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Well, the guy told me that the reason he is charging sales tax is because he is a reseller for Amazon. Meaning, he orders the merchandise and lists it as a "gift" to me so it is drop shipped to me. He pockets a profit by just being a middle man. I've been seeing a LOT of that on Ebay. If I wanted to buy from Amazon, I would do so. However, I do not do business with Amazon, and have sent items back when I see the Amazon box on my doorstep. So in a way, this sales tax thing could be a good thing, since I will have some indication now that the seller is just someone using Amazon as their supplier. Of course, you don't see any indication that sales tax is due until you get to the PayPal page.
This is actually kind of underhanded now, since when you are comparison shopping on Ebay based on price, you don't have all the figures you need to make a decision. Let's face it, if you have 20 sellers all selling the same exact thing and you can see them all lined up in front of you, why WOULDN'T you just buy from the seller offering the best price? But with the way it is now, if you select the best price, and that seller is an Amazon reseller, you won't know about the sales tax "gotcha" until you have actually gotten to the point where you are going to pay for the merchandise. Used to be you could tell simply by the location of the seller. Now that is no longer true. For an auction site, isn't the PRICE one of the most important criteria you use for selecting what to "bid" on?
Damn... I'm going to be running out of places to buy from.....
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