That’s wild: PCHome is same price and free next-day shipping (although they are about +25% marked up compared to Amazon … which now offers FREE international shipping to TW if you spend $65 total in your cart btw). If I’m shopping for parts, should I just BROWSE at GuangHua, then BUY on pchome || Amazon? O_O
It was substantial too, like +5%. $2000 PC would be +$100 just to use a card; enough fee to double up m.2 drive space.
Is there a trick to get the fee waived? Potentially spending a lot didn’t do the trick. It’s not like I have that kind of cash in my pocket (ATM would surely reject; and even though Taiwan feels safe, I still wouldn’t want to flash a big wad of cash in public).
That’s because most these businesses are compulsive tax evaders. They charge massive amount for credit card because it has to go on a fapiao which means it’s taxed. They have the same surcharge for requiring fapiao for tax writeoffs and stuff.
But I know for a fact they make a “profit” of about 50nt on any core PC components, that means GPU, CPU, Hard drive, motherboard, and RAM. I don’t know how true their reporting is but guys make so little profit on them that they’re practically a loss leader to get you to buy peripherals, which have much higher profit margins (as high as 600%).
Can’t you get caught out on customs duties etc. for expensive items like a desktop computer, or is Amazon quite good at calculating those in advance these days?
My last laptop bought from Amazon was $19.20 shipping and $33.80 duties and taxes, in USD for a 700 odd dollar laptop. The same spec on PChome was hundreds USD more, it was well worth importing. Not sure what duties apply to desktops though.
Absolutely. Taiwan gimps you on ram and hard drives in both laptops and desktops from what I’ve seen, yet still charges way more than Amazon even with the nerfs.
Yea I have no idea. The big chains (like the 3C place) will not charge you fees for using credit card. But I guess the smaller stores make so little profit that they have to charge for credit card…
Then you lose on points or cash back, harder to track business expenses, lose the easy accounting (QBO), lose on warranties/protections backed by credit card, then you don’t have to carry and whip out 70k ntd cash for a fully new PC.
Even then, would your bank let you withdraw 70k from 1 atm at once? Doubtful. At 20k limit, you’ll also awkwardly and time consuming be withdrawing 4 sessions worth. You’ll likely have to tell your bank your card isn’t stolen if they block your debit card.
I’m not saying this exactly applies to this situation but
I recently used a credit card in Taipei electronics market area. It’s a US based card. On checkout the card machine gave an option to select local currency or US dollars. I think if you do not select local currency then there is a fee like this note at the bottom about a 4% currency conversion fee.
If given a choice, always use international credit card in local currency and let your bank manage the exchange rate.
