As a general matter, the Consortium colleges do not pay for prime membership.

• If you currently have one, please cancel your prime membership pro-actively by calling Amazon Customer Service at (866) 486-2360. Amazon will refund the prime membership fee based on how many months of the annual membership have already been used.
• Please be cautious not to sign up for prime membership. Currently, Amazon offers on it’s business account prime membership to users and it’s a bit to easy to accidentally sign up for it.
• If you have Prime at home, you can link your personal prime account to your business amazon account. Then you’ll receive the benefit of Prime, i.e., free shipping on small orders, on the regular Amazon business account.
• “Prime Exclusive Items”: are a limited set of items sold by Amazon that can only be purchased with a prime membership. In these cases, those items are often available from 3rd party sellers as well (just without the 2-day prime shipping). If your order is above the current threshold for business accounts, you can still get 2-day shipping.

The AmazonSmile Foundation donates 0.5% of the price of eligible purchases to the charitable organization selected by you. Please always enter your business account through AmazonSmile and designate your employer as your charity to earn back some of the dollars spent on Amazon

Generally, the colleges are exempt from Sales tax except in California and thus sellers should not charge sales tax.

– If Amazon was the seller:

• Call (888-280-9552) to have the sales tax refunded

– If 3^rd party seller:

• On amazon.com go to “Your Account” and to “Your Orders”.
• Find the item that was charged tax and click the “Contact the Seller” button.
• Enter as the subject “Tax Exemption Refund Request”.
• Include the order number and amount of sales tax charged.
• The seller is required to respond within 72 hours.
• They may ask for some additional information, if not, they typically just issue the refund.
• If you have any issues contacting the seller, or other questions, contact the Amazon tax team at (888) 280-9552.

• Once you receive the email invitation from Amazon to join the business account, click the “Accept this invitation” button in the email.
• Then click the “Continue” button.
• You will see the screen: “Sign in to the account you will use for business.”
• Enter your college.edu email address and Amazon password for this account (if you don’t remember the password, click “Forgot your password?” to reset the password).
• Click on “Sign In”.
• On the next screen “Choose an account option”, click on “Create a separate account” to separate your personal purchases on Amazon from any business purchases. This action will create a new (personal) Amazon account under a different (personal) email address.
• Click on “Continue”.
• Enter the email address you want to use from now on for personal Amazon purchases.
• Click on “Save and continue”.
• You will be prompted to enter your name, college.edu email and to create a password for the account to buy for business on Amazon.
• Click on “Create Account”.
• You’ll see an “Almost Complete!” window and you can choose to copy your address book and payment methods. Be sure to only use a college shipping address and only the college’s purchasing card as a payment method for the business account.
• Click on “Complete”.
• Amazon will send you an email confirming the creation of the account.

• Once you receive the email invitation from Amazon to join the business account, click the “Accept this invitation” button in the email.
• Then click the “Continue” button.
• You will see a screen “Sign in to the account you will use for business”.
• Enter your college.edu email address and password (if you don’t remember the password, click “Forgot your password?” to reset the password).
• Click on “Sign In”.
• You will see the screen: “Choose an account option.”
• Click on “Use my existing account”.
• Click on “Complete”.
• Amazon will send you an email confirming the creation of the account.

• Once you receive the email invitation from Amazon to join the business account, click the “Accept this invitation” button in the email.
• Then click the “Continue” button.
• You will be prompted to enter your name, your college.edu email address and to create a password.
• Click on “Create Account”.
• You’ll see an “Almost Complete!” window.
• Click on “Complete”.
• Amazon will send you an email confirming the creation of the account.

Each college has an Amazon Business Account through which all Amazon purchases made for business are required to be made.  Benefits of the Business account are:

• Free Two-Day Shipping on eligible orders over $49
• Free standard shipping on eligible orders over $35
• Pricing and quantity discounts on over 8 million items not available on consumer accounts (with or without Prime)
• Sales Tax Exemption on purchases
• Custom reporting for your transactions
• Access to a specialized Customer Service team

To sign up for an Amazon account at your college, contact procurement@ (your college, e.g., procurement@champlain.edu)
To access the Amazon account, please always use smile.amazon.com and choose as the organization you will support your college.
Personal Use? The Amazon Business Account may only be used for business purposes to avoid violation of tax exemption regulation.
Shipping Address: Enter your departments shipping address.
Payment: At this point you need to have a College purchasing card to be able to purchase on Amazon.
Returns: are handled the same way as on consumer accounts (albeit word on the street is that the business support teams might be a bit more lenient with free returns…)
Reporting: The Amazon Business Account allows for reporting on what was purchased in the past by user. If you are an administrator, you can also run reports on purchases for your department.
Amazon Customer Service: (866) 486-2360 Monday – Friday 8 a.m. – 10 p.m. EST and Saturday & Sunday 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. EST.