Farking Newegg.com

[GT98]

Well just found out that Newegg.com, my favorate online store for computer stuff just opened a warehouse in New Jersey, my home state. Now that means that I'm getting nailed for sales taxes when ever when I order something from them!

I thought that if the tax law was if only a store has retail operation in that state and not just a warehouse?

GRRRR

[KvHagedorn]

Send them a nice email telling them you can no longer be their customer because of this.. GOODBYE!

Then buy someplace else. There are only about 1,000,000 online computer parts stores. I usually buy from Provantage or Allstarshop myself. I've also bought stuff from PCProgress.. all have pretty good service, and Provantage usually has the best prices (they don't list themselves in Pricewatch, by the way.)

[Helevitia]

Newegg has one of the best return policies and their customer service is top notch. I have to pay tax too and it is well worth it.


Dave

[Chrono_Wanderer]

LOL. that sucks!

But can't blame them. they have to open their warehouse somewhere. The people to blame are the governments IMO

[SpiralDragon]

you know... one thing i cant figure out... all these on line stors and barly any of them sell outside the US.... why be online if not to catch an international cliantel....

[Paddy]

indeed.

I would save £100 by ordering two MP CPUs from the States

[Admiral]

Originally posted by SpiralDragon
you know... one thing i cant figure out... all these on line stors and barly any of them sell outside the US.... why be online if not to catch an international cliantel....

Too much carding fraud.
Return policies and customer service would be more troublesome.
Going through customs procedures.

Anyway, only bought my CPU cooler and monitor cable online from the US. I wouldn't consider buying bigger things with a potential to malfunction (because of handling during shipping, bad luck with a defective part or failure during waranty) and go through an endless return/receive shipping loop mostly on my expense.

[SitFlyer]

Originally posted by Helevitia
Newegg has one of the best return policies and their customer service is top notch. I have to pay tax too and it is well worth it.


Dave

Same here They are my #1 choice for all my purchases

[Brian Ellis]

Originally posted by SpiralDragon
you know... one thing i cant figure out... all these on line stors and barly any of them sell outside the US.... why be online if not to catch an international cliantel....

Absolutely!

I've often used them either when I visit the US (although some don't deliver to hotels, either) or when a US friend visits here, he can bring things over.

Even worse, some companies will not accept credit cards issued outside the USA and this includes some US Banks, even if you present them with passport etc. with the same name as the card, yet they can get on-line authenticity and credit check within seconds? Are they afraid AQ has hidden something in the magnetic strip? Yet the bank on the next block will accept it, no hassle.

IDEA: why don't we set up a register, here or elsewhere, of US companies that will export and accept foreign credit cards?

[KvHagedorn]

I'm not sure to what extent this is universal, but I know I can buy from Amazon in the UK and Germany with a US card. Also have bought other things online from the UK with no problems (a nice chess set that took an amazingly short time in shipping.) I know of one UK company that won't ship outside the country, but that applies only to bottles of scotch.

[MultimediaMan]

Brian, to answer your question:

Here in the U.S., International Credit Card Purchases are not indemnified by the Card Provider. Credit Card companies (Visa, Mastercard, American Express) are required to absorb any and all risk associated with the use of their cards.

What this means for businesses and individuals is that if a card is stolen and charges are made on the stolen account, both the cardholder, and the businesses where the goods were purchased from will be free from financial liability.

However, this is a U.S.-only law (Cards stolen domestically and used internationally are also covered by U.S. Law, if they were stolen in the U.S.). International card fraud is a different animal, and those charges are NOT recoverable by either the consumer or the business, unless you pay the card issuer an extra insurance fee.

Addressing the Sales Tax Weenies:

Those of you who don't pay sales tax on Online Transactions beware: you ARE required to pay your state sales tax seperately. I realize there is no way for your state to track this (yet), but that is the letter of the law. If you have a licensed business, you still have to pay sales tax on goods that are not for resale.

[Brian Ellis]

MMM

Yes, but in Europe, you can swipe the card and type in the value of the transaction (or phone the credit card company, if it is a phone or on-line transaction) and get an approval number. This guarantees payment, no matter where the card is issued. The credit card company has a register of all cards, world-wide, and can see instantaneously whether a card has sufficient credit left, has not been stolen or lost and has no other reason to be blocked, such as suspicious usage. Why cannot this system be applied in the USA? There is no risk for the retailer and really minimal risk for the credit card company. Yet, if I go into a US shop, even one that works on line, I can use my foreign cards without problem. Why can't I use them on line with the same shop, because they are foreign? It does not make sense.

[Gurm]

Brian,

The simple answer is money. Retailers are ALREADY paying an absurd overhead to accept credit cards, and the charges go up all the time. Any additional risk associated with them increases DRASTICALLY the amount that the credit card company charges.

There are two scenarios in which the company won't take the international cards:

1. They never got the ability to do so. This is EITHER because they were too lazy, or because they looked into how much it cost and said "no thanks". My parents recently got set up to take credit cards, and the costs are pretty ridiculous, depending on how much business you think you're gonna move.

2. They stopped taking them because of the risk. Every time you run a bad credit card, your risk assessment gets bumped up, and the limit of how much business you can do in any given time period gets pulled down. Eventually it gets to a point where it's not worth it. I've had friends who ran an online business (colocation and site hosting) and had to stop taking ANY credit cards after a while because of the number of fraudulent transactions they were getting - and it wasn't THEIR fault at all. They had no reason to believe that these people, whose information they verified, weren't using legitimate credit cards.

So the simple answer is money. Unless you think you're going to do a HUGE BOOMING business from overseas credit cards, it isn't worth it.

...

As to why lots of companies don't ship internationally... have you ever tried to guarantee an RMA internationally! ARGH!

First, just shipping to some countries is more expensive than they item the person is buying. Yikes! Shipping guaranteed is virtually impossible at any sort of reasonable price point. Once we had to ship a PC system to Taiwan (yeah, stuff is made there but their own availability lags years behind apparently), and it was $300 to ship it. This was a few years back when it was a $3500 machine, so that wasn't too bad. But shipping it insured, with return freight guaranteed, would have been almost $1000 !!! That's just too much, it would have killed most of our profit.

- Gurm

[Admiral]

First, just shipping to some countries is more expensive than they item the person is buying.

No kidding there, to get my 36$ cooler here it would've been 116$ with UPS, something around 100$ with Fedex and I had to go with regular US air mail that was 20$ or so.
So the costs of shipping for some products pretty much make up for the import taxes and VAT in most European countries.

[Brian Ellis]

OK, but they still won't ship if I send them cash or a bank transfer and I arrange the packing, formalities and transport. They simply do not want to know.

I agree that it would be ridiculous to order $100 of goods from the US, but some items may be several '000 dollars and they still don't want to know.

Yet, ten years or so back, my company was the Swiss rep for Gateway, Austin Computers and CompuClassics.and I had zilch problem importing hard- and soft-ware, even on credit terms.