Amazon Will Collect Sales Taxes Nationwide on April 1

nilepez said:
IME, Microcenter doesn't even price match Fry's, and there are 2 of them withing 10 miles of the store.

I've had BBY refuse to pricematch software that was on sale at Fry's and claim it was exempt from their price matching (it's not). So I'm not going down that road. Best Buy get's my business if I need it right this second (in which case I'd go there even if amazon didn't charge tax), but otherwise, I try not to put any coin in their coffers.

And honestly, if I was going to price match on a big item, I'd go to Fry's, since they occasionally have price matching and they pay the taxes.
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In almost 20 years, I've had BB deny only one price match. I drove to the next BB store and the manager there approved it.

I've had Microcenter deny a couple in that time, because the price was "lower than their cost", so I asked them to sell it to me at their cost and they did so. "Their cost" was close enough each time to make it worth buying from Microcenter.
 
jkw said:
In almost 20 years, I've had BB deny only one price match. I drove to the next BB store and the manager there approved it.

I've had Microcenter deny a couple in that time, because the price was "lower than their cost", so I asked them to sell it to me at their cost and they did so. "Their cost" was close enough each time to make it worth buying from Microcenter.
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Just telling you what they've said in Richardson to me and I've heard them say it to others. Regardless, Driving 10-20 miles with traffic is a PITA and there's very few times that I need something today. IF that happens, then I'm buying it locally even if it costs 2x as much as Amazon.
 
I've been paying sales tax on Amazon for some times and it doesn't bother me at all. I buy from Amazon because they ship fast, their customer service is second to none and their selection is amazing. I am not shopping around for the absolute lowest price, I want a good price that is convenient for me and Amazon has that for nearly everything.

Also I don't mind paying sales tax since, you know, tax goes and buys me things that make my life good.
 
nilepez said:
Just telling you what they've said in Richardson to me and I've heard them say it to others. Regardless, Driving 10-20 miles with traffic is a PITA and there's very few times that I need something today. IF that happens, then I'm buying it locally even if it costs 2x as much as Amazon.
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These BM stores are definitely YMMV. Guess we're lucky here in the KS/MO area.
 
I just never really liked Amazon. Newegg always seems to have better prices, with free shipping.

I also like to go stores and shop. Sometimes I really don't mind driving 20min.

Its our LAZY ass society that can't handle going to retail stores. Take that big giant burrito the size of a small cow out of your fat face, and get some exercise and get out of the house!
 
Motley said:
Its our LAZY ass society that can't handle going to retail stores. Take that big giant burrito the size of a small cow out of your fat face, and get some exercise and get out of the house!
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The nearest good sized PC parts store is 4-5 hours away from me Mr. Perfect.
 
Motley said:
I just never really liked Amazon. Newegg always seems to have better prices, with free shipping.

I also like to go stores and shop. Sometimes I really don't mind driving 20min.

Its our LAZY ass society that can't handle going to retail stores. Take that big giant burrito the size of a small cow out of your fat face, and get some exercise and get out of the house!
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honestly that's only part of it.. the other part is stores carrying what you need, there's to much bs with product contracts in stores now.. half the shit you expect a store like home depot to carry they don't because they have a contract with a manufacture to only sell their product but they don't make that item so home depot doesn't carry an alternate brand.. so your only option is amazon which has damn near everything. then you have places like bestbuy who price gouge everything because they think all customers are morons and will pay anything they put in front of them thus companies like newegg came into existence.. so on and so on. it's not just society that has gotten lazy it's brick and mortar stores that have become lazy due to their shitty business models that no longer work.

HeavensCloud said:
The nearest good sized PC parts store is 4-5 hours away from me Mr. Perfect.
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same here, we only have a single bestbuy that doesn't really carry computer hardware since life here is ass backwards and people still live in the 80's and 90's.. closest semi legit computer store is 6 hours away in seattle. we have lots of furniture stores that always claim they're going out of business and re-open under to new name 3 days later though, lol.
 
HeavensCloud said:
The nearest good sized PC parts store is 4-5 hours away from me Mr. Perfect.
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I wasn't talking to people like you. I understand there are many people out in the boonies.

I'm talking to the lazy people that will drive past their Microcenter/Fry's on their way to the burrito store. Then go home and order PC parts online. lol
 
Motley said:
I wasn't talking to people like you. I understand there are many people out in the boonies.

I'm talking to the lazy people that will drive past their Microcenter/Fry's on their way to the burrito store. Then go home and order PC parts online. lol
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I have a Microcenter 6 miles from my house, and I only rarely shop there, and when I do it's usually either because of a special deal (Mobo + CPU combo's are great) or because I'm in the middle of a build and find out I have the wrong cable, or are missing a special screw or something else.

The thing is, I am very picky when it comes to my builds. For me it will almost never be OK to buy whatever a store has in stock.

I research my builds to death and select my ideal components, and then I buy those and only those. Typically that means, what my local microcenter may have in stock will not be an exact match of the part number I was looking for, and thus I don't want it.

Microcenter is great if you just want to wander in and are flexible about what you are going to buy and select something they have, but if you are more demanding, have figured out EXACTLY what you want, and nothing else will do, they are mostly useless.

No B&M retail store can ever be large enough to have exactly the part number I want, at the best price when I want it at all times. The internet can offer me this. This is why I rarely ever enter B&M stores for anything else than the likes of milk, bread and TP.

I will never be OK with settling for something because "that's what the have in stock, I guess"...
 
I'll still use Amazon, so I don't have to go out to an actual store and deal with their retarded sales associates.
 
Am I the only one who things that an online sale should be considered an "onsite" sale? Oh you want to base your company in CALI, ok everyone gets charged 12-14%, its just like the customer walked into the store. That might get states competing vs just milking the population and providing no local retail infrastructure.
 
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Wonder how this will affect Amazon's playing field advantage.
I mostly buy stuff locally from Fry's, Target, Best Buy and other places and price match if necessary.
I've been paying tax for years so I see no advantage.
 
WorldExclusive said:
That's the point of online sales tax....to get you to buy locally. Mission accomplished says your State Government.
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or heaven forbid... Leveling the playing field? It's either collect sales tax on all sales or none at all. You can have an opinion on sales taxes either way, but imo you should at least be consistent about it.

Buying online still is very handy, especially for stuff you already know you want and can wait to get it.

Shopping locally is nice when you are not really sure exactly what you want, try it on, see the size, might need to return etc.
 
dandirk said:
or heaven forbid... Leveling the playing field? It's either collect sales tax on all sales or none at all. You can have an opinion on sales taxes either way, but imo you should at least be consistent about it.

Buying online still is very handy, especially for stuff you already know you want and can wait to get it.

Shopping locally is nice when you are not really sure exactly what you want, try it on, see the size, might need to return etc.
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The quandary was always which government is entitled to that tax. The sellers state will argue that is the seller that created possibility of the transaction thus the sellers state should get the tax and it's easier logistically for the seller. The buyers state will argue that it is the buyers money that allowed the transaction to occur, so the buyers state should get the tax. The seller would then have to submit payments and monitor sales tax off all different states. Thus the agreed solution was that if the seller AND the buyer are in the same state, then both arguments are satisfied. But governments realized too much money was being lost as more consumers purchased online or by mail. So now they need to convince you a new solution is needed.

It's kind of like <forcefully> pushing everyone to buy electric/gas efficient cars and then realizing you lost a lot of money on gasoline taxes. Woops.
 
Motley said:
I just never really liked Amazon. Newegg always seems to have better prices, with free shipping.

I also like to go stores and shop. Sometimes I really don't mind driving 20min.

Its our LAZY ass society that can't handle going to retail stores. Take that big giant burrito the size of a small cow out of your fat face, and get some exercise and get out of the house!
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Newegg doesn't always have free shipping and they're certainly not always cheaper. I'm not sure when they stopped doing free shipping on stuff, but it was several years ago.
 
Meh, I live in WI and they've been collecting for a while now, most of the time it's still cheaper and far far far far better selection than anything available locally.
 
Being in California they have been collecting tax for a little while now on items sold from Amazon and any retailer located in the state. What I want to know, and what I haven't found yet, is if this applies to items sold by 3rd party that are out of state. I am getting ready to purchase a new camera through Amazon but the product is coming from Beach Camera so there is no tax, on April 1st will that now be taxed? Hell of a way to celebrate my birthday with having to pay more taxes than I already do.
 
They've been collecting for a while. Some 3rd party merchants appear to be exempt. I'm sure China based sellers are exempt. Our governor is in their pocket so its not a shock. But I'm not sure the rationale or if that is going away too?
 
jpm100 said:
They've been collecting for a while. Some 3rd party merchants appear to be exempt. I'm sure China based sellers are exempt. Our governor is in their pocket so its not a shock. But I'm not sure the rationale or if that is going away too?
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I've never paid taxes on 3rd party (with the possible exception of 3rd party that was located in my state).
 
Same as someone else said I get 5% back on anything I buy so I pay 1% sales tax. Prices are the same or better than brick and mortar and I don't spend gas, mileage and time going to the store.
 
Amazon just started charging tax in my state this month. I'd still prefer to shop through them- and I have 3-4 Best Buys within 10 miles of me. And BBYs don't always have the same SKUs that Amazon carries.

The last thing I bought from a BBY was my mouse- only because Amazon was OOS. (and it was $10 more from BBY)
 
Amazon has been charging me sales tax for some time. Still better prices for what I buy (i check very well before purchasing) and I don't have to dork with stores. I really hate when stores change their layouts so I end up wandering trying to find what I am looking for only to sometimes not even find it, wasting that time. Plus i live in a 7k population town, not a whole lot of 'big stores' out by me.
 
Not too long ago, Amazon started bending us people in FL over the tax barrel. Right after that I ordered a few small items. They shipped the stuff from the warehouse in Central FL to me up in NW FL. The package went to Georgia then down back here to me. o_O Took an extra day longer than the estimated shipping. Really chapped my hide. :mad:
 
jkw said:
You know Best Buy price matches with Amazon, and just about any other legit online or local business, right? Microcenter does too. I have Best Buy and Microcenter credit cards, and price match probably half my purchases at both places. Consequently, Amazon will rarely have a (probably just slightly) better price than either place. Hell, Best Buy used to even match financing offers, and I'd get them to do those crazy 30-36 month no interest NFM offers. Best Buy also does price matches over the phone for web sales, and I do that if the item is not stocked locally. I also regularly get partial refunds if the price drops at Best Buy or anyplace else within 45 days of purchase. I'm a BB Elite member, so I get 45 days to do that. I recently got $100 back on Oculus Rift Touch controllers, 40 days after my purchase, because Oculus lowered their price.
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Your Best Buy must be better than ours. For me, it seems the customer pays more for the privilege of fending off the onslaught of employees who seem to have gotten their start in used car sales. I guess their condescending tone is supposed to to push you into buying that $100 hdmi cable, instead of showing they know less about anything in the store than you do. Not to mention the inconvenience inherent to big box stores, travel, zoo-like parking lots etc. I'd think the majority of [H] users would rather pay extra to avoid BB, unless their experience has been wildy different from mine or they absolutely have to have something right this second.
Since they have the absolute best customer service I've ever seen, my USPS mailman is awesome, and I can shop in my underwear, I'll stick to Amazon.
 
dethklokworkorange said:
Your Best Buy must be better than ours. For me, it seems the customer pays more for the privilege of fending off the onslaught of employees who seem to have gotten their start in used car sales. I guess their condescending tone is supposed to to push you into buying that $100 hdmi cable, instead of showing they know less about anything in the store than you do. Not to mention the inconvenience inherent to big box stores, travel, zoo-like parking lots etc. I'd think the majority of [H] users would rather pay extra to avoid BB, unless their experience has been wildy different from mine or they absolutely have to have something right this second.
Since they have the absolute best customer service I've ever seen, my USPS mailman is awesome, and I can shop in my underwear, I'll stick to Amazon.
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I had a best buy experience when going with a friend to buy a pc (this was a while ago). I asked the salesman if the PC used an AGP or PCI video card. He turned the PC around and showed me the monitor port and said it uses the standard kind.....

We left and he ordered one online from an oem lol.
 
About time. I'm not a fan of paying taxes, but it's only right to force online business to also collect tax for the state so it's fair with what physical stores also have to do.
 
Iceshot said:
Zarathustra[H] - I hear you, no question Ebay has inherently more opportunity for headache's from bad vendors. Amazon is king when it comes to customer service and vendor policing.

However, problems with shady vendors can be avoided by simply buying from long established vendors with high "Feedback as a Seller" scores. It's very rare that something listed for sale on Amazon does NOT have a long established, high reputation seller listing the same thing on Ebay. Out of 450 Ebay purchases spanning 15 years, I can count on one hand how many times I had to involve Ebay directly because a Vendor tried to pull a fast one. I've always received a full refund from Ebay with modest effort on my part. In each instance I had to contact Ebay for a bad vendor, it involved a new account with "limited feedback". I've learned to avoid those sellers and have not had a single problem ever since.

Ebay is not the wild west of online purchasing it use to be 15-20 years ago. They have GREATLY improved and tightened their polices / protections for customers. For me personally, in most instances, the cost savings outweigh the top notch customer service / buying experience Amazon offers.
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eBay is terrible now as an occasional seller FYI. They've ramped up all sorts of things to basically protect consumers, but at the same time it's made it where only large vendors can really afford to operate on eBay now.

The worst part is that ebay still doesn't have a way to pre-credit check people who bid on your auction. This is why I've had to force to selling stuff on ebay as buy it now only w/ immediate payment required. The past few times I tried to sell my stuff on ebay you'd get people with fake accounts bidding on your item, winning the auction, then not paying. This means a downtime of 14 days as the auction took 7 days, and you have to wait 7 days just to re-post the item and report the non-paying bidder. I once had this happen 3 times in a row which meant a month of a half of waiting to sell my item.

Ebay is complete shit now, and the 10% fee on top of paypal fees has made it terrible to use as a small-time seller. Everything that made it good a decade ago has slowly over time been destroyed w/ protectionist shit for large vendors and the protection for the buyers is overly lopsided. (For instance removing the ability to leave negative feedback for buyers. You are only allowed to leave positive feedback now or open a dispute. So if a buyer doesn't pay in 7 days, I open a non-payment dispute, and then they pay on day 13 I can't leave negative feedback for them taking so long to pay. I also can't leave negative feedback even if they never pay and the dispute is resolved in my favor!) There is all sorts of shady shit a buyer can do to fuck you out of money due to how ebay automatically sides with the buyer in all cases, and then requires the seller to be the one to do all the legwork in disputes and as mentioned large vendors run bots on eBay that purposely bid on items without paying to remove them off the market. Another aspect which eBay still hasn't fixed in almost two decades - Making it so bots can't interface with their website, but they purposely still allow bots to operate as it benefits their biggest customers - Large sellers.

TLDR - Don't use eBay as a small time seller anymore, it's got really shitty in the past 4-5 years, and please don't use it even as a buyer as I don't want eBay making money off the large vendors making sales.
 
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nilepez said:
Newegg doesn't always have free shipping and they're certainly not always cheaper. I'm not sure when they stopped doing free shipping on stuff, but it was several years ago.
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They still have free shipping on some items, but far from everything.

I personally really like Newegg's organization of products, which makes it very easy for me to find things.

I can easily navigate by category and checkboxes and then refine further by search terms of I feel the need, then sort by lowest price and keep going down the list until I find something I like.

Amazon has all of these things on the surface, but their categories for tech/PC parts are much worse, and they insist on using an extremely fuzzy search logic, which pisses me off to no end. I can't even add quotes to a search term to make it specific. It always shows me "similar" items.

I'm so used to my search terms being specific and only bringing up the exact things I want them to, that on many occasions I have almost bought the wrong thing on Amazon.

Fuzzy search logic may work for clothes, shoes or toliet paper, but for tech, where a single term can mean the difference between great and absolutely useless to me, fuzzy logic is incredibly stupid.

They should at the very least offer the option to make search terms specific.
 
Mchart said:
eBay is terrible now as an occasional seller FYI. They've ramped up all sorts of things to basically protect consumers, but at the same time it's made it where only large vendors can really afford to operate on eBay now.
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PM me your address and I'll send you a box of candy for this post, as it is spot-on. I still occasionally sell on eBay, but the fees on top of fees coupled with deadbeat/shill bidders and eBay automatically siding with buyers in any dispute has really soured the experience. I desperately wish for a viable alternative.
 
Saturn_V said:
Amazon just started charging tax in my state this month. I'd still prefer to shop through them- and I have 3-4 Best Buys within 10 miles of me. And BBYs don't always have the same SKUs that Amazon carries.

The last thing I bought from a BBY was my mouse- only because Amazon was OOS. (and it was $10 more from BBY)
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a great tactic to avoid price matching :(
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
They still have free shipping on some items, but far from everything.

I personally really like Newegg's organization of products, which makes it very easy for me to find things.

I can easily navigate by category and checkboxes and then refine further by search terms of I feel the need, then sort by lowest price and keep going down the list until I find something I like.

Amazon has all of these things on the surface, but their categories for tech/PC parts are much worse, and they insist on using an extremely fuzzy search logic, which pisses me off to no end. I can't even add quotes to a search term to make it specific. It always shows me "similar" items.

I'm so used to my search terms being specific and only bringing up the exact things I want them to, that on many occasions I have almost bought the wrong thing on Amazon.

Fuzzy search logic may work for clothes, shoes or toliet paper, but for tech, where a single term can mean the difference between great and absolutely useless to me, fuzzy logic is incredibly stupid.

They should at the very least offer the option to make search terms specific.
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Agreed, Newegg has far better categories and more useful filters for computer parts. Any computer part purchase I've made on Amazon was based on research I'd done elsewhere.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
They still have free shipping on some items, but far from everything.
I personally really like Newegg's organization of products, which makes it very easy for me to find things.
I can easily navigate by category and checkboxes and then refine further by search terms of I feel the need, then sort by lowest price and keep going down the list until I find something I like.
Amazon has all of these things on the surface, but their categories for tech/PC parts are much worse, and they insist on using an extremely fuzzy search logic, which pisses me off to no end. I can't even add quotes to a search term to make it specific. It always shows me "similar" items.
I'm so used to my search terms being specific and only bringing up the exact things I want them to, that on many occasions I have almost bought the wrong thing on Amazon.
Fuzzy search logic may work for clothes, shoes or toliet paper, but for tech, where a single term can mean the difference between great and absolutely useless to me, fuzzy logic is incredibly stupid.
They should at the very least offer the option to make search terms specific.
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I totally agree with you on the search. Amazon's search (esp for tech stuff) can be very frustrating. I don't why they aren't better than they are.
 
Ducman69 said:
Its human nature to be selfish, and especially people that know they aren't net tax contributors are the least likely to complain about taxes since they take more than they put in to the pool... cuz selfish. Tis normal. Next newsflash, water is wet. ;)
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true, but it isn't just selfish. My wife is a penny pincher with no equal, as cheap as they come. But she sees it as her responsibility to save everything she can for her family. To her, she is only being responsible, not selfish.

After all, no one else is going to buy her kids new shoes.
 
Mchart said:
eBay is terrible now as an occasional seller FYI. They've ramped up all sorts of things to basically protect consumers, but at the same time it's made it where only large vendors can really afford to operate on eBay now.

The worst part is that ebay still doesn't have a way to pre-credit check people who bid on your auction. This is why I've had to force to selling stuff on ebay as buy it now only w/ immediate payment required. The past few times I tried to sell my stuff on ebay you'd get people with fake accounts bidding on your item, winning the auction, then not paying. This means a downtime of 14 days as the auction took 7 days, and you have to wait 7 days just to re-post the item and report the non-paying bidder. I once had this happen 3 times in a row which meant a month of a half of waiting to sell my item.

Ebay is complete shit now, and the 10% fee on top of paypal fees has made it terrible to use as a small-time seller. Everything that made it good a decade ago has slowly over time been destroyed w/ protectionist shit for large vendors and the protection for the buyers is overly lopsided. (For instance removing the ability to leave negative feedback for buyers. You are only allowed to leave positive feedback now or open a dispute. So if a buyer doesn't pay in 7 days, I open a non-payment dispute, and then they pay on day 13 I can't leave negative feedback for them taking so long to pay. I also can't leave negative feedback even if they never pay and the dispute is resolved in my favor!) There is all sorts of shady shit a buyer can do to fuck you out of money due to how ebay automatically sides with the buyer in all cases, and then requires the seller to be the one to do all the legwork in disputes and as mentioned large vendors run bots on eBay that purposely bid on items without paying to remove them off the market. Another aspect which eBay still hasn't fixed in almost two decades - Making it so bots can't interface with their website, but they purposely still allow bots to operate as it benefits their biggest customers - Large sellers.

TLDR - Don't use eBay as a small time seller anymore, it's got really shitty in the past 4-5 years, and please don't use it even as a buyer as I don't want eBay making money off the large vendors making sales.
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I do not disagree with your criticisms about selling on Ebay, The fee's are a bit high and yes, the zero feedback accounts bidding up items at the last moment (zero intentions of paying) is indeed a frustrating widespread problem. This needs fixed urgently and Ebay is keenly aware of the problem. Even still, for those of us well distanced from major metro area's (ie Rural) selling on Ebay is often our best option. No Craigslist and a very limited local market really hamstrings your ability to move your stuff locally at a reasonable / descent profit margin.

That said, my posts emphasized the positives of purchasing off Ebay which with a little common sense and patience, I routinely (75% of the time) save 5-30% (on average) over Amazon for the exact same items (lower price + no tax + Ebates cash back + Ebay bucks). Over the course of a year, this adds up to a substantial savings over Amazon that's hard to overlook.
 
Meh I live in NY where they tax the shit out of you for everything. I've been in the habit for quite some time now for smaller purchases not worrying about it as it is still usually far cheaper. For larger purchases I just have my sister in FL where there is no tax get it for me and bring it with her on her regular visits up here. I pay nearly 5k a year in property taxes, some of the highest gas prices in the country, insane electricity and income taxes. I don't feel bad about saving money where I can.
 
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