Online Retailers

Dear Karen: How can I minimize returns to my retail website after the holidays? Answer: Make sure your sales page includes product details and a toll-free customer service line. "The easier it is for customers to speak to a real human being, the less likely they are" to return merchandise or resort to a credit card "chargeback," said Brien Heideman of BadCustomer.com. Customers sometimes use chargebacks -- disputing credit card charges and demanding repayment -- if retailers don't have a clear return policy.

Between the chocolate eggs, the pastel fashions and the flowers, American consumers are going to spend $16.8 billion on celebrating Easter Sunday on April 8. And that doesn't even include paying for increasingly expensive gasoline to get to church. The average person will shell out $145.28 for the holiday, up 11% from the $131.04 last year, according to a survey from the National Retail Federation conducted by BIGinsight. Much of the uptick has to do with the warm weather as well as generally improving consumer confidence , researchers said.

As long as there has been online shopping, there has been Cyber Monday. But is that now more virtual than real? Online retailers for the last decade have counted on the Monday after Thanksgiving to deliver for them what Black Friday does for bricks-and-mortar stores: a turbo boost into the holiday shopping season. Online sales surged on that Monday as many people hopped on to their employers' fast Internet connections to do some holiday shopping when they returned to work after Thanksgiving.

It's an increasingly common sight at the mall: shoppers using their smartphones to scan the barcode of an item they like and checking its price online. Some scanning applications go further, letting shoppers buy the item from a competing Web retailer with just a few taps on the screen. The largest online seller, Amazon.com, even offers customers up to $5 off the items they scan in other companies' stores. The brick-and-mortar shops may be able to match their online rivals' discounts, but there's one competitive disadvantage they can't overcome: Many online retailers do not collect sales taxes from customers outside of the state where they are headquartered.

— Web-savvy shoppers can often save big buying online instead of at the local mall. But a chunk of the savings comes at the expense of state and local governments, in the form of sales taxes that are never paid on many Web purchases. The losses add up for cash-starved state and local governments across the country: California alone loses out on more than $1 billion a year. Now states are starting to get serious about collecting that money. Options under consideration include rewriting the rules on which dot-coms have to charge sales tax — or even requiring online retailers to send their customer lists to the government.

Online retailers collectively made a profit last year for the first time as sales jumped a better-than-expected 51%, in a sign of continued resilience in e-commerce, an industry survey found. Online sales surged to $114 billion last year, surpassing forecasts of $96 billion, fueled by the travel category, according to an annual survey of 150 retailers conducted by Shop.org, the online arm of the National Retail Federation, and Forrester Research.

With each click, a Web page brings ideas for the holidays. A cashmere sweater! A CD player! The latest bestseller! Before you know it, your list is finished. But those cheery feelings of satisfied shopping vanish when you click on a Web site's "check out": Say hello to shipping charges. Like mail-order companies before them, online retailers can surprise you with seemingly big shipping and handling charges. Sure, it's not unreasonable to expect to pay for delivery; after all, convenience costs.

Every teenager who has ever worked at a grease trap knows how to say it: "Would you like fries with that?" But online retailers are proving to be slow learners. They know how to build a store, but most have forgotten how to sell. Until they remember, Web surfers may buy a few things, but they won't really shop. Lost among the technology in online stores has been the marketing and merchandising commonly found in real-world stores.

Online retailers racked up unexpectedly strong numbers the day after Thanksgiving, which had not previously been a stellar day for electronic commerce. It's an indication that the totals for today -- when consumers return to work and to their computers after the holiday weekend -- would be even stronger. ComScore Networks Inc., which tracks online sales, estimated that Internet shoppers spent $195.6 million on Friday, a 30% increase over the day after Thanksgiving last year.

The Web surfer in Boston who tripped across an Internet gift store called Unique Novelties 2000 in December probably didn't know that he had reached a business based in the San Fernando Valley. And even if he did, it certainly didn't matter once a $7 poodle figurine captured his fancy. Instead of clicking on another page to find out more, the customer called the site's customer service number three time zones away. Although it was 3 a.m.

Amazon.com Inc. will change the way it does business, at least in California, now that Gov. Jerry Brown has signed into law a bill that requires the giant Internet retailer and certain out-of-state online merchants to collect sales taxes on purchases by Californians. Starting next Sept. 15, Amazon and many other Internet retailers will lose their ability to offer essentially a savings to customers by skipping the levy of 7.25% or more, which bricks-and-mortar stores and other merchants must collect.

The California Legislature may finally have ended its long-running battle with Amazon.com over the collection of taxes. An eleventh-hour deal in Sacramento will delay for a year a new state law requiring online retailers to collect taxes from California shoppers. In exchange for the delay, Amazon has pledged to comply with the law once it becomes effective. The deal will cost the state something in the short term, but it averts a fight at the ballot box and some unseemly maneuvering in the state capital.

A tentative deal that would halt Amazon.com Inc.'s campaign to repeal the state's recent Internet sales tax collection law may have pulled California back from the brink of an expensive and politically fractious June ballot war. Bricks-and-mortar retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Target Corp., have long complained about Amazon's unfair advantage, but said they were satisfied with the agreement reached between lawmakers and the world's...

Amazon.com cut a tentative deal with legislative leaders Wednesday night that would allow it to postpone collecting sales taxes from Californians for another year. The company in turn would drop its battle to overturn the state's new law that required it and many other out-of-state online retailers to collect the taxes. Under the deal, Amazon would delay collecting taxes until September 2012, Assemblyman Charles Calderon (D-Whittier) said. The new law had mandated that Internet retailers start collecting state taxes in July if they had offices, workers or other connections in California.

A coalition of health, welfare and social services advocates is calling for a boycott of Amazon.com Inc. until the Internet retailer drops a referendum to repeal a new law requiring it to collect sales taxes on Californians' purchases. At a news conference Monday on the steps of the state Capitol, the Think Before You Click campaign asked shoppers to cancel accounts with the Seattle-based company. The group has launched a website, ThinkBeforeYouClickCA.org . "The $200 million in annual revenue that California loses each year through Amazon's tax loophole would have been enough to prevent the $90-million cut from California's Adult Day Health Care program," said Nan Brasmer, president of the California Alliance for Retired Americans.

Even as Amazon.com Inc. gears up for a legal battle over sales tax in California, the online retailer's stock continues to climb after posting second-quarter results that beat Wall Street expectations. The company reported that sales jumped 51% to $9.91 billion for the quarter that ended June 30, compared with $6.57 billion in the same period last year. Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said in a statement that competitive pricing and expanded selections were driving "the fastest growth we've seen in over a decade.

Any action of the Legislature can be overturned by voter referendum — almost. The state Constitution explicitly exempts tax measures. So how can Amazon.com circulate petitions to overturn ABx1 28, the law that requires online retailers to collect sales taxes on purchases made by California consumers? Simple: The so-called Amazon-tax law isn't a tax at all. It doesn't impose any new obligation on Californians, who have been required for decades to pay sales taxes on goods purchased from out-of-state sellers.

Any action of the Legislature can be overturned by voter referendum — almost. The state Constitution explicitly exempts tax measures. So how can Amazon.com circulate petitions to overturn ABx1 28, the law that requires online retailers to collect sales taxes on purchases made by California consumers? Simple: The so-called Amazon-tax law isn't a tax at all. It doesn't impose any new obligation on Californians, who have been required for decades to pay sales taxes on goods purchased from out-of-state sellers.

Greed, we are told by the moral philosophers, brings out the worst in human beings. As Amazon.com is about to prove, the same rule applies to big corporations. Last week, the giant online retailer announced that it was backing a ballot referendum to overturn a new state law mandating that it collect the sales tax due on purchases by its California customers. That law, which was signed by Gov. Jerry Brown at the end of June, was designed to eliminate the price advantage enjoyed by Amazon, and many other online retailers, over brick-and-mortar stores.