Amazon.com Dumps Connecticut, Too

Amazon has lashed out against my home state of Connecticut, cutting all their affiliates in the state, because Connecticut told Amazon to play fair. While local merchants are required to collect and pay state taxes, Amazon was happily undercutting them online, using its affiliates as mules to deliver some of those sales. The state recently closed that loophole, therefore raising the ire of Amazon who's now promptly firing all of its Connecticut affiliates as a retaliatory reaction. Blame the state all you want, but don't just become tools in the hands of a greedy corporation.

This is not the first state who has been punished by Amazon. This follows a string of affiliates from other states who have been dropped like sacks of manure because that's what Amazon generally thinks of its users and partners. Amazon figures it has milked the affiliates enough already and will continue to do so with all the residual backlinks. Why continue to pay commissions when it can keep the money for itself?

At the same time consider Amazon's hypocrisy of keeping the New York affiliates. New York has the same state tax laws as these other unfortunate states but the New York affiliates haven't been fired. Why? Money, of course. New York is just too lucrative of a market to dump so easily.

I myself was dumped by Amazon over a year ago and wasn't happy about it. So yes, I do have a grudge, but life goes on. I licked my wounds, moved on to Google Adsense and eBay and dumped Amazon in return by vowing to never shop from them again, A promise I have faithfully kept since then.

Of course I am happy to use Amazon's site for comparison shopping and product information, but never to order anything from. eBay or other sites suit me just fine, thank you very much. And when it's time to consider cloud computing services for my company, Amazon will be last in the list to consider, if at all. Why would I jeopardize my job position by going with an arrogant and untrustworthy company?

Don't let being fired from Amazon upset you. Fire them back. Stop buying from Amazon.