them in the dark so the book retailers can count the piles of money they collected from the saps.

Want to bet on how long it takes before angry French burn down whatever association’s building this is?

[kingu]

I’ll go out on a limb and say that Amazon wins the appeal on this one. The price of the book is unaffected by the free shipping offer, the price of the book is the same with delivery or without delivery. It places Amazon on the same footing as a brick and mortar store, actually, a little off the same footing, since Amazon requires at least 20 euros worth of purchase before the discount even comes into play.

The only question is what venue they win their case in. Pretty sure the French courts will be the ones to back down on this one. In any event, Amazon’s customers in France are likely buying more books than ever, meaning this publicity will completely overwhelm the cost of the ‘fine’ they’re paying now.

[Sherman Logan]

The 1981 Lang law was passed at a time when booksellers were losing sales to supermarkets and other new competitors. It was meant to assure that the French public had equal access to a wide variety of books, both high-brow and low-brow, not just heavily marked-down publications.

A darn good thing they have this law! Amazon carries such a narrow selection.

(Element of sarcasm there.)

[grundle]

Those are good points.

[I still care]

LOL. Isn’t Jeff Bezos a huge Democrat?

I always think it hysterical when these rich limo libs want it both ways. It’s alright for government to interfere with business and the markets as long as it’s not THEIR business.