Hi all! I’m Emma from Nikkei Asia’s audience engagement team. I’ve seen some discussions on this trend in Japan-related subreddits, so thought I’d post one of our recent stories. Here’s an excerpt:
*Consumer electronics chains across Japan are working to thwart inbound tourists who abuse their tax-free status by making bulk purchases of high-value items to sell them later at markup.*
*Bic Camera is rolling out an automated system that records the passport numbers of customers who make tax-free purchases and shares the information with roughly 200 locations groupwide, including outlets of affiliate electronics chains Kojima and Sofmap.*
*It automatically alerts the sales associate if a customer tries to buy more of the same items by visiting one store at different times or going to multiple locations. A customer who is flagged will be unable to complete the purchase.*
*Bic Camera will initially target five high-priced items, with other products added later. Previously employees had to enter passport numbers manually and identify bulk purchasing themselves.*Â
*Edion is testing a system at select stores to prevent resales and looks to have it in around 120 shops offering tax-free purchases by the end of May.*
Surely the passport data will be handled properly
im confused, if these resellers are essentially buying at retail and exporting it to China.
I think the main problem is that Japan lacks a sufficient infrastructure to help retailers log and record consumption tax exempt transactions. Hence both manufacturers and retailers are imposing privacy invading draconian systems of identification.
Seems stupid that Japanese manufacturers don’t want people to buy their products at a retail price.
Why do they even care? Once it’s out their country the product is no longer their concern.
So are people REALLY making this worthwhile for this much effort so sell a PS5 for maybe $40 profit? (Article insinuating tax free approx $380, retail is $499, how much would you pay for a grey market PS5 from some random person?)
Too many people in this world reach straight for key data because it’s easy and useful. But as this data becomes increasingly easy to acquire it will become increasingly difficult to govern and the data itself will become less useful. It’d be nice if governments demonstrated they understand this issue- if they lose the ability to properly track and tax people due to data breaches the alternatives will be very expensive.
As an example of an alternative- something like hashing might work. So instead of storing raw passport numbers with dob etc store a value derived from that data. Even if it’s reversible it at least raises the bar. There are so many misuses of data that just come from low skilled handlers of it. I don’t like handing over valuable ID when we live in a world where institutions are so trusted by the system that if they say something is true the govt will defacto believe them, and getting things cleared up is expensive and time consuming.
I mean why do tourists get tax free ? Yen is already low enough . Just let them buy in bulk, but tax them.
Wait why would you even do that? In my experience electronics in Japan even duty free are more expensive than it costs back home. I guess if you’re from Europe where there’s VAT and stuff it might factor out but for Americans it seems like you’d lose money.
Hope they stop these shitty cringey people. At an outlet there was a bunch of them just ruining a Nike store buying every box of cheap shoes, No shame at all talking loudly about reselling prices etc on the phone. So tacky.
9 comments
Hi all! I’m Emma from Nikkei Asia’s audience engagement team. I’ve seen some discussions on this trend in Japan-related subreddits, so thought I’d post one of our recent stories. Here’s an excerpt:
*Consumer electronics chains across Japan are working to thwart inbound tourists who abuse their tax-free status by making bulk purchases of high-value items to sell them later at markup.*
*Bic Camera is rolling out an automated system that records the passport numbers of customers who make tax-free purchases and shares the information with roughly 200 locations groupwide, including outlets of affiliate electronics chains Kojima and Sofmap.*
*It automatically alerts the sales associate if a customer tries to buy more of the same items by visiting one store at different times or going to multiple locations. A customer who is flagged will be unable to complete the purchase.*
*Bic Camera will initially target five high-priced items, with other products added later. Previously employees had to enter passport numbers manually and identify bulk purchasing themselves.*Â
*Edion is testing a system at select stores to prevent resales and looks to have it in around 120 shops offering tax-free purchases by the end of May.*
Surely the passport data will be handled properly
im confused, if these resellers are essentially buying at retail and exporting it to China.
I think the main problem is that Japan lacks a sufficient infrastructure to help retailers log and record consumption tax exempt transactions. Hence both manufacturers and retailers are imposing privacy invading draconian systems of identification.
Seems stupid that Japanese manufacturers don’t want people to buy their products at a retail price.
Why do they even care? Once it’s out their country the product is no longer their concern.
So are people REALLY making this worthwhile for this much effort so sell a PS5 for maybe $40 profit? (Article insinuating tax free approx $380, retail is $499, how much would you pay for a grey market PS5 from some random person?)
Too many people in this world reach straight for key data because it’s easy and useful. But as this data becomes increasingly easy to acquire it will become increasingly difficult to govern and the data itself will become less useful. It’d be nice if governments demonstrated they understand this issue- if they lose the ability to properly track and tax people due to data breaches the alternatives will be very expensive.
As an example of an alternative- something like hashing might work. So instead of storing raw passport numbers with dob etc store a value derived from that data. Even if it’s reversible it at least raises the bar. There are so many misuses of data that just come from low skilled handlers of it. I don’t like handing over valuable ID when we live in a world where institutions are so trusted by the system that if they say something is true the govt will defacto believe them, and getting things cleared up is expensive and time consuming.
I mean why do tourists get tax free ?
Yen is already low enough .
Just let them buy in bulk, but tax them.
Wait why would you even do that? In my experience electronics in Japan even duty free are more expensive than it costs back home. I guess if you’re from Europe where there’s VAT and stuff it might factor out but for Americans it seems like you’d lose money.
Hope they stop these shitty cringey people. At an outlet there was a bunch of them just ruining a Nike store buying every box of cheap shoes, No shame at all talking loudly about reselling prices etc on the phone. So tacky.