Original subtitles

Come here. Look at this! That's a bottle of piss.

That's a bottle of piss. Piss!

That's the Amazon fulfilment centre.

We've been here for, what, two or three minutes?

And we've got seven bottles of piss.

That's definitely p... This one, I'm not so sure about.

Like, this... This looks like it could just be apple...

Yeah, it's apple juice. Look.

Yeah, it's piss.

Amazon. They're the world's biggest online retailer.

Their founder is one of the richest men on the planet,

and they're such a big part of our day-to-day lives now.

I mean, I used to use Amazon all the time.

I kept on hearing these stories about Amazon

not being a great place to work.

Amazon patented cages for staff to work in in 2016.

I've even heard stories about people being disciplined

for having heart attacks at work.

It seems like people think Amazon are getting away with quite a lot,

and I'm an expert in that field.

See, my name's Oobah Butler, and I've made a career out of

getting away with stuff.

I made my garden shed into the number-one rated restaurant

on TripAdvisor in London.

I faked my way to the top of Paris Fashion Week.

And for my next heist, I'm setting my sights on Amazon.

Amazon have been taking the piss for too long now,

and it's about time someone did something.

So to do this, I needed a team.

Yeah... Take on Amazon? Yeah.

Take on Amazon and try and...

...change them, basically. Right.

You are a lawyer? I am. OK.

I think I might be... I might be in trouble.

What did you do, then?

I don't know. I don't know the law.

Yeah, I don't know. Maybe I should just start...

Yeah.

Start telling you.

For a while now, a struggle has been brewing between Amazon and sections

of its workforce, and it was all coming to a head here -

Coventry.

Something historic was about to go down.

Amazon warehouse.

Today is, like, the first ever, like, walk-out

in UK history of Amazon staff.

So we're heading, but we're going...

We're going incognito.

Does that cover my hair up?

It's a bit Jamiroquai-y.

The workers at Amazon Coventry are trying to organise

for better working conditions.

Only one Amazon warehouse on the planet has ever succeeded

in forming a union, so I wanted to find out

what makes going up against Amazon such a challenge

and what was really going on behind closed doors.

Does anyone want to talk to the... You'd like to?

No. No? And you don't want to either?

OK.

Yeah, appreciate that.

I kind of got the sense that Amazon's workers were worried

what would happen to them if they spoke out about what was going on.

Amazon have reacted pretty badly

to workers trying to form unions in the past.

They were even issued a cease and desist for retaliating

against the only currently established Amazon union in America,

so that is what Coventry's workers are up against.

They might not want to recognise unions.

Hi! We're here and we're staying here.

People feel scared to speak up?

That's abundantly clear. Yeah, they are scared.

They don't want to lose their job. They've seen people come and go.

So if Amazon's workers can't talk to me

about what's actually going on inside,

then I need to find another way to see if Amazon's workers

are being mistreated.

I'm going to get inside Amazon.

Coventry Fulfilment Centre, BHX4.

My own personal Fort Knox - and I want in.

It's hard to even get close to this place.

You can't just walk up and have a look.

The whole place is surrounded by this perimeter fence,

constantly patrolled by guards at all hours.

Get past them and you'll get to a set of gates that can only

be accessed by employees with a very special type of card...

...or maybe the subtle art of persuasion.

Er, I was just really wanting to come and have a look in the centre.

You know, I've got an offer that... should be nice.

Just weren't interested.

Right, so if you can't get through, then what about going over?

Attach yourself to a drone, zip right over the gate.

Oh.

Yeah, it didn't... OK.

But there's a back door.

Get in a box, post yourself in as a return,

jump out wearing an Amazon uniform and you could bypass the whole lot.

Just one snag.

But then I had an even more ingenious way

of getting into Amazon.

I applied for a job.

I think I got it.

So I've got the job, I've found a way in,

but now I need some special equipment.

That's... an undercover camera.

I've not really used this in any meaningful way.

And... I know you've done a lot of undercover.

I was thinking, if they catch me, I'm going to say I'm recording

an Undercover Boss.

No, cos that's a lie.

You can't lie. If you're caught, you can't lie.

You're a... You are there in the public interest.

So the problem is with that is that... Look, your brand...

...it's a lie. Your brand is jokester, prankster.

This is the one part of this film

where you cannot be either of those things. Mm-hm.

Did no-one recognise you?

I sprayed my hair brown...

Right, OK... and I swept it back and I had glasses.

And I went under the name Paul.

"Hello, I'm Paul and I work for Amazon."

So, on the first day, I went in and had my induction.

Er, Paul. So I was supposed to be here at 12. Sorry.

Is everything OK with all that?

Oh, God! Sorry.

So I was late to my safety induction.

I'm not sure if I'd missed anything important with regards to, like,

safety or anything, but Norm pulled me up,

so I just joined the other new recruits and tried to catch up.

Amazon say they always reschedule any missed inductions.

It was really rammed home to us

that whenever we left the warehouse floor,

we'd have to go through multiple airport-style security scanners.

It felt pretty intimidating,

like they didn't trust their own staff at all.

I obviously knew I was going to go off like a Christmas tree

every time. Why would you be going off like a Christmas tree?

Cos I had a camera strapped between my legs. Oh, I see.

Did you have a contract of employment issued by them?

Yeah. Yeah, and what did the contract of employment say

about filming and speaking to people?

I didn't really read it. Right, OK.

Fuck it. Doesn't matter, does it?

All right, yes, I agree to that and I agree to that.

So I was all trained up, which meant the next day,

I would be on the warehouse floor -

and that means I'd have to go through the scanners.

Got literally a camera strapped right here by my testicles.

So it's like...

If the scanners don't get me, then there is a god.

Amazon's employees have to go through this every day.

I mean, it felt more like I was walking into some sort of nightmare.

True or false? False.

Right. Is that bad?

Well, what happens next?

I was in, but I was really rattled from almost being rumbled...

...50 I went out to the smoking area to calm my nerves,

sat down next to my new colleagues and introduced myself as...

Which was... Mm-hm... not good.

No. Because I was in disguise

and under a different name. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I was a bit panicky then.

So with their advice in mind, I got my head in the game

and focused on my mission.

I needed to gather evidence of how Amazon workers are being treated,

so I got to work. And as soon as I got on to the warehouse floor,

I got this distinct feeling that I was being watched.

We felt like we were being surveilled at every second.

There was clearly a mistrust of staff.

I guess it was just shocking to me how quickly I started...

Things started aching. My back started hurting.

You know, I started having people who were also on their Day 1

saying about their feet hurting. Yeah.

Have you ever had foot pain before?

One of my co-workers was saying that she had worked there

for eight months and that she was in tears

because of how much pain she was in.

So on the second day, I was working on this lorry.

The fan didn't work.

It's really hot.

I was told that we needed to take turns on shifts

on this boiling hot lorry...

...but I was never rotated out of the van, as my supervisor said,

and instead worked there for four hours.

On Day 1, I'm boiling hot! I'm in pain. Like...

I mean, am I just bad at my job, or is this...?

Well, that sounds more like a health and safety issue.

Right. They're not providing a safe work environment.

Is that a law? Could be an issue, yeah.

It hadn't taken me long to collect evidence of workers in pain

and potentially unsafe practices at Amazon Coventry,

but I was about to discover something even bigger.

I was one of about 100 new employees on that day.

This was a pivotal moment for Coventry's union hopes.

They needed the support of at least 50% of the workforce

to establish Amazon's first union in Europe.

I mean, they were so, so close.

But if Amazon took on hundreds of workers,

that could change everything.

This was wild.

I was shattered, but with this evidence in my hands

I knew I had to just keep on going.

I mean, what else was I going to find?

I mean, it seemed like Amazon were hotter on surveillance

than health and safety, as I was about to find out.

So I'm working undercover at an Amazon fulfilment centre,

but I've just been pulled aside for a chat -

and it didn't sound good.

Right, OK.

Similar looks, similar resemblance?

Right, OK.

That is... Yeah, that's me.

It's not a wig!

Yeah!

In what seemed like no time at all,

Amazon had monitored and identified me.

They'd clearly done their research and were quick to ask me...

Yeah.

I needed to get out of there before they found my camera

and all of the intel that I'd gathered.

I should leave now, basically.

Because I'm... Because it's...

Yeah, I need to go now.

Thank you.

Yes.

I've got screws in my pelvis.

I know - you said that. I've got screws in my pel...

I've already had a doctor's note...

Sorry? Oh, no, I'm leaving anyway now.

Sorry, I'm going to be getting my stuff now. Sorry.

I won't be returning tomorrow.

That's my last shift.

But thanks. I appreciate it.

Let's get the fuck out of here.

Not long after I was rumbled,

a story broke that Coventry's unionising bid had been halted.

Organisers claimed that Amazon's hiring spree

had skewed the balance of staff so much,

they'd have to postpone the vote.

I mean, if this was true,

I'd inadvertently been at the heart of Amazon's union busting.

I'd been used as a patsy.

Now I had to make things right.

They said...

So I just started thinking and thinking,

"How do I get people to care about Amazon's... sort of workers?" Yeah.

And I started kind of... I was hanging around

their fulfilment centres a lot, and I noticed how,

outside a lot of them, there are bottles of urine.

Outside... Of urine?

Bottles of urine, yeah. Yeah.

If you ever go to an Amazon fulfilment centre

and you look at the side of the road,

there's often, like, bottles of urine.

Just for the record, it definitely was urine cos I sniffed it.

Yeah, and then I thought, "well, where on earth is this coming from?"

So I went to speak with Alex Press, a labour journalist

who hosts a podcast about Amazon, to confirm my suspicions.

People are... People are pissing in the bottles.

It's a pervasive problem, one that all the delivery service partners

and the company itself are very aware of.

There's no time for bathroom breaks

cos you don't want to get written up for being off the clock.

It's called "time off task" at Amazon.

There's evidence that people are pissing in bottles

or holding it in to the point where women at Amazon often complain

about developing urinary tract infections.

It's really bad and well-documented most among the delivery workforce.

But an Amazon spokesperson said that they don't do that.

Yeah, well... Well...

Excuse me, excuse me!

We're making a film where we're talking to Amazon delivery drivers.

When was the last time that you pissed in a bottle?

Oh, today.

Yeah, today. I mean, it's just like a...

It's like a thing, you know, every day.

It's just... It's unfortunate, but we have to do it.

You see in the backseat, back there?

This is...

How does it make you feel?

It's honestly degrading, you know?

It's kind of like, in a way, you feel like you have no option.

So I've spoken to drivers all over the world,

and it seems to be the same everywhere.

And the reason that they piss in bottles

is just cos they're under such crazy pressure to meet targets.

So they're being monitored by a dispatcher at all times.

I am, like, the dispatcher lead.

You get a direct monitor of how many packages everyone has done... Mm-hm.

...how long they've been working... Yeah.

...how many packages they've done, the percentages of them.

They don't give you enough time to schedule a break.

And if you do, you'll probably end up going overtime.

You know, people who are going slow usually end up getting fired.

If I'm looking for a McDonald's or for, I don't know, for a toilet,

for a public toilet...

You lose time. Exactly.

Now, I've found out that every bottle of urine

that is found in their car at the end of the day counts against them.

We go off, like, a point system.

So it's like, if you pee in a bottle and you leave it...

Like, you're going to get a point for that.

How many points until they might have trouble?

Well, everybody has, like, their own system.

So our point is a ten-point system. Yeah.

So there's fleets of Amazon vans all over the world

chucking bottles of urine out their window.

Amazon are flooding the world with piss!

It just seems like such a waste. Of piss?

Yeah.

You want it?

I'm collecting all of the bottles of urine that I can find

from Amazon's disgruntled and overworked drivers.

The people at the top of Amazon have tried to brush this issue

under the carpet, so I'm going to make their drivers' urine

something they can't ignore.

See, the number one product in any Amazon category

gets a special promotional badge saying it's a best seller.

And if I can get one for Amazon drivers' piss,

then they will proudly display it front and centre

of their own platform.

We want to make a drink out of the drivers' urine.

We just need to come up with, like, a name, a label,

a design for a logo.

Has it got to do with energy?

Yeah, energy... Energy's good.

Has it got to do with piss?

Piss Energy?

Bustin'.

What about Drive?

Drive? Drive's not bad.

Shall I look if it's been taken?

Fuck! Taken.

That actually looks pretty good. Yeah, it looks good.

What do drivers want when they're on a shift for Amazon?

They want to piss. Yeah!

They want to be released from their shift...

Release Energy Drink. And they want to... release!

Release Energy. Rel... Yeah, that's not bad.

Release Energy. There's nothing! Release - you can see it!

It sounds like it would be good for you.

And it... It IS a release.

Basically, taking a wee...

Energy drinks have a look to them, don't they?

It needs to be "Release” and maybe - in little letters - "Energy".

The Amazon orange... Nice. .. kind of looks...

Yeah, it does look energy drink-y.

It looks like how I imagine your vat of piss looks.

We need more a healthy, piss colour.

A little more yellow - bright yellow!

That's too... That's almost been too hydrated.

That looks like Wes Anderson's designed it. Yeah.

Yes!

That's it.

I would totally drink that. You'd drink that?

Yeah, definitely! Would you drink that?

Look what's just arrived.

Very nice!

7.5 inches.

This is all being listed. And that's where it says all the ingredients,

which are all the ingredients to... urine.

Saved and finished!

I can't... Just part of me just thinks, "Surely not."

It's available to buy.

Fuck!

Does anyone want to do a test purchase?

I originally listed the drink as a refillable pump dispenser,

but Amazon's algorithm and their internal team moved the product

into a drink category.

The drink was live, but I had no idea what to do next,

so I spoke to someone who's spent the last four years researching

Amazon's platform for tips on how to make this wee number one.

I don't want to be a killjoy, but I really hope you can't do it.

So you would say it was difficult to have a top spot product?

Oh, of course, yeah.

I mean, I think, you know, if it wasn't difficult,

everyone would do it.

If you can make yourself one of the top few results

that 60% of people doing online shopping see,

that's very valuable.

The risks involved are that it can also be very expensive to get there.

OK. Then there are all sorts of possible unforeseen events

and contingencies and sometimes even, like,

algorithmically unexplainable things that can happen

because it's an enormously complex platform to navigate.

How to get the top spot on Amazon

in any given product category is,

you know, a secret.

I'd say it's probably a secret even from Amazon themselves.

I was flying blind.

There was no sure-fire method of making this thing a bestseller.

I just needed to shift as much product as possible

and hope for the best.

So I enlisted the help of a core team.

So the plan for today is... we've got to try and make this product

that we've made out of Amazon drivers' urine,

got to try and make it a number one product on Amazon.

So it's real Amazon drivers' piss?

Yeah. We relisted the drink in the Bitter Lemon category

to give ourselves the best chance of a number one.

But this was going to be tough.

I mean, we were going up against Schweppes!

The best hope of us getting a number one product on the Amazon platform

was to game the algorithm -

by selling it to as many people as possible

in the shortest amount of time as possible.

And it wasn't long before sales just started rolling in.

And we're going to what?

Are you actually going to send me this bottle of piss?

One order's through so far.

I've got three people who said yes already.

I've got 11 yeses and counting.

I've had one yes. We just got a 12th yes!

27... No, 28.

39. 41. 46. 65. 100!

We had been selling all day

and we were nowhere to be seen on the best seller list.

But surely it must take a little bit of time to update, right?

Yeah, but we're not even on any list.

It was a lot harder to get Amazon drivers' piss

to climb their rankings than I thought it would be.

I'm a bit like, "What have I done? What haven't I done?

"Why isn't that appearing on those lists?"

If we wanted to get this piss to stick to Amazon,

we were going to have to dig deeper.

Hello. Am I going to get, like, sued or imprisoned or anything?

Joe said it's...

...asked him to confirm his payment method.

Please, guys! Anyone interested?

If you're up for doing it... I can send you the details.

I look forward to my...

...to my delicious bottle of piss.

Come on!

But no matter how many times we refreshed the best seller list...

Oh, God!

...we weren't on it.

It's not updated. It's not moved.

It's still the same.

After 12 long hours, we got an update.

"Amazon has noticed unusual reviewing activity on this product.

"Due to this activity, we have limited this product

"to verified purchase reviews."

The fuck's that mean?

Amazon were on to us.

My ploy to outsmart their algorithm had completely failed.

We were about to call it a night...

...and then we noticed something weird on the listing.

Yes!

Yes!

OK, so... Fucking did it!

I've got the number one product at Amazon...

.. made out of Amazon drivers' piss!

I was like, "It's been flagged. We're over.

"We're done. We are done."

No, we're not, baby! We're number one!

So this product that I'd made out of Amazon drivers' piss

had become a number-one product on Amazon.

So what next? What would Jeff do?

Take it global.

Now I was a successful entrepreneur,

I had the platform to spread my story far and wide.

Success comes down to four principles.

Patience, invention,

synergy, and succeeding.

There is so much potential in Piss.

The whole idea behind Release is it's the first

fully reusable energy drink.

And then I got invited on the news.

Oobah Butler joins me now.

Hi, Oobah. Thanks for being here.

I created a product made out of Amazon drivers' urine

and I listed it as a drink on Amazon.

Why did you do it?

In order to bring attention

to the bad treatment of workers

on Amazon, but I used

the power of number one.

Oobah, thank you for sharing your story.

To Amazon, I would like to say thank you.

Thank you for creating working conditions that allows my product

to be so abundant and plentiful.

Thank you to every member of the general public who bought

Amazon drivers' urine sold as an energy drink.

Isn't that good?

I don't think so, no. Why?

I thought... I was quite pleased with that. No.

What's the problem with that? Because you've got no idea.

These consumers don't know that they're buying people's urine

that's been left on the side of the road, repackaged and rebranded

by you as an energy drink.

It went live as a product on their platform.

Yeah. They allowed it.

Yeah.

Isn't that crazy? Yes.

Any concerns? Yeah, several.

What would be your concerns?

It's not even fit for public consumption...

...I would have thought.

You're selling, in effect, an illegal product.

So is it illegal to sell Amazon drivers' urine online?

Is that actually a genuine question?

And it would be an issue if a member of the public

got their hands on it? Yeah. What could...? What would be the worst

thing that could happen if that happened?

Well, you don't know what's in the urine.

What if you've got a drug addict?

Well, it would be... Or there's a disease.

But that's not... That's classic entrepreneurship, isn't it? No.

I saw at the side of the road, I saw there was an issue and I took

it and I made it into a number one product.

Potentially endangering people's lives, I think.

That's over-pitching it. Maybe I should take it down.

It's still live now?!

Yeah. There's something you need to know.

At no stage did any member of the public get anywhere

near receiving a bottle of urine as a drink.

I had a close syndicate of friends buying the drink and controlled

every purchase.

So no-one unwittingly bought any?

There were one or two purchases I didn't recognise the name on,

but we just... I just cancelled them because I just thought,

"Well, I don't want to disappoint anybody."

More importantly, you didn't want anyone to drink the urine.

Yeah, that, too.

This was a closed experiment to get everyone talking about Amazon

drivers having to urinate in bottles, and it had worked.

The media noticed.

Thanks for telling us about this.

Eventually, they removed the listing.

I mean, this was here, though.

I'd managed to make a number one drink on Amazon made out of their

drivers' urine.

This is the biggest online retailer on Earth, and now people

were talking about the huge issues drivers face.

Amazon sent through a right of reply, saying...

It got me thinking, how easy is it for much more dangerous

products to end up in the wrong hands?

For my next mission, I recruited two of the most twisted individuals

you're likely to meet.

Come here. I'll wait in there for you to come back.

I blew the camera on fire.

These are my nieces.

So my nieces are growing up in a world that's filled

with voice assistants. This here is Alexa.

Say, "Hello, Alexa".

Hello, Alexa.

Hello, Alexa.

With 71.6 million users already, Amazon's goal is supposedly to get

one of these into every room of every home.

I mean, they say they want to make shopping easier.

I've never used one.

Alexa...

...add, er, lemonade to the shopping list.

Schweppes lemonade added to your shopping list.

It's got its own safety protocols.

For example, when you try to buy a bottle of vodka, it doesn't let

you because you might be underage.

But are all products so tightly controlled?

Alexa, add stainless steel

carpenter knife to my basket.

A top result is stainless steel carpenter knife.

It's £13.21, including VAT, with delivery by tomorrow.

I added it to your Amazon basket, where you can review product

and seller details before checkout.

To purchase now, say "buy it now".

Buy it now.

Processing your order...

Look at this!

That is really, really... OK, it's wrapped up still.

No, no, no. This one's mine. Oh, God.

Can we open them?

I don't...

You don't like blades, do you? No.

A sword! When we ordered a knife that we were sure needed age

verification, we found that there was no such thing.

So I went to report them to Trading Standards,

who take businesses to court if they catch them committing

illegal business activities.

How old are your nieces? Four and six years old.

Yeah, that is bad.

This one's mine!

In 2016, Amazon, with a number of other retailers, signed

a voluntary agreement with the government to do their part

to stop kids accessing knives.

With all we hear about knife crime, you know, gangs, children dying,

it's extremely worrying how easy it is for anyone

to buy knives online.

Unsurprisingly, it's illegal to sell any bladed item that isn't

a small pocket knife to a minor.

It's also illegal to put these items through the letterbox

without any age verification.

I wanted to know what the consequences

would be for businesses who sold stuff

like this without age verification.

Turns out if a case gets to court,

a business can face a fine of around...

£5,000. £5,000? Yeah.

A £5,000 fine for a company the size of Amazon is nothing.

So me and my nieces did a little bit more shopping.

Not from third-party sellers, but directly from Amazon themselves.

Whenever you want to add new items, try saying something like,

"Add apples to my basket." Add Basics folding...

...pruning saw to my basket.

A top result is Amazon Basics steel folding pruning and garden saw

with 20.3cm blade.

Buy it now!

Your order for Amazon Basics pruning and garden saw was placed.

It will be delivered here tomorrow.

That's the Amazon logo.

Look at all this.

Whoa! That's like a monster which has sharp teeth.

Here's the rat poison.

Add the Big Cheese rat and mouse poison.

Into my basket.

Rat and mouse poison to your Amazon basket.

Can we open the rat poison?

No. I don't know if you should open the rat poison.

One. Two. Three. Four.

Five. Six. Seven.

How many knives did you guys order?

SHE LAUGHS

50, maybe.

Alexa... add knife.

Knife. Knife. Knife. Knife. Knife. Knife. Knife. Knife.

Knife to my basket.

So it's a knife party!

What did you say? Knife party.

What's your reaction to that?

Well, I'm surprised.

I'm surprised there's no appropriate checks and balances in place.

I'm surprised the algorithm allows the purchase without some kind

of age verification.

One... two.

We purchase 67 items that we believe should have been age-verified.

For each of these items, three offences were potentially committed,

as none had age verification at the point of purchase, none

were packaged to indicate age verification, and there was no age

verification at the point of delivery.

I ordered all of them.

In fact, most went into Amazon lockers, making

age verification impossible.

That could be 201 offences all together.

So 201 times £5,000

suggests that...

...me and my accomplices hit Amazon for around £1 million.

Sure, it could potentially be that much for 200 separate

offences, but there's also... There's a much higher cost as well.

If a company has to change its processes to stop the sale

of all age-restricted products to children, that is going to hit

the bottom line every year, forever.

Paul said to leave the evidence with him and he would see

what he could do.

I felt like Amazon were getting away with it.

Amazon said the majority of the products we bought didn't need

age verification, but admitted that four of them

did and that they've now been reclassified.

They said...

Don't open it.

But I wasn't done with Amazon yet.

I did a little bit of research and it turns out Amazon

don't actually pay much tax.

But like, don't you legally have to pay tax?

Like, how do they get away with it?

What large companies will do for the most part is tax avoidance

and profit shifting.

You only pay corporation tax on profits.

Instead of declaring that they're making a profit

in this country, they will bill you, say, through a third-party

country such as Luxembourg.

Yeah. It says on the Amazon receipts, it always says EU,

Sarle? Sarle, yes.

So Sarle is something that commonly appears on Luxembourg companies.

We buy something from Amazon.

We think we're buying it from the UK, but really we're buying

it from Luxembourg.

The Luxembourg company then gets a UK Amazon company to deliver

it to our houses, but the revenues and profits are almost certainly

declared in Luxembourg.

And it's not because it's a centre of finance, it's not

the City of London.

It is for secrecy and tax purposes - for the most part.

So is it easy to have an offshore company?

If you've got enough money and legal expertise,

very easy.

Do you think there's enough, like, resources there to actually go

after these companies? Definitely not.

When you're seeing hundreds of millions of profits declared

offshore every year,

then we should be doing something about that.

What do taxes actually pay for?

Everything. Everything that people care about could be funded through

money that is currently lost, because it's not so much wealth

trickling down, but more sort of gushing offshore.

That wealth could be taxed and could be paying for the NHS,

for social care, for schools, for roads and transport and,

you know, even things like potholes and... Potholes?

How long would it take for an Amazon Prime delivery

without using the roads that are paid for with our taxes?

We get angry about things we can see, right?

And with a pothole, that's... Like, you can literally see

infrastructure crumbling. Right. And that makes people angry.

And if Amazon paid more in taxes, there would be less potholes.

To put it bluntly, yeah.

So my plan is to help Amazon do the right thing.

I'm going to trick Amazon into paying tax.

The first thing I did was I went on the internet and I found a load

of pothole fillers. Afternoon. Parcel.

Oh, God.

So the plan was to fill in the potholes with the pothole

filler from Amazon.

So I needed the builder.

Craig

I also needed the getaway driver. For the sake of convenience,

that was also Craig.

Next up was finding some of Britain's most menacing

potholes. That is a fucking pothole.

Right. OK. And how did you find the potholes?

Local viral potholes.

If you go on your local news website right now, I guarantee you one

of the top read stories is someone angrily pointing at a pothole.

There was one in Coventry that was called the Grand Canyon.

I managed to get the Coventry Telegraph to do a survey.

Did you see it? Yeah.

Christine has been at war with that thing for a long time.

This lady's granddaughter had broken her car in it.

No-one would fill it in, so I went and filled it in for her.

It's got to be an in-out operation.

Yeah. You stop the traffic. I'll do the job. Straight in and out.

Two minutes. A bucket in. All right.

I think if we just do it and we do it with enough authority, no-one's

going to question us. Come pass.

Oh, mate, you've absolutely smashed it.

We just filled the canyon.

Is the potential problems that might arise

the fact that I've basically been a pothole vigilante?

Potentially. Health and safety.

It's not done to an appropriate standard.

There's a car crash. Someone trips, slips.

You may now be the one that's liable.

How much money is that likely to cost me?

How many potholes did you do again?

A handful. Yeah.

Next pothole? Yeah.

In there. This one.

Let's go.

I don't know if we've got enough left. I think we've run out.

I think that's it. People were beeping their horns.

They were so happy.

What?

They were saying, "Who's doing this?" And I was saying, "Amazon."

Don't thank us. Thank Amazon. They're paying for it.

You know who's paying for this? Amazon.

What's this got to do with Amazon paying taxes?

Remember earlier how I ordered all the pothole filler from Amazon?

Apparently, Amazon use robots to process their refunds, but they do

it by weight. They don't even open the packages.

So to test this, I emptied all of the pothole filler

I'd be using and took the empty packages down to the beach, filled

them up with sand until they weighed exactly the same.

And I went on Amazon

and I filed for a refund and said that the product was...

I just didn't want it any more. Right. Hmm.

I was just... Because I'm working by the beach.

I got my money back.

Communities had their pothole problem resolved, and Amazon...

Amazon get to have done the right thing.

Without knowing it. Without knowing it. Yeah.

How serious could that be?

Well, how much money are we talking?

Well, the refund? Hundreds of pounds.

Hundreds of pounds.

All right.

Well, it's pre-planned.

Quite a sophisticated process.

You're exploiting a flaw that you know about in their system.

Hypothetically, if that is what happened,

that could be quite serious.

Would the owner of the beach be angry with me for taking the sand?

I doubt the owner of the beach is going to be your biggest problem

here. Right. OK.

It's probably Amazon or the police.

I haven't considered the fact the police could even...

Why would they be interested in this? Why is...?

Because it's a criminal offence, Oobah. Right. OK.

You've got money you're not entitled to from Amazon

by lying on your returns. On your refunds.

Right. OK.

That's fraud. That's textbook fraud by false representation.

What's the maximum sentence you could get for fraud?

It can carry years.

The judge at sentencing may take into account why you did something,

but it's not relevant to whether or not an offence

has taken place.

The offence is the offence.

So your good intentions, your Robin Hood quest to make them pay taxes,

is not really going to feature.

He was right.

I saw a story online that confirmed basically everything he was saying.

I just read a story about two kids in Spain who did the exact

same Amazon scam.

I think this could land me in...

...serious trouble.

But I had something else up my sleeve.

So...

...six weeks ago, before I did any of this...

I saw that news story and thought...

this could land me in serious trouble.

Unless I do something about it.

Well, how do I protect myself?

What would Jeff do?

What tax havens are used commonly by big corporations?

So, Luxembourg, often thought of as a tax haven, is what's

used by Amazon. Other common ones?

Ireland. I'd probably use Bermuda or the Cayman Islands,

potentially Belize.

I'd use one of those companies because there's very little

jurisdiction over them.

We're going to somewhere very, very secretive.

I now proudly own a company in Belize.

Belize?

Yes. Right.

I created an Amazon business account for that business

and purchased the pothole filler through Amazon.

Afternoon, parcel?

So, another company out of the UK...

A shell company. .. has bought the items?

Yes.

My name is not in any way attached to the business.

Yeah. Or the business account.

I used a gift card instead of my credit card.

So, not attached to me, either.

I think that's me. That's my hands clean.

Morals and ethics aside, technically...

...this is an offshore issue.

Yeah.

And...

...do you want to know the name of the company?

Mm.

Hole Maintenance and Repair Corp.

Or, as an acronym...

HMRC.

Yeah.

So, I could have used the same structure

that Amazon uses to avoid paying tax

to avoid getting in trouble.

Yeah.

See, now you seem impressed!

Have you've actually done this?

Yes.

Yeah, I don't think Amazon will be pursuing you

for fraud

through Belize.

I think they'll struggle to do that.

Amazon will struggle to get their hands on me?

I think you will probably get away with committing fraud, there.

I don't know.

Don't quote me in court!

So after working undercover at Amazon,

creating a number one product made out of Amazon drivers' urine,

to learning how dangerous their platform can be,

to turning the tables on Amazon's alleged tax avoidance,

I've become very familiar with Amazon's use of loopholes.

But their favourite loophole?

It's you.

It is impossible to imagine a customer coming to me

ten years from now and saying, "Jeff, I love Amazon.

"I just wish you delivered a little more slowly."

It sounds like they're blaming the way they operate on you.

I take it as an article of faith

that customers notice

when you do the right thing.

And that's a lot of power that they're claiming

that you have over them.

So what are you going to do with it?

And just one more thing.

Remember earlier on when I had to sign that kind of

confidentiality agreement just to work at Amazon?

I agree to that.

And I agree to that.

Well, Colin, the lawyer had a look over it.

Yeah, as I thought.

Protected disclosures.

What do you mean?

They can't stop you revealing,

in the appropriate forum,

in the correct way,

criminal wrongdoing,

breach of health and safety legislation,

breach of safe environment for work.

How much would you have charged to have looked through this contract

as you just had,

If I was just... If I'd walked in off the street?

I would have said it'd be about 300 an hour to

look through the agreement.

£300 an hour?

I'd have thought, for an average employment lawyer, yeah.

So, then, basically, what you're doing right now

is providing legal advice

to every single Amazon employee out there

on the NDA that they've signed.

Fuck you for screwing me over!

So, if you're an Amazon employee who's dealing with

health and safety breaches,

dangerous working conditions,

or just mistreatment at work,

then head to www.ndanoway.com

to receive Colin's full, free, advice.

My advice has been

based on academic commentary.

It's not legal advice.

Hopefully, there'll be a disclaimer,

saying it's nonbinding.

My true advice?

Hmm.

Don't publish this film.