While French law now requires online sales sites to charge shipping costs when purchasing books, Amazon recently found a way to continue offering free delivery to its customers. But the current Minister of Culture does not see it that way at all.
Since October 2023, French online sales platforms that offer books for sale can no longer do so without imposing shipping costs on their customers. We are talking about a sum of 3 euros, which is certainly not enormous, but which, for platforms like Amazon which make free shipping a selling point, is necessarily restrictive. To benefit from free ordering, customers of the site must order at least 35 euros of books.
This legislation, adopted more than a year ago, has a rather simple objective: encourage the French to go to a bookstore to buy books. It is true that this type of store is suffering more and more from competition from the Internet, even if online sales platforms cannot apply more than 5% reduction on the works sold.
Amazon’s little pirouette that goes wrong
Sites like Fnac or Amazon are among the first affected by this situation. However, Fnac can play on collecting orders in store, which is not the case for Amazon, which does not have physical stores. SO, for several weeks, the American online merchant has been applying a pirouette which allows it to offer free delivery to its customersincluding when it does not include 35 euros of books.
The trick lies in the possibility of having your order delivered to a collection locker called Amazon Locker. If the lockers are in a mall or department store that sells books, then Amazon believes that this allows it not to apply the delivery costs of 3 euros. In this practice, not all lockers are eligible, but Amazon clearly indicates when this is the case when confirming the order.
It is important to understand that here, Amazon takes the liberty to interpret the legislation in its own way and, inevitably, this approach goes down very badly with the entities who consider themselves wronged by this approach.
“A circumvention of the legislation”
The first to react was none other than the French bookstore union. Through the voice of its general delegate Guillaume Husson, questioned by The Worldhe believes that Amazon is “an actor without faith or law, who attacks a text supported by the government and voted unanimously by parliamentarians”.
It turns out that Rachida Dati, the Minister of Culture, is of the same opinion. “I tell you: it’s a circumvention of the legislation”she told AFP during her trip to the Montreuil Book Fair at the end of December. “I asked for a very clear answer on this. »
For its part, Amazon defends itself by explaining that:“This initiative facilitates access to books, especially in small towns and rural areas, and is in compliance with the Darcos Law. We note, like other players in the sector, that the applicable regulations provide that the delivery of books can be free if the book is collected from a store that sells other books. » For now, it therefore remains possible to use more than 2,500 Amazon collection points in France to have books delivered without paying shipping costs.
It is difficult to know if this situation will last much longer, but it is certain that for Amazon, the timing was calibrated to give this possibility to its customers as the holidays approach. Ultimately, whatever the outcome of this economic-cultural conflict, it is easy to consider that the e-commerce giant has, in any case, succeeded.
