Quote:
Originally Posted by koland
The surcharge in some regions also covers added costs of business (think currency conversion, payment to publishers, taxes direct to amazon by their govt, extra programmers and staffing required to service those countries, fill out their forms, pay customs fees, etc) and always has. I'm sure the extra cost of 3G is also a factor (and is shared even by those who don't have 3G, but are in the same country, unfortunately for them).
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I don't have all of the details completely clear, but I always thought that the 2$ surcharge was dropped in those countries were Amazon was directly doing business (UK, France, Spain, Italy...) and that's where they probably have most of the expenses that you're mentioning (now, the VAT thing is another thing, not really related to the $2 surcharge).
However, they are still charging the 2$ in Africa, Latin America and some other countries, where they don't charge taxes, don't do currency conversion and don't deal with customs fees themselves).