Not just an e-tailer: Mouthy Kogan has taken to “taxing” Internet Explorer 7
 Click to enlarge |
The 6.8% tax on all goods purchased from Kogan’s e-store via “the antique browser ” Microsoft IE7 explorer comes into effect today, Kogan dramatically announced on a blog.
The irked e-retailer is furious at Microsoft for not updating “the pain in the rear” software, which is forcing it to spend (too) many man hours “making our new website look normal on IE7,” compared to other browsers.
“This is an extremely old browser, so from today, anyone buying from the site who uses IE7 will be lumped with a 6.8% surcharge – that’s 0.1% for each month IE7 has been on the market”.
Microsoft fiends take note, IE6 will not be subject to the levy tax.
The e-tailer is also calling on IE7 users to upgrade to “an up-to-date browser such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Opera or even a more recent version of Internet Explorer,” as it vents anger against the software giant.
“But don’t worry, unlike other taxes, we’re making it easy to get around this one with a simple upgrade away from IE7 :).”
“It’s not only costing us a huge amount, it’s affecting any business with an online presence, and costing the Internet economy millions.” (Steady on Kogan, Windows 8 ‘ll be here soon ).
“Hahaha, you guys have to release some statistics in the future on how many people persisted with IE7 and paid the tax,” one amused consumer wrote on Kogan’s comments page.
But another wasn’t so convinced:
“Laughing at the minority of posts that slam this as anti-customer. Firstly Kogan’s the PR stuntman extraordinaire, this is not designed to raise revenues people. Secondly IE7 is used by about 2-3% of all web users in Aus so the backlash risk is very minimal.”
But its not just poor old Microsoft the 28 year-old Melbournian entrepreneur Kogan is going hard on – he also hit out at rival JB Hi-Fi earlier today, declaring it the loser in the grey importing war.
