Sunday 28th April 2013 – Big Business

Yesterday my Mistress was having an anti-big-business day. To be fair she was pretty much anti-everything yesterday with the possible exception of us. Anyway, she is trying to sort out getting paid by the US arm of Amazon. They get paid by her without difficulty so you’d think they could afford her the same treatment. But you’d be wrong. It all started when they ignored the fact that she had tried to notify them that they didn’t need to deduct tax as she paid it here. Not only did they deduct tax but according to what she has read they deducted twice as much tax as they are entitled to. As if that wasn’t bad enough they used to pay by cheque and only paid when you had $100 but on switching to paying by bank transfer, instead of paying the whole balance by bank transfer they insisted on the part before the change being by cheque. This mean that a balance of around $22 had tax deducted leaving $14 which after the bank charges levelled for cashing means that she received £3.76. That notification from the bank came the same day as the email from Amazon saying her tax form had now been rejected because the countries listed on two lines differed. On line 4 she gave her home address and regards herself as living in England – fair enough, she does actually live in England. On line 9 she had to name the country which has the tax treaty with the USA that is relevant and to name it exactly as per the tax treaty – so that would be United Kingdom. Her reply to Amazon read: ‘I’m sorry your geography is so bad that you do not know England is part of the United Kingdom. I’m sure you can find an atlas in your warehouse that could help you with that.’ It’s days like that that she is lucky to have four dogs to ease her tension, although our arguments may not have helped!

Alfie Dog with a little help from Rosemary J Kind alfie@alfiedog.me.uk

Alfie’s Diary – the Book is available at Amazon UK –https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00583ZGSA

You can find short stories to read at www.alfiedog.com