Amazon has been a global brand for over 20 years. Recently, they have faced many problems that have made the company stand out in harmful ways and may change their business model in the future.

Amazon Is Bad For Small Businesses

Amazon has been under fire for various issues in the past year, including labor violations and anti-competitive practices.

1) Amazon gets investigated for potential antitrust violations by the Department of Justice

2) The online retail giant’s long-standing relationship with the United States Postal Service is under fire

3) Amazon has come under scrutiny from President Trump, who wanted to regulate its size

4) The company was recently called out on how it treats contract fulfillment workers and

5) More people than ever questioned whether an algorithm could take away jobs.

Amazon Criticisms List

Many people are unhappy with Amazon and have voiced their complaints on social media. For example, many parents complain that they feel like Alexa is watching them because it records everything it hears around the house when you use it for voice commands.

Others say there needs to be more oversight over how data is collected from consumers who use Kindle devices and other services such as Prime Video and Audible.

Bad Worker Treatment

Some believe that Amazon’s employees should unionize to negotiate higher wages, and health care coverage can be provided to all employees. The company has also come under fire by some activists for selling products.

When all businesses remained closed for almost 6-7 months throughout the pandemic, Amazon expanded its operation. The company’s increasing avarice to strengthen its process during the pandemic stacked thousands of workers’ lives.

Recently Amazon hired almost 175000 new warfare workers to meet the increasing demands. But they overlooked their workers’ safety and failed to implement preventive measures despite workers’ complaints.

After continuous complaints and no company response to ensure workers’ protection and safety,  Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, Amazon workers,  criticized the company on Twitter. Unfortunately, instead of improving their safety measures, Amazon fired them.

Taxes

Amazon has a long history of tax evasion. The company had been active in different European countries, including the UK, and denied its permanent settlement in these countries to avoid taxes.

In 2009, Amazon tried to play the same tricks but got into trouble when the Tokyo National Tax Agency caught Amazon red-handed. The Japanese tax authority wared Amazon to pay $119 million in taxes for unreported income in Japan.

In 2012, Amazon generated more than £3.3 billion in sales but did not pay a penny of tax. After investigating the company’s tax avoidance, it decided to pay corporation tax; unfortunately, Amazon was again involved in tax evasion in 2017 when it paid only€16.5m on revenue of €21.6bn.

Amazon’s Bad Gets Worse

Amazon, run by Jeff Bezos, the world’s wealthiest person, is accused as the worst offender as the company has been “aggressively avoiding” tax over the past few decades.

According to Fair Tax mark’s report, Amazon dodges and delays the tax by shifting revenue to low-tax countries.  The report stated that Amazon’s revenue ($960.5)and profit ($26.8)for this decade, its effective tax rate was 12.7%, while the firm paid just $3.4billion.

Climate Change

The company faces severe criticism from customers and workers for its role in climate change. Huge energy waste from massive servers and cloud computing activities is causing a high carbon footprint.

The sad thing is that Amazon threatens its workers who raise their voices against this environment decaying practice.

Amazon Is Bad At Recycling

Amazon is accused of improper handling of electron waste. According to MPs, the global giant produces millions of tons of electronic waste every year without proper disposal and recycling. Mostly this waste is dumped overseas, incinerated, and disposed of in landfills.

According to an Amazon spokesperson:

Though company officials claim that they have taken steps to reduce electronic waste by recycling it, the reality is that Amazon is not legally contributing to collecting, recycling, and repairing waste.

Illegal Items

Besides tax fudging, Amazon continuously faces harsh criticism for marketing illegal items on amazon.co.uk.

According to The Guardian’s 2015 report, the company has been disobeying rules by selling banned items such as pepper spray, stun guns, and concealed cutting weapons.

Amazon Lawsuits 2021

There were six Amazon lawsuits in 2021. In early February, the first one was when the company sued 1634 defendants for selling counterfeit goods on Amazon.

• In March, Amazon filed a lawsuit against two allegedly fraudulent sellers using Amazon to sell products that did not exist.

• In May, Amazon filed suit against a group of websites accused of selling pirated e-books.

• June saw Amazon suing a Canadian company for allegedly infringing on its trademarks.

• And in July, the company filed suit against a group of individuals and companies for allegedly running a scheme to defraud Amazon customers.

Class Action Lawsuits

Some notable class action lawsuits against Amazon include a lawsuit filed in 2015 alleging that the company had violated labor laws by requiring employees to work off the clock. A lawsuit was filed in 2017, alleging that Amazon had illegally billed parents for app purchases made by their children.

Another Amazon class-action lawsuit was filed in 2015 against the online retailer by plaintiffs who alleged that the company had been using unfair and deceptive practices in its pricing of certain items.

The lawsuit claimed that Amazon had been charging more for some items than it should have and that the company had not been transparent about how it set prices. The case was ultimately settled out of court, with Amazon agreeing to refund $70 million to customers who had been overcharged.

While this may seem like a lot of money, it is essential to remember that class action lawsuits are often filed against large companies with deep pockets. In this case, the amount refunded to customers dropped in the bucket compared to Amazon’s overall revenue.

Final Thoughts On Amazon

These are only a few glaring answers to Amazon, a lousy company. Their massive profits and monopolistic leanings are doing significant damage to the economy. Consumers need to learn so we can hopefully stop glorifying this company.

More importantly, their prices aren’t even that good with all of that said. There used to be a time when buying goods on the internet was cheaper. Amazon can now analyze consumers’ shopping patterns, rivals’ prices, inventory, profits, and other factors every ten minutes to determine new product prices. That way, they can ensure their prices are always aggressive and can juice out more value.