Net sales taxes... beng charged more than your actual state tax?

Here's an (year-old, but) interesting story...

Internet shoppers know the drill. You buy something online and think you’ve cleverly avoided paying sales tax, but sometimes you lose the gamble and have to pay anyway, depending on a cryptic set of tax laws full of legal terms like "nexus." Ultimately, you trust the Web site to charge the proper taxes, because what else can you do?

For nearly half a million Dell computer purchasers in Washington state, that trust was apparently misplaced. From 1999 to 2005, Dell overcharged 470,000 consumers nearly $24 million in sales tax, and now, the company must refund the money under terms of a lawsuit settlement reached in May....

[ Source | http://redtape.msnbc.com/2006/07/can_you_trust_n.html ]

::makes a note to check the exact tax amounts for his future online purchases::

That aside, Dell apparently still has problems calculating taxes - a coworker was just on the phone with our boss, who apparently purchased some Dell latops online. The tax was "estimated" (according to Dell) to be $0*. And as an educational facility, we're tax exempt anyways. But they charged taxes anyways. And there's apparently no way to get the money back... o.O

*Other people have had the same problem, where the tax was estimated to be $0, but turned out to be $30-something for a $370 refurbished system...