Kogan.com announced last week that they will be adding an extra tax on Internet Explorer 7 users that want to purchase products from their website. The logic being that they have to put in extra development effort to make IE7 display the pages in a consistent format.
Internet Explorer 7 has been around since October 2006 and is considered by most web developers as being a black sheep when it comes to compliance to international web standards. Any user wanting to purchasing product from the Kogan website will be charged an extra 6.8% of the product cost if they are browsing the site with IE7.
Kogan states “The way we’ve been able to keep our prices so low is by using technology to make our business efficient and streamlined. One of the things stopping that is our web team having to spend a lot of time making our new website look normal on IE7.” It gives the users an option to upgrade to a more modern browser, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera, but excludes the option to upgrade directly to a newer version of Internet Explorer, that would be compliant to the latest web standards.
“This will help us increase our efficiency, help keep prices for all smart shoppers down, and hopefully help eradicate the world of the pain in the rear that is IE7″, states Kogan.
Comments on their site have been generally positive, including the following:
“web developers everywhere salute you, good sirs.”
“I work maintaining the website of a major german car manufacturer where we are mandated to support IE7. Most of our work when developing any feature, I would say between 50% – 80% is spent making sure it works with IE7. I think your tax is kinda low :-p”
“Please give whomever thought of this policy a pat on the back for me. I wish all companies shunned the political correctness of catering to the lazy and stupid “customers” (in quotes, because they really cost you more than you profit from them).”