Lodmot

Actually Massachusetts was one of my other choices of places to move. I'm sorta waiting to see what my Canadian girlfriend wants to do, because she might decide to move here. LDR's for the win. Lol. But yeah, anywhere besides Connecticut would be nice.

Alright, that makes sense. I personally think option number 1 would've still been the most ethical route for Newegg to take. Newegg makes more than enough money from us to where they can afford the extra paperwork and process. It shows through in their actions that they clearly don't care about their customers. By choosing option number 3, Newegg has now lost new potential sales from Connecticut residents. On the other hand though, Connecticut did a bad job communicating exactly what they want from online retailers. Otherwise, if they had planned ahead of time, none of this would be a concern with anybody. I'm already at odds with my home state as it is, and now this is just one more motivating factor for me to leave. To sum it up though, I really feel like both companies messed up and could've handled this situation better.

Ah, that's interesting. Having a bill come in the mail will definitely help matters. I still wish Connecticut approached the issue differently with Newegg though. I'm still very disgruntled at our state and plan to move to Canada in two years or so.

True, it's the same money that leaves my wallet in the end. The issue is, we have the technology where we can make it simple for people so they don't need to manually do the math or keep track of charges in excel files. Most of the time I never have to pay attention to tax. I go to a store, or Amazon, or eBay, and I check out or use PayPal to send the transaction to the seller. Now all of a sudden, I have to remember specifically that Newegg orders require me to keep track of the taxes I owe. Some people are excellent at it and it just comes naturally for them, but for me it's inconvenient and it's just another pointless thing for a disorganized guy such as myself to have to remember.

That definitely lines up with what she said on the phone. It definitely sounds like Connecticut is mostly to blame here now. I'd still give partial blame to Newegg because they had the freedom to avoid this but they chose to screw us over instead. I'll have to just use Amazon for purchases from now on rather than Newegg, and once I move out of Connecticut I might go back to Newegg, but they could always just pull something like this again, so I don't really trust them anymore.

I just got off the phone with a Connecticut representative, and as it turns out, they actually DID pass that as a new law unfortunately. >< The girl I spoke with said that it caught a lot of people off-guard, including her as well. They're hoping this will eventually cause Newegg and other online vendors to start charging use tax to customers now.

Yeah, I didn't think to ask him about the law Connecticut passed. What he did say though was this: "We will not collect sales tax on behalf of the state and we currently do not provide tax exemption for Connecticut customers. We will send an follow up email once we have more information about this. Per state laws, we had to supply information on the orders that were placed, but had not supplied the state with any of the customer’s personal or sensitive information." I guess they're going to send a follow-up email on this then it sounds like? I don't know..... I just hope I don't get bit in the butt about this later because I actually had just finished a major gaming build, and I bought over $1000 worth of parts from Newegg. Lol.

That's interesting-- that's exactly what the Newegg rep told me during our conversation just now. It sounds to me like one of two things is occurring here: A) Newegg is under the impression that they're not required to charge Connecticut residents use tax, but Connecticut actually wants them to, and at the same time, didn't adequately communicate that requirement to the company until now. B) Newegg really ISN'T required to charge us use tax, and Connecticut is misinterpreting what should be going on in regards to online purchases. In either case, it sounds like both the state and the company of Newegg are confused. Honestly though I think Connecticut is the source of what happened. Our state is really unreasonable and illogical on more than a few issues (this being one of them), and it's part of the reason why I plan on moving outta here. This is something Connecticut should've tackled back in 2014/2015 before more unpaid use tax amounts got placed on customers' shoulders.

I still don't understand why I'm incorrect with that point... If Connecticut is literally approaching Newegg and asking them to start charging us taxes on our orders (a fact that's been pointed out several times already), then they were supposed to be doing that. If Newegg was in fact not required to charge us taxes, the state wouldn't have approached them, and this thread wouldn't exist right now. At this point, I am still under the firm belief that the state of CT and Newegg are both at fault. The customers weren't doing anything wrong. I'm actually going to talk to Newegg support right now about the issue.

Actually CT approached Newegg first, asking them to start charging us customers taxes on their products. That's the one thing people are missing here. The choice was to either start charging us taxes and the whole issue would've been dropped, or otherwise they would like our personal information. Unfortunately for us, Newegg chose the latter option.

The issue isn't really exactly whether it's difficult or not. It's more-so a matter of Newegg's decision to mistreat its customers after Connecticut gave the company the golden opportunity not to. And now we're disgruntled because we're paying not only for Newegg's flawed transaction system on their website, but their decision to screw us over.

Then the system in the US is pretty flawed I'd say. Not really surprising honestly though. I'm in the middle of making serious long-term plans/considerations about moving to Canada (not even just about this nonsense either, but for other reasons unrelated to this topic) This goes right back to the other point-- is the average computer techie going to know that Newegg isn't set up with Connecticut to pay them sales tax? And quite frankly, your statement there is incorrect anyway... As Lurick stated before, CT basically told Newegg to "Tax your customers going forward and we'll ignore the prior years, no records needed". To me that sounds like Newegg is....... well...... being required to tax its customers. Going back to my other examples-- when you go to the grocery store, or buy something at Walmart, you normally don't need to WORRY about them including tax on the total price of the item. If you want to talk about companies outside Connecticut, the same concept should apply. Like I mentioned above, if Connecticut is approaching Newegg about the issue, then CLEARLY Newegg was supposed to be charging us Use Tax and they WEREN'T. When I buy things on Amazon, I get charged tax on my purchases. Now what makes Amazon any different from Newegg in this regard? It's actually not a BS excuse, because unless you are EXTREMELY meticulous and have detailed records of every online purchase you made throughout the year, you're bound to make a mistake or two on your tax returns. Like I said before, there are other online retailers that I've used which DID tax me for items I bought. Nobody is going to sit down and read a bunch of terms and conditions regarding billing transactions before they purchase something online. If people are indeed not paying what they need to pay the state, then better regulations need to be put in place that cover online transactions. I'll agree with you that Newegg should've given customers a heads-up about sending their information to CT. However, Connecticut did approach Newegg, so your point here is flawed. They went to Newegg and said "Please start charging people taxes on their purchases or give us their personal information". That could be true, yes. But there's many other people that resort to online shopping simply because they need certain parts for PC builds that they can't find locally otherwise. I would love it if I was able to get everything I needed for my gaming rig at my local Best Buy, but the fact remains that I do a lot of my shopping online quite simply because there's a better selection of components online. I don't have malevolent intentions against my state, and not all online shoppers do either.

That's all fine, but you're forgetting that when you purchase something from Newegg, the transaction is between you and Newegg. You're utilizing their system to make payment towards their item(s), including any tax costs associated with it. Like I mentioned before, even if keeping track of the taxable amount IS the customer's responsibility (which ideally it shouldn't be), there's still no way to input the correct tax amount in Newegg's checkout process. So even if you had every intention of paying the correct tax amount and knew about this issue ahead of time, you're still using Newegg's flawed checkout system (and therefore being unfairly penalized for it). It's their responsibility to make sure their website is either: A) Properly charging the customer the correct tax amount according to his or her state of residence from the billing address specified OR B) Require the customer to fill in the appropriate tax amount for their state. And as mentioned before by other people in this thread, the average consumer just looking to buy computer parts from this place isn't going to automatically think "Ooh, I better make sure I'm paying the correct use tax amount on this order." We're techies-- not accountants.

100% agreed. I'd also like to add that if the disclaimer was written for other states other than the four mentioned, I would expect it to have entries for those other states as well.

Okay, why isn't it correct?