The Internet Sales Tax passed in the US Senate (actual passage of the bill, not a test/procedural vote) with a veto proof majority of 69 to 27. Two thirds are required to override a veto. The next step for the bill is to go through the House of Representatives and if it passes there, onto the President for signing or vetoing. Via Gizmodo, AP, Ars.
Amazon is ramping up the promotion of their Global Shipping Feature. They ship to 65 countries that participate in the Amazon Global shipping program and promise simplified customs with import fee deposit and door to door tracking.
If you haven't been on eBay recently, beware when you return logged on with your account. eBay is now pushing "The Feed" on more accounts. If you see things jumping up and asking for confirmation, don't just click blindly to make them go away. "The Feed" is eBay's attempt to figure out what an individual's interests are and show them products that fit those categories. Needless to say, a lot of people find this irritating.
Continue reading "PSA: eBay forces "The Feed" on more accounts" »
The National Internet Sales Tax is a possibility now, as it is currently being debated in the Senate (C-SPAN2 as of the time of writing of this blog-post). The current situation is rounded up (as of a couple of hours ago) at The Verge.
While making a nickle-dimer purchase with PayPal, I noticed a new feature, "Pay After Delivery". This is offered to verified PayPal users and works for bank account payments, not credit cards. I forgot to try this new service out, if I do with a future purchase, I will post a new blog-post about it.
The text that describes the promotion is pasted below, since the website that shows it is behind the PayPal login page, and it is bad internet practice to link to a webpage that requires a login - especially a financial services website (for security and other purposes). Long post, after the jump...
Continue reading "Meta: PayPal testing Pay After Delivery feature for bank account payments" »
Starting March 3 in 2013, Best Buy online and brick and mortar stores will be price-matching prices local retailers along with some of the major internet online sellers. For the brick and mortar stores, you have to ask for the price match and provide online proof of the pricing and you have 15 days to do it. This Best Buy hopes will end "showrooming". Not all the details have been revealed yet. Some of what is known at Bloomberg and Engadget and The Verge which mentions that 19 retailers will be price-matched online including Amazon, Apple, Crutchfield and Walmart.
Buy.com has officially switched to Rakuten.com. Buy.com links automatically forward to Rakuten.com. Rakuten is the Japanese mega-company that purchased Buy.com a few months ago.
This a wallet-impact alert. As part of a settlement between the credit card companies and retailers, in forty (40) US states, retailers can now charge credit card fees on purchases made with credit cards. This is not mandatory, it depends on what individual retailers and retail chains decide to do. This will probably play out in the next few weeks and months, but it is something to keep an eye out for. The surcharge may be up to 4% of the purchase price. This only applies to credit cards, not debit cards.
The ten states that won't allow credit card surcharges of any kind are: California, New York, Texas, Florida, Mass, Maine, Conn, Oklahoma and Kansas.
It will be interesting to see whether this is applied more at the brick and mortar level versus online purchases, since cash and check payments for online purchases are not exactly ideal. It will be interesting to see how it is applied in interstate purchases where there are differences in surcharge laws.
Details so far at ABC News and Reuters and The Verge and Geek.com et al.
On the other hand, cash is not exactly without cost. Those big armored security trucks that come and pick up bags full of cash are certainly not free. If a store is robbed, the cash will fly away, but the credit card payments will not. Plus, credit card purchases offer consumers certain protections and flexibility that you can't get with cash payments.
Some meta action now, an interesting story at Ars Technica chronicles how NewEgg's lawyers headlined by Lee Cheng crashed a patent troll who wanted a 1% running royalty on all sales because of master of the obvious patents - eg the use of shopping carts for online shopping. (via Techmeme).
Some meta news now. Buy.com will officially change its name to Rakuten.com on January 31, 2013. There is a notice of this at the Buy.com website. As you may recall recalling, Buy.com was purchased by Rakuten (Japanese retail giant) a few months ago.
In a session at PMA 2013 chronicled at PMA News Line, a Sony representative discussed with the imaging world Sony's perspective on Instant Rebates and Uniliter Pricing and such. Sony said they are experimenting and looking for alternatives to Instant Rebates, such as bundling of products or free with purchase promotions (eg free 16mm pancake with camera purchase).
If you are having issues with missed deliveries and such or the idea that the delivery guy will just leave a gadget on your doorstep without a signature, you may be interested in this: digital cameras are among the items eligible for delivery at Amazon Lockers. You can search for locations or request Amazon Lockers for your areas of interest at the Amazon Lockers page. Availability of Amazon Lockers varies depending on your location.
If you are not familiar with Amazon Lockers, we tested them out for you. They work like this: when you place an order at Amazon, instead of shipping it to your home/office/regular address, you ship it to an Amazon Locker facility. You must select this at the Amazon Checkout page. For security purposes, you will be prompted to enter the credit card information again. When the items are delivered, Amazon sends you an email with a delivery code (mix of letters and digits). You then drive to the Amazon Locker facility and enter the delivery code at the Amazon Locker machine. Just like that, one of the lockers magically opens, and your items are right there waiting for you in the familiar Amazon packaging. There are lockers of different sizes, so they can accommodate things big and small. There are limits on the big, for example, you can't fit an HDTV in the lockers. At least the ones I have seen.
If you want to test the waters first, it may not be a bad idea to try it with a low-risk purchase, for example, just send a book or a DVD to an Amazon Locker to get a hands-on feeling of how it works.
Amazon Lockers are available at select 711 stores and according to the internets, Amazon is also working on installing them at select Staples and Radio Shack stores.
We have a retailer update. Starting December-31-2012, the websites of CompUSA and Circuit City will be folded into the Tigerdirect website (link to their weekend specials). Tiger's parent company purchased those companies when they went under a few years ago. The websites were already running almost the same specials but they had different skins. Now everything will point to the Tigerdirect website. The combination of all of the above gives them 41 brick and mortar retail stores with the latest one opening in Puerto Rico. Almost half of the stores are in Florida.
If you are worried about your purchases that did not turn out as expected getting lost in the holiday shuffle and not getting returned on time, fear not. B&H Photo comes to the rescue as they have extended their holiday shopping returns until January 18, 2013. For items that you purchase right now, that's almost two months! Items purchased after December 19 or so, will have their usual 30 days. Details at the B&H Return Policy page.
A new round of worker strikes at Walmart may impact their brick and mortar Black Friday sales according to a new report at Business Week (via The Verge). So if you are planning Walmart brick and mortar purchases, you may want to keep an eye on this.
Such headaches for our beloved 1-percenters. What's a 1-percenter to do? Pay employees more or lose the high-volume of black friday sales? Such headaches. [sarcasm ends]
Time sure does fly. The holiday shopping season is almost here. We are just 40 days away from Black Friday 2012. As Best Buy is trying to get more competitive with shoppers, they have announced that during the 2012 holiday shopping season they are going to be price-matching online retailers, including Amazon. This is a high-level announcement. The specifics and mechanics of the price-matching have not been revealed yet. Early details at WSJ (paywall) and Tech Crunch and Business Insider and Geek Wire et al. (via Techmeme)
Best Buy has now improved their Premier Silver Reward Zone membership. You get a 60-day return policy along with a 60-day price match policy instead of the previous 45-day return policy. To reach the Premier Silver membership level, you have to spend $2,500 at Best Buy (online or in-store) during a calendar year. If you are not sure how this reward program works, be sure to read up on all the details and check the Best Buy and other shopping forums (or google it all).
If you are looking for one of the hot new DSLRs like the Nikon D800 or Canon 5D Mark III, you can reach the Premier Silver level with just that one purchase. Look for the Best Buy links for your camera(s) of interest at the Stock Status mini-site. As of the time of writing, they have the Nikon D800 body only in-stock for $3000 with online shipment or Store Pickup, your choice.
Please note the 60-day return policy only applies to Best Buy Reward Zone members who reach or remain at the Premier Silver level. This does not apply to everyone!
As you may recall recalling, the last few months there was a little bit of a "return policy war" among retailers, with B&H Photo increasing to 30 days, Buy.com increasing to 45 days, etc, etc.
eBay is beta-testing a new service offering $5 same-day delivery of eBay purchases of products/retailers participating in this promotion. Of camera interest, Best Buy and Target are in on the beta running now in San Francisco. Details at Tech Crunch (via Techmeme).
As of a 10pm ET recheck, the B&H Photo website is back online! As of the time of writing of this post, the B&H Photo website is temporarily down! None of the links to the B&H Photo website will work while the website is down. We obviously cannot go back and temporarily update hundreds of posts with links to B&H Photo, so this post serves as a general-purpose alert.
Ritz Camera has filed for bankruptcy for a second time. The first time was in 2009. Details at PMA News Line and Fox Business. More store closings and layoffs are planned.
Ritz Camera (the brick and mortar stores) is a separate business entity from the online RitzCamera.com, which filed for bankruptcy of its own in 2011. A brief history of all things Ritz via Wikipedia.
A discussion of the situation from the perspective of a photographer who had a paid pre-order can be found in the dpreview forums.
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