You know you’re in trouble when Stephen Colbert gives you the finger on his TV show. On June 4th, Colbert gave not one but two fingers to Amazon. Yes, that Amazon.

Now, I’ve had a love-hate relationship with Amazon for a long time. I love it when I can order something from the comfort of home, assured that the item will be very quickly delivered to my door and I’ll probably have paid less than from anywhere else. I hate it when I have to admit that my efficiency and frugality are also laziness and greed; that by ordering from Amazon, I am denying smaller businesses and local merchants much-needed income. I hate it even more when I remember that Amazon’s business model takes a huge hunk of profit out of the hands of authors and threatens the existence of local independent bookstores.

The ingenuity and entrepreneurial genius of Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, deserves admiration. But I am aghast at Amazon’s unnecessary ruthlessness in its ugly battle against Hachette Book Group, the publisher (under various publishing names) of such authors as James Patterson, Scott Turow, Malcom Gladwell, Mitch Albom, Jane Hamilton, J.D. Salinger, J.K. Rowling (under her pen name Robert Galbraith) and hundreds of other authors.

Hachette had the courage to stand up to the huge wholesale discount Amazon demands on the titles it sells. In trying to negotiate better terms with Amazon, Hachette wanted “to protect the value of our authors’ books and our own work in editing, distributing and marketing them.”

Declaring war on Hachette’s attempt, Amazon took steps to discourage book lovers from buying Hachette books on the Amazon site: they eliminated presales options; removed their customary Amazon discount; are telling potential buyers that shipment could take weeks; and removed some titles from the Amazon site or are suggesting less expensive alternative titles from other publishers.

This is not the first time Amazon has heavy-handedly threatened publishers. In 2010, they removed all buy buttons from the listing for MacMillan titles during a negotiation over e-book pricing. As far back as the 1990s, Amazon routinely punished imprints that didn’t accept its business arrangements. Until now, they’ve gotten away with it as the media largely ignored the story while customers like you and I increasingly purchased things through Amazon.

As big as Hachette is, Amazon is way bigger in its dominance of the bookselling industry. Hachette is the fourth-largest publisher by market share but Amazon is, reportedly, responsible for at least a third of all U.S. book sales and somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of the burgeoning eBook market. The battle may seem to favor Amazon … but I wonder. Most of us root for the underdog when we sense an unfair fight. We tend to favor the working person (in this case, authors) over the faceless corporate behemoth (Amazon). And we demand honesty in the companies we do business with. Amazon isn’t being honest with us about book availability.

Whether moral sensibility or greed guides us, there’s no point in saving money if the seller purposely holds the product back or attempts to misdirect us, especially when it’s so easy to shop elsewhere at a marginally higher cost. Brand allegiance is a myth and if people grow tired of Amazon’s inability to provide a certain level of service, we’ll shop elsewhere.

If Amazon doesn’t start playing more fairly, they may find more people giving them the finger.