SillyDog701

[Antony]

An Australian online electronics retailer Kogan known for selling its own brand products at lower than well known brands has implemented "taxing" system for Internet Explorer 7 users.



The excuse from the retailer owner:

"Internet Explorer 7 has long since passed its use-by date," Mr Kogan said. "It’s a constant source of frustration for our web guys and we’re sick of burning cash on a browser that hit the market nearly six years ago. It goes against everything Kogan stands for."

It is interested to note that Kogan.com is discriminating the world's most popular browser Internet Explorer, even the newer versions.

news source: Kogan wages war on Internet Explorer: Users taxed (news.com.au)

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; rv:13.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/13.0.1 AlexaToolbar/alxf-2.15

[James]

It might not be the brightest business model for a company that wants to to a good business online, but it certainly is unique and creative. Gotta give them kudos for originality.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 5_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B206 Safari/7534.48.3

[Antony]

Good point. However, companies do have right to refuse any business with anyone, as long as it was not due to reasons prohibited by laws.

Somehow, I was a bit irritated by the word "tax." I don't think businesses can impose tax to consumers at their liking. "Surcharge" would be a more sensible word.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; rv:13.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/13.0.1 AlexaToolbar/alxf-2.15

[James]

Funny you should say that the word "tax" bothered you. It was only then that I realized it bothered me as well. I agree... surcharge is a much better word.

You probably know that I'm a retired teacher now working part-time in a bookstore. We have kids come into our store who literally tear the place apart. I would love to show them the door and tell them to never come back BUT we're open to do business and selling books, even to bratty kids, is what we do. I wonder if I can enact a surcharge on kids under ten years of age? LOL

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:13.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/13.0.1

[Fulvio]

Whatever is the name, it is wrong, though funny. If anything works, it should be accepted, and not rejected because r. Wise Guy has set up its system to look at the User Agent. It happens to me all the time on Microsoft-oriented sites, when I use my favorite program, Seamonkey. There is no attempt tax/surcharge or whatever. I am, simply, rejected, and told to use Internet Explorer, or IE comes up, in spite of the fact that Seamonkey is my default!

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1) AppleWebKit/536.11 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/20.0.1132.47 Safari/536.11

[DJGM]

It's old news from nearly a month ago. Turns out it was all just a marketing (publicity) stunt anyway.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; rv:13.0) Gecko/20120615 Firefox/13.0.1 SeaMonkey/2.10.1 Lightning/1.5b2

[James]

Just a marketing stunt! Geeze! I hope this outfit suffers for their stupidity.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:13.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/13.0.1

[Antony]

The following up of the Kogan's anti-Internet Explorer saga was that Kogan website disappears from Microsoft's popular search engine Bing, which was reported yesterday.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; rv:13.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/13.0.1 AlexaToolbar/alxf-2.15

[James]

Interesting. I just submitted Kogan to Bing and it brought up several key stories as well as their website. Something is fishy about this entire episode AND the reporting on such from that site. If it were true (and it now appears questionable), I can't say that I blame MS for exacting their pound of flesh.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:13.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/13.0.1

[Antony]

If Kogan decided to play with Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 users (temporary), I feel that Microsoft is entitled to get back to Kogan on Bing (temporary).

You probably know that I'm a retired teacher now working part-time in a bookstore. We have kids come into our store who literally tear the place apart. I would love to show them the door and tell them to never come back BUT we're open to do business and selling books, even to bratty kids, is what we do. I wonder if I can enact a surcharge on kids under ten years of age? LOL

Speaking about selective "surcharge," back in the late 90s (when I was in New Zealand), most computer stores had a sign saying things like "prices are inclusive of 1.5% (or 2%) cash/cheque discount." What they really want to do was to pass-on the credit card processing cost, however, the government did not allow such surcharge.

Perhaps, you can make a surcharge for annoying kids by saying something like "listed prices are inclusive of well behaved discount" to go around it.

Back to Kogan, Kogan is also known for gathering media attentions. Claiming they cut off middlemen in the business. Recently, they started to sell Apple products at prices lower than Apple's recommended retail price, and have refused to answer if they were Apple Authorised Resellers numerous times. The online community comment on Kogan has not been positive in general.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_4) AppleWebKit/534.57.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1.7 Safari/534.57.2