Kogan is slapping a 6.8 per cent tax on customers accessing the company’s website on the Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) browser.
The world first tax will be applied to all products on the Kogan.com website when accessed through IE7. “Internet Explorer 7 has long since passed its use-by date. It’s a constant source of frustration for our web guys and we’re sick of burning cash on a browser that hit the market nearly six years ago. It goes against everything Kogan stands for,” said Ruslan Kogan, Kogan founder and CEO, in a statement.
Customers visiting the website using Internet Explorer 7 are met with a message saying,
‘It appears you or your system administrator has been in a coma for over 5 years and you are still using IE7. To help make the Internet a better place, you will be charged a 6.8% tax on your purchase from Kogan.com. This is necessary due to the amount of time required to make web pages appear correctly in IE7.’
Kogan said technology companies such as itself should not have to unnecessarily spend money sustaining out-dated technology such as IE7.
He also stated it made no sense to spend so much time and money delivering cost effective products to the market but waste money on its own IT spending.
However, Kogan conceded customers can avoid the tax by using other non-Internet Explorer browsers, such as Chrome, Mozilla, Safari and Opera.
“We don’t believe our customers are to blame for Internet Explorer 7, so we have included a popup on the site which encourages them to avoid the tax by simply upgrading their browser,” Kogan said.
From a developers point of view this is a bold move but welcomed in my opinion and a cracking idea. Unfortunately web development is still held back by older browsers, fortunately most browsers such as Google Chrome or Firefox do automatically update. Will it loose them some business though?
Source(s)
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/427580/kogan_slaps_6_8_per_cent_tax_ie7_users/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/australian-company-introduces-worlds-first-tax-on-microsoft-internet-explorer-7-browser-7851497.html