Amazon has found a way around the law that imposes delivery fees on online book orders. The solution is simple: have packages delivered free of charge to your own collection points.

Amazon has found a way around the law that imposes

Amazon has found a way around the law that imposes delivery fees on online book orders. The solution is simple: have packages delivered free of charge to your own collection points.

Since October 2023, consumers have been required to pay shipping costs of 3 euros for online book orders below 35 euros. Beyond that – and provided that the order contains exclusively books – the costs can be reduced to one cent. A measure adopted in order to protect – in theory – small independent bookstores against large e-commerce platforms, Amazon in the lead (see our article). But it seems that Jeff Bezos’ firm has managed to find a flaw in the system, since it seems to have found a solution to be able to once again deliver books for free to its customers.

In a press release, Amazon announced that “Amazon.fr customers now benefit from free delivery to more than 2,500 collection points for their book purchases”. In fact, the mandatory shipping costs on new books only concern home delivery. Also, the e-commerce giant has been working for a year to densify throughout France – including in rural areas and small towns, where access to bookstores can sometimes prove complicated – its network of automated delivery lockers.

Amazon shipping costs: delivery to a collection point rather than to your home

The law on the economy of books provides that delivery of books must be chargeable, “unless the book is collected from a book retail store”. It is therefore sufficient for the locker to be placed in a bookstore, a press office or even the shopping arcades of supermarkets with a book section to be able to benefit from free shipping costs.

Established since 2016 in France, Amazon delivery lockers guarantee simplified access to delivery people as well as even shorter times for certain deliveries. In addition, they allow customers to collect their packages without being subject to the time constraints associated with home delivery. Once their books have been selected on Jeff Bezos’ platform, all they have to do is choose their preferred collection point when paying, and that’s it!

©Amazon

Book delivery: Amazon finds a way to circumvent the law

This announcement did not really please the Government. The Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, announced to the Senate that she was going to contact the book mediator – the authority responsible for reconciling disputes relating to the principle of the single price of books set by the Lang law of 1981. For her part, Senator Horizons Laure Darcos, who introduced this law on book delivery costs, is outraged. “It’s scandalous and despairing. It’s a blatant circumvention of the law which is to the detriment of booksellers”she got angry.

Same story with booksellers. “This amounts to a circumvention of the law which says that postage can be free when the book is collected from a book retail store. The question therefore is whether a ‘locker’ installed in a hypermarket corresponds to this definition. For our part, we doubt it.reacts Guillaume Husson, general delegate of the French Bookstore Union (SLF), to Echoes.

“Amazon circumvents the spirit of the law and tries to play with the interpretation of the text”agrees Eric Lafraise, director of external relations for the Union of Cultural Leisure Distributors, which notably brings together the Cultura and Le Furet du Nord brands. “At the time of the debate on the law, the idea of ​​it was to bring more people to bookstores. Not to lockers.”

Shipping costs for books: an economic victory for Amazon

Amazon has never hidden its hostility towards this law, which has caused it to lose one of its main advantages over local businesses. In particular, she put on the table the argument of purchasing power in the current context – since consumers had to pay more to receive their books, which is not ideal in times of inflation – as well as that of areas rural – who cannot necessarily easily get to a bookstore, and therefore rely on delivery.

For Géraldine Codron, head of the Books category at Amazon.fr, “this new free delivery option represents a major step forward in providing all readers with easy access to literature.” The company welcomes this victory “for readers” … especially since it will allow him to maximize his profits in the run-up to Christmas.

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