Amazon Lightning sales- VAT issues

Zimmerframe

Just curious re. this one. I am sure a company the size of Amazon are totally compliant legally, but surely this is a weird business model.

As an Amazon UK business customer, when browsing the Amazon UK site, all items stocked and sold by Amazon themselves are displayed with a VAT exclusive and a VAT inclusive price and naturally as a Rep. of Ireland customer with a valid VAT number, the V.A.T exclusive price is the price charged. So far so good.

Now the fun starts when Amazon has a sale item, which they refer to as a "lightning deal",
Everything appears exactly the same as normal, i.e the item is displayed with a VAT exclusive and a VAT inclusive price EXCEPT now I will be charged the V.A.T inclusive price, yet the invoice will show no VAT charged.

example

Normal day: Amazon Uk item retails for £100 including VAT ie. £83.33 excluding V.A.T - If I order this item, then I pay £83.33

Sale Day The item is on sale with a 10% reduction. Now the same item is displayed as retailing for £90 including V.A.T and is clearly displayed as £75 excluding VAT. I would assume the invoice to a business customer would be £75 but NO the full £90 will be charged. The actual invoice will show something completely different to the prices you just saw, something like item price £100, V.A.T -zero, lightning discount £10, Invoice total £90.

So the item costs me more, because the price of the item has been reduced.

All this seemed bizarre to me, so I contacted Amazon and they stated

I've attached a link below which will take you to the Terms and Conditions for Amazon Lightening Deals:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_left_v4_sib?ie=UTF8&nodeId=201895600

As my colleague previously mentioned, the price cannot be reduced below the listed price, as such we increase the overall price of the item for VAT registered customers and the saving is then deducted from this increased price to match the price listed on the website.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention so we can review this further and check over the Terms and Conditions for our Lightening Deals.


So far as I can see, the VAT exclusive price shown is totally FALSE, and in a nutshell if the price of the item has been reduced in the Lighting sale, then as a business customer you must pay Amazon extra money.

nuac

LD Mod
Moved this to Taxation - more likely to more replies there