[Eric Ewe]

PROVIDENCE – Amazon.com Inc. cut ties today with its business affiliates in Rhode Island to protest a provision in the draft state budget that would force the company to collect sales tax, Providence Business News has confirmed.

Rhode Island is now the second state where affiliates in the program, known as Amazon Associates, have been cut off over the sales tax issue. Earlier this month the Seattle-based online retailer also closed its affiliates’ accounts in North Carolina.


http://www.pbn.com/detail/43272.html

[MattMcWilliams]

Absolutely SAD!

[Eric Ewe]

You can expect more until they make their point.

I will take bets that Amazon will not terminate CA affiliates. There are way too many affiliates in CA for them to do it, like NY.

[affninja]

Rhode Island is now the second state where affiliates in the program, known as Amazon Associates, have been cut off over the sales tax issue. Earlier this month the Seattle-based online retailer also closed its affiliates’ accounts in North Carolina.

So did they not cut off Hawaii yet? I'm reading conflicting reports.

[mellie]

So did they not cut off Hawaii yet? I'm reading conflicting reports.

Hawaii affiliates were removed, just not getting the same airtime. Several affiliates from Hawaii have forwarded their letters to me. Zappos, Endless, Audible and a handful of smaller merchants also terminated Hawaii.

(note: The Amazon termination takes effect "on or before July 1". If it's on July 1 nexus would exist and it would be pointless to terminate.)

[markwelch]

Eric wrote: > "I will take bets that Amazon will not terminate CA affiliates. There are way too many affiliates in CA for them to do it, like NY." <

How much money are you willing to put down on that bet? I'll take the other side -- if California enacts the "Amazon Tax" language, Amazon will terminate all its California affiliates.

I posted my long-winded analysis of this two days ago, in another discussion thread: Is Amazon bullying affiliates? bluffing? (http://forum.abestweb.com/showthread.php?t=121088)

[markwelch]

Mellie wrote: > "Hawaii affiliates were removed, just not getting the same airtime. Several affiliates from Hawaii have forwarded their letters to me. Zappos, Endless, Audible and a handful of smaller merchants also terminated Hawaii." <

Your "airtime" comment was quite timely, as I just read an online article in the Honolulu-based Pacific Business News (http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2009/06/29/daily6.html), which mentions Amazon's termination of Rhode Island publishers, following their earlier termination of North Carolina publishers -- but the article doesn't mention that Amazon had also terminated its advertising relationships with Hawaii web publishers. The PBN article cites TechCrunch as its source, and contains no original reporting. This isn't very impressive; but perhaps they rushed to publish before they were able to get a comment from Amazon due to the time-zone difference.

Apparently, the PBN reporter doesn't read the Honolulu-based Star-Bulletin (http://www.starbulletin.com/business/20090627_Amazon_poised_to_cut_affiliate_program_in_Hawaii.html), which reported two days earlier on Amazon's decision to terminate Hawaii publishers, as if that news wasn't already three months old. (Alas, the Star-Bulletin article contains a confusing typographical error, stating that "Amazon also will collect taxes..." when the actual news was that Amazon will not collect the Hawaii excise tax [sales tax]. The correct meaning seems clear from the context.)

Keep in mind that Hawaii's state legislators were warned by Amazon three months ago (http://forum.abestweb.com/showthread.php?t=117539) that it would terminate Hawaii affiliates if the unconstitutional law were enacted -- long before the last-minute addition of the "Amazon Tax" language by the NC and RI legislators.

Any Hawaii web publishers might want to contact the newspaper via their online contact form or by email (pacific at bizjournals dot com), to share their experiences.

[Kevin]

To Mark's point, Eric, I think Amazon got stuck with us NY affiliates as opposed to keeping us due to sales volume. I had commented on that in another thread, and I believe Mellie and Mark concurred.

While I'm in no position to comment on the thought process Amazon uses for deciding these things, there is definitely "proof" (if you will) that terminating NY affiliates wouldn't have absolved them from a Nexus status by the time they (and a lot of us) got serious about this.

IMHO, CA affiliates are NOT safe from being dropped by Amazon or any other affiliate program, regardless of the numbers.