Thursday, May 17, 2007

Hey Apple.ca, tax matters.

I'm still shopping for a new laptop, haven't had an urgent need to buy one but as Liisa is returning to Europe in a couple of months and I'll be without computer at home. I've been seriously looking at a Mac laptop, especially since they've just released new versions which means some of the current versions are being sold off cheap.

So I went to the apple.ca website and checked out some prices, found a model that I liked and started going through the purchase process. I confirmed the purchase and was happy with the price I paid but a couple of minutes later I received a confirmation email with a different price on it! The difference, tax. The apple.ca site doesn't calculate or show tax when you place your order which confused me a bit since every other Canadian online retailer shows tax properly, apple.ca does show shipping when you order however. Not showing tax up front is either a mistake that could be easily fixed or a sleazy way of making it look like their products are cheaper than they are.

Tax added 14% to the order and I figured I could get a cheaper price elsewhere so I canceled my order before they processed it which was a bit disappointing.

On top of this problem I repeatedly had to log into the apple site in order to navigate around and when I canceled my order I got a cancellation confirmation email in French while all the other emails I got from them were in English? Nice products, but could use a little improvement on the e-commerce side.

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