1 June 2018 was the day for consumers to rejoice as the GST, blamed for raising the cost of living, has finally been abolished in Malaysia. For retailers, the days leading up to the establishment of the GST meant more hours spent to adjust the system and to replace the price tags.
We at Mini Me was also quite busy compiling the prices with GST and without GST from Tesco Online, the market leader in online grocery shopping in Malaysia.
Not 6% but 5.66%
We can confirmed what Mydin managing director Datuk Ameer Ali Mydin has been saying all along is true. He was interviewed by Malaysiakini.com saying you cannot just deduct 6% from the original price. One should deduct 5.66%. Here is the explanation:
The final figure we have found is 5.72%*
* Tesco Online based on 87 products from various food and drink categories excluding those on promotion. The pre-GST price check was carried out on 31 May 2018, while the post-GST price check was conducted on 1 June 2018.
Buyer’s beware
However in the process of compiling the prices, we have found quite a number of price anomalies on Tesco Online. Here are just some examples we have detected not including price increase, which we decided not to reveal to the public.
We do not have the explanation why the price decline was not at least 5.66% but there are also a few examples from Tesco Online that we saw mistakes were corrected several days after 0% GST was put into effect. 
There are cases where the price decline has been steeper than 5.66% and this discount does not come with any reference to price promotion.
Most consumers will not even notice the slight changes in price but this serves as a wake up call to retailers to be extra careful with the prices displayed on their e-commerce site.
