# Amazon and Visa



## Foxbat (Nov 17, 2021)

I have to admit to being pretty ignorant when it comes to the machinations of how credit card transactions actually work. A couple of years ago, my bank changed my Visa card to Mastercard and I had no clue as to why it would do this.

Now, I feel that it might just have saved me a lot of hassle. I only use my card for my Amazon and Paypal accounts and it turns out that Amazon will stop accepting Visa cards issued in the UK in January. Apparently it’s all about transaction fees. I still have no idea about the whys and wherefores but at least I’m happy my bank went with Mastercard. I thought I should post this just in case others here might be affected by this news.








						Amazon to stop accepting Visa credit cards in UK
					

The online giant says high Visa fees mean it won't process credit card transactions from 19 January.



					www.bbc.co.uk


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## hitmouse (Nov 17, 2021)

Note: this applies to UK Visa credit cards only. Visa debit is unaffected.


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## AE35Unit (Nov 18, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> Note: this applies to UK Visa credit cards only. Visa debit is unaffected.


Phew, that's a relief!


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## Jo Zebedee (Nov 18, 2021)

All the more reason to swop to https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/Thesecretbookshelf instead of Amazon and support your local bookshop* instead of a billionaire intent on avoiding taxes and treating his workers abysmally. and for ebooks, kobo and the like are great, too - and with more and more range as authors choose to go wide now that Amazon pay so much less in KDP having suckered us all in to create a monopoly. 

in terms of visa, it’s to do with the charges the retailer has to bear for accepting the card. 

* sign in, go to the bookshop finder, select the shop you wish to support and buy through them. They get 30% of the sale and a further 10% is shared between all the bookshops on the system. At the moment, the link is set to my shop but when you select your local one, the icon in the top left will change - so long as that shows the shop you want, the sale is going to them.


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## AE35Unit (Nov 18, 2021)

The thing is I don't often use Amazon for books. We do rely on it for a lot of household stuff that we can't get elsewhere.


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## Jo Zebedee (Nov 18, 2021)

AE35Unit said:


> The thing is I don't often use Amazon for books. We do rely on it for a lot of household stuff that we can't get elsewhere.


There’s that old monopoly effect again - I bet we used to be able to get them in hardware stores etc.


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## AE35Unit (Nov 18, 2021)

Jo Zebedee said:


> There’s that old monopoly effect again - I bet we used to be able to get them in hardware stores etc.


Yes we did, but now we can't.


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## Foxbat (Nov 18, 2021)

I use Amazon as a last resort of purchase. How I operate is to find a third party seller for the item I’m looking for (not just books). I buy from them through my Amazon account and only buy from Amazon if I absolutely can’t get it elsewhere. Now, I know Amazon still get a kickback for this but at least I’m still buying from other vendors.

As an example, I regularly buy my mum mints that she likes from a sweet shop in Cornwall (can’t get them here). They are bought via Amazon but not from Amazon and are delivered by Royal Mail.

Amazon have opened up possibilities for small vendors like the sweet shop in Cornwall.  This, I’d imagine, would become an important part of their trading during the pandemic.


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## AE35Unit (Nov 18, 2021)

There is a certain cat food that we can't get elsewhere-one of our cats has special needs. Also our dog is wheat intolerant. For us Amazon is a lifeline


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## Foxbat (Nov 18, 2021)

I should have added that it’s also my belief (rightly or wrongly…whether or not I’m simply deluded is another argument entirely) that the less times I have to input a CC number, the less chance of these numbers being harvested. I’ve had both accounts for many years and never had a problem. I don’t have to input CC numbers all the time using them.  If I can’t buy online via my Amazon or Paypal account, I just don’t buy. It’s that simple.


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## HareBrain (Nov 18, 2021)

I use a Visa credit card on Amazon for my occasional purchases (mostly KDP proofs), but didn't get the email. I reckon they'll come to an agreement before the deadline anyway.


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## nixie (Nov 18, 2021)

HareBrain said:


> I use a Visa credit card on Amazon for my occasional purchases (mostly KDP proofs), but didn't get the email. I reckon they'll come to an agreement before the deadline anyway.


Same here, also didn't receive email.


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## Foxbat (Nov 18, 2021)

HareBrain said:


> I use a Visa credit card on Amazon for my occasional purchases (mostly KDP proofs), but didn't get the email. I reckon they'll come to an agreement before the deadline anyway.


I think an agreement will happen too. This feels like brinksmanship to increase Amazon’s profit margin by decreasing costs. If they get it wrong, they could lose a lot of UK customers (which is probably why they’re offering a cash incentive to Visa customers to change payment method).

Apparently Mastercard online searches have increased by a factor of 16.


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## Jo Zebedee (Nov 18, 2021)

Secondary vendors are normally small shops and businesses etc. My concern with it - I've looked into whether it's worth being one - is that it's closing down other options to businesses by becoming the biggest and only. Which is what they did with indie authors, and now we're trapped accepting what they pay (which keeps getting whittled down) and their terms etc. Their reviews have changed so that it's nearly impossible for a small author to get enough reviews for eg the likes of Bookbub. So, my concern is the more we support the monopoly of Amazon (and, yes, that includes buying off small shops instead of going directly to them) the more monopoly they have, the less chance we have to buy elsewhere.

I'm no saint. I've bought from Amazon in the past, and I will do again, I'm sure. But I do now try to actively find out if there is an alternative and, for instance, call the very good hardware store a few miles away and see if they can help.

I don't have an answer to this. As a bookstore, they don't annoy me nearly as much as my local Tescos do, taking all the sales of the bestsellers without any love for books as a product, and they don't massively damage my business model, which is to have a lovely place to come and browse and have the whole bookstore experience. But I do know no area I am a user or a consumer in that has benefitted long term from them. Not as an author, a purchaser, or a business. And the more we use them, the more we take away our consumer choice - to the point where, if they decide they only want one credit card - because that business is prepared to meet their requirements, even if not business-sound for them, to give Amazon more profits - do we all only get that credit card? What do we do if that then leads to later charges? Accept them?

From what I've ever seen of them as a business, each step is just a slippery slope.


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## Jo Zebedee (Nov 18, 2021)

HareBrain said:


> I use a Visa credit card on Amazon for my occasional purchases (mostly KDP proofs), but didn't get the email. I reckon they'll come to an agreement before the deadline anyway.


Sorry for my double post. If they come to an agreement it will be to force Visa to charge less to Amazon. How, then, do Visa make up that loss of revenue? Probably at the expense of other service users - will there be more charges to customers? Will they hoik up charges to other businesses to make up the shortfall? It's the usual Amazon bully-boy tactics.


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## CupofJoe (Nov 18, 2021)

And apparently this Amazon cull doesn't affect business account holders that use a Visa Credit Card. Just us personal card holding shoppers.


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## mosaix (Nov 18, 2021)

AE35Unit said:


> The thing is I don't often use Amazon for books. We do rely on it for a lot of household stuff that we can't get elsewhere.



On occasion, I've found an Item on Amazon then located the retailer's own website and bought from there.


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## AE35Unit (Nov 18, 2021)

mosaix said:


> On occasion, I've found an Item on Amazon then located the retailer's own website and bought from there.


Yea but with prime you get free p&p and next day delivery


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## Jo Zebedee (Nov 18, 2021)

AE35Unit said:


> Yea but with prime you get free p&p and next day delivery


If that's what matters - and I get that consumers choose however they want to, against whatever criteria they choose - then you can see why this means there is no availability anywhere else, and no choice about where to buy the product from. 

Honestly, I get all the arguments about using Amazon - I used to use them a lot myself. But, bottom line, if you choose to use them to get free P and P and next day delivery, that a small business can't absorb the costs of (and this is separate from the cat food issue, if they are the only place you can get it from - although I'm surprised your local vet can't help), then you can't complain when things are only available from them, because you've chosen to support their monopoly.


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## AE35Unit (Nov 18, 2021)

Its simple. We don't have a car, there's no decent shops in the town, Amazon has stuff we need that we can't get anywhere else. Its a no brainer.


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## Montero (Nov 18, 2021)

Try looking at Argos - they may surprise you. A lot of reasonably priced good quality stuff and they deliver - and the returns don't involve posting it to China.

I buy a lot of stuff mail order even though we do have a car we are rural and everything is a bit of a drive and I like to avoid Amazon as much as I can. Also avoid big supermarkets as much as possible these days after how blinking useless my favourite one I'm not naming was at deliveries at the start of lock down.
I get bread flour direct from a farm with a mill  www.mungoswells.co.uk/
Wensleydale cheese from Wensleydale Creamery - Artisan Cheese, Gifts & Hampers
These folks do rather good chocolates https://onlinechocolate.co.uk/shop/ols/products - discovered them only a couple of months back and bought a test box before the Christmas order.
I'm just trying out an online grocery store for a few bits of fruit that aren't available locally - will wait to see what I think before naming.
As I said above, Argos - very useful collection of things that they have
About to mail order replacement bedding from Dunelm.
Sock shop is another good one.

And books from Bookshop.org.

You can do a lot of mail order without Amazon.


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## Jo Zebedee (Nov 18, 2021)

AE35Unit said:


> Its simple. We don't have a car, there's no decent shops in the town, Amazon has stuff we need that we can't get anywhere else. Its a no brainer.


And that’s exactly it. There is no need to make reasons for shopping there, except that it suits you best.  they have nailed the business model of convenience.


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## Ursa major (Nov 18, 2021)

HareBrain said:


> but didn't get the email


You expected to get an email from a company that is endlessly emailing me with recommendations of books of types I would never buy...?

Personally, I'm assuming that Amazon has not gone further than it has in the expectation that their announcement will persuade Visa to cut its charges for UK-issued credit cards (and/or that it will lead to an increase in purchases by Visa credit card holders to beat the deadline).


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## Foxbat (Nov 19, 2021)

Ursa major said:


> Personally, I'm assuming that Amazon has not gone further than it has in the expectation that their announcement will persuade Visa to cut its charges for UK-issued credit cards (and/or that it will lead to an increase in purchases by Visa credit card holders to beat the deadline).


Never thought of it in this way. But now that you mention it, could this be Amazon’s version of reporting a shortage as we have seen numerous times recently (petrol, turkeys etc.) and deliberately creating a pre-Xmas surge?


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## Stephen Palmer (Nov 19, 2021)

I'm also using Amazon as little as possible. For books, Waterstones, or eBay...


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## Vertigo (Nov 29, 2021)

There is no denying Amazon is convenient; they have built their monopoly on being so and there's no better example than what they've done with ebooks. I am still constantly surprised that governments have not stepped in on this one.

I try my best not to use them and now pretty much only buy from them when I can't get anywhere else. And that, in fact, is becoming quite rare but occasionally some books are only on Amazon. I even find Amazon are no longer necessarily the cheapest, I can usually find the same product elsewhere at the same price or even cheaper, including ebooks.

What Amazon have done very cleverly is by being very cheap initially they have established themselves as the default in many peoples eyes so they no longer need to worry about being the cheapest. Many people go to Amazon and simply don't look elsewhere. And I suspect Prime has been a massive tactical tool in achieving that. Ebay is another significant example; I would say I almost always find ebay more expensive than elsewhere.


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## mosaix (Nov 29, 2021)

I was forced into using Amazon this morning to buy a Christmas present. It was the first time I've used them for a long time and I'd forgotten just how insidious they are in trying to get you to sign up to Prime.

The buy-without-Prime button is practically invisible - despite what they told the Parliamentary committee. I get really irritated with politicians who just blithely accept what they are told. Anyone worth their salt would have had a laptop with them logged in to the Amazon checkout page and asked the Amazon representative to find the bl**dy button!

Anyone remember the Australian politician asked, on live TV, to open one of the new 'easy to open' milk cartons? Very funny but also serious - he'd just been espousing (lying about) how easy they were to open when the presenter brought one out from under the desk. Result? Milk all over the place.


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## Foxbat (Jan 17, 2022)

It’s hard not to be cynical about this so (in my best French accent) -  Sacre Bleu! Quelle surprise!








						Amazon halts plan to block UK Visa credit cards amid talks
					

Plans to block the cards are halted as the two sides continue to try to resolve a dispute over payment fees.



					www.bbc.co.uk


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## Ursa major (Jan 17, 2022)

I'll have to log on again to change my payment method back (after changing it only yesterday). *EDIT*: Done.

Note that I've never bought anything from Amazon other than Kindle editions of books, so I've never bought anything expensive enough to trigger the protection offered by credit cards (but not debit cards).


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