I just learned about this story of an Aussie electronics dealer who charges an extra tax on people who come to his site using Internet Explorer 7. He says:
“To help make the Internet a better place, you will be charged a 6.8% tax on your purchase from Kogan.com”
I wonder what he charges Internet Explorer 6 customers!
What do you think? Would this work?
Personally, I don't think this type of “tax” would make me stop using my browser, but it would make me purchase from another site altogether.
It is a pretty brilliant bit of marketing of the site in general however.
Personally I think this is a great idea. Hopefully it will catch on and other retailers will introduce similar “IE taxes”. Often the reason users don’t upgrade their browser is because they are not aware a newer version is available. Measures like this should help to raise awareness.
Of course there are many users in an enterprise setting who simply have no choice but to continue using older browser, but this type of approach is not targetting them (yet…)
Wow, finally someone with the guts to actually try this.
Where would this stop? How would you like it if you’re using IE (doesn’t matter what version) and you visit Apple and they tax you just because you’re using a Microsoft product. You visit YouTube on your iPad or iPhone and you’re taxed because you’re not using a chrome browser. Basically this is discrimination as is what Kogan is doing. If not why can you visit the Kogan site on Firefox version 0.9 which is so outdated and it won’t tax you. So why just IE???