There is no sales tax in Oregon so that's not the issue. I think it's just how much a SA knows. I went to my "local"
Coach FP first to ask for the bag I ordered and all the SA did was search the website for the style number. Of course it did t show up because it's not going to be on the site until next month so she told me it wasn't a valid item, even after I told her it was unreleased and she had to search JAX.
Later that day we went to another FP store in a different mall and they actually looked it up through JAX. They even asked how I found out about it and we searched tPF together which was fun!