Sales taxes are right to pay in every way. Why should some company shipping from out of state get a competitive advantage over another company that has stores in your state, employing people in your state, paying property taxes in your state, generating income taxes from those employees in your state, etc.?
Answer: there is no reason. It's a historical aberration from 'let's help the internet get off the ground' and the practical difficulties collecting the tax.
Those taxes go for extremely helpful and needed things. They pay for the medical care for the less fortunate. They pay for the state services that do a lot for the public. They pay for a lot of good programs. I think it's basically short-sighted, destructive selfishness that leads people to say "no way I'm paying sales tax on my new big screen tv". Pay it and be proud as a citizen.
Or, how about if there's a loophole, like all the ones people richer than me have, you take it. Like a proud citizen. I pay plenty of taxes, I'll take the breaks where I can.
I sure as hell won't feel guilty about it.
Sales taxes are right to pay in every way. Why should some company shipping from out of state get a competitive advantage over another company that has stores in your state, employing people in your state, paying property taxes in your state, generating income taxes from those employees in your state, etc.?
I got fucked recently by Amazon raising the free shipping limit from $25 to $35... Ended up spending almost $50 for that one extra item to push it past $35, decided that I didn't really need any of those things right now. Would have spent about $30. I could return them but I may need them later and mailing stuff is annoying -- especially because my printer is only hooked up to my laptop that I rarely use.
The problem is that the amount that we're being charged is actually more than what it would be if you paid it on your income tax. We don't have a physical Amazon presence here, but they're charging us 9% now, which is the tax that you'd get if you went to a local score. However, if you paid the tax on your state taxes, which is where you'd handle it in the past, you'd only pay 4%. I'm paying over twice as much now.![]()
"I got fucked recently by my inability to budget appropriately and refrain from buying things I don't need, and I'm too lazy to power up my laptop on the other side of the room and waste other peoples' time and gasoline to return them so that I may buy them again later with free shipping once I do eventually need them so that I might save a few bucks"
How nice of you to make it out P&N to make a self-deprecating post more insulting.
But I don't see why the local store should be at a disadvantage - they're giving more benefit to your community.
I am still mad at AZ for increasing the minimum requirement for their GCs to $1. Greedy bastards.
Used to be $0.15 minimum not too long ago.
Your post didn't look self-deprecating to me. If you already knew your place, my bad.
I don't think they'll wait because you have something in your cart, I've never seen that. Most of the time I have something in my cart, anyway... they could be sleuthing your buying tendencies YMMV but I doubt they do that. What I think they do is combine when they can for free shipping and that slows it down sometimes. I usually don't care that much, a day or two is rarely important to me in online ordering. What grates on me sometimes is ordering from China. We're talking weeks and weeks sometimes. In my experience, Amazon free shipping with 25, 35, 49 minimum has been quick enough most of the time. I leave a ton of stuff in my save for later bin and usually have a few things in my cart. I shuffle stuff around to get in under the minimum for free shipping. Dropping it to 35 from 49 will make my shipments more frequent. Glad they did that, hope it holds.Hot dam, this is welcome.
I rarely order directly from Amazon due to the $50 min., plus the fact that they'll wait 4-5 days to ship half the time - maybe because they want to bundle and have to shuffle stuff, or another order from you appears imminent and they know they can combine the two orders - or maybe it's purely because you aren't paying for shipping.
That's how I roll. No minimum. Ships quicker. Costs less (or same).I'm starting to buy only 3rd party sellers on Amazon and avoid the whole Amazon warehouse slavery. No minimum shipping and it ships faster.
Amazon is forcing that on me. I went to order 4 things yesterday and only 1 of the 4 would Amazon let a non-Prime member order.I'm starting to buy only 3rd party sellers on Amazon and avoid the whole Amazon warehouse slavery. No minimum shipping and it ships faster.
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Gotta wonder what's going on with them. I was going to place an order last week, but couldn't find anything I needed for $6 or whatever to hit $35. Bought the item from Walmart instead, with free shipping (and for some reason, no local taxes).