Amazon has announced its leap into the UK’s fresh food market after a supply deal was agreed with Morrisons, the country’s fourth biggest supermarket.

Britons spent £5.3bn on Amazon in 2014 and the online retail juggernaut was voted best customer service provider in January this year. Already renowned for its low prices, next-day delivery and online movie streaming, Amazon’s natural next step seems to be grocery deliveries.



However, while customers may be fond of the convenience and speed of Amazon’s operations, it is a company that inspires more complicated feeling in its workers.

Last year, a New York Times investigation revealed the extent of the pressure put on Amazon’s employees. Grown men seen sobbing in the office, frequent layoffs creating a climate of fear, people with cancer being overworked … the list goes on, though Amazon later denied these claims.

Workers sort arriving products at an Amazon fulfilment Centre. Photograph: Robert Galbraith/Reuters

These allegations, as well as the knowledge that Amazon has put smaller stores, especially bookshops, out of business, give some people misgivings about the company. And that is before we get to the fact that Amazon, like Google and Starbucks, has had a somewhat fraught relationship with HMRC. In 2014, the company paid just £11.9m in UK taxes, though last May it agreed to pay corporation tax on UK sales.

This has led a number of people to try to live a life free from Amazon. Ethical Consumer magazine decided to boycott it, denouncing “cheaper shopping at the expense of our public services” after the tax avoidance row. Guardian writer Stuart Heritage said the revelation of the horrendous workplace culture at its headquarters was enough to push him to boycott, despite the “convenience of buying stuff in my pants on a laptop on my sofa”.

For those who are worried by Amazonian overreach, here are a few ways to curb your dependence and get your goods elsewhere.



Turn to other online shops

Ebay celebrated 15 years of activity in the UK in 2014, when it sold 3bn items – not all of them kitsch memorabilia. The website has made the fortune of many an entrepreneur, and the range of items sold would bewilder even the most savvy of online shoppers.

A sign outside eBay headquarters. Photograph: Paul Sakuma/AP

If it’s only a movie you’re after, there are alternatives: Hulu and Netflix vie with Amazon Prime in the web-streaming space. And those who particularly object to Amazon’s labour practices can feel especially good about signing up to Netflix, which offers its employees a year of paid maternity or paternity leave and regularly tops the list of best companies to work for.

But because you can’t have it all, the latest news seem to suggest that it too is sometimes not overly keen on paying corporation tax in Britain.

Hive.co.uk proudly boasts that it is a “British, tax-paying company.” A network of 360 independent booksellers in the country, it will provide you with the latest books, audio and video you need. And to make your conscience even clearer, a percentage of every purchase goes back to local independent bookshops, helping them to survive in the scary era of all-online shopping. Alternatively, you could buy books while supporting your favourite news website by clicking here.

Food-wise, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Asda and Waitrose already deliver, in exchange for a minimum spending and a small delivery fee. There are also a host of companies that offer food boxes delivered to your door, such as Abel & Cole, Hello Fresh and Gousto.

Abel & Cole organic food. Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian

Back to the high street

According to the Office for National Statistics, food sellers have the lowest proportion of sales occurring online, at just 4%. Most of us still leave the house to go food shopping, be it at a big supermarket branch or at the corner shop.

As well as being healthier – a wander through Asda isn’t exactly a spin class but does get the heart rate up much higher than sitting and clicking on the couch – a recent study by investment firm Charles Stanley showed that you are more likely to make bad decisions when shopping online shopping. The almost infinite range of products makes it harder to find the best deals, and the lack of assistance means that you might be missing some vital information – or simply buying the wrong product.

Shopping on the high street. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

And you could be saving jobs too. As online shopping has exploded in the past few years, high-street retailers have struggled to adapt to the changing needs of customers. Since the 2008 financial crash, Woolworths and Zavvi, among others, have closed down. Perhaps significantly, both these brands offered products that can now be ordered in one click from a plethora of online competitors. On Monday, the British Retail Consortium announced that 900,000 industry jobs were at risk in the next 10 years, on the same day Amazon announced its partnership with Morrisons.

Resist the urge to splurge

While we received the encouraging news this week that we are consuming far less than we were 10 years ago – with the average person in the UK using 10 tonnes of material in 2013, down from 15 tonnes in 2001 – we still use and buy too much.

According to the National Employment Savings Trust, 85% of Britons spend money on stuff they seldom or never use. Taken as a whole, that is £6.2bn we could save every year. And with the nation’s top impulse buy being bananas, Amazon’s forthcoming delivery of fresh food could be bad news for our wallets. It’s worth resisting the allure of unnecessary online purchases, one banana at a time.

