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Restrictive Sales Practices on the Web?
"Here are a few examples:
IBM, Apple and Dell operate web stores that sell almost their entire range of kit, they only ship to the USA. Power Notebooks have the same policy but cite different reasons (see below). Some manufacturers have local country websites but these offer a restricted range compared to the main site.
Apple has their new iTunes system. As I am outside the USA they will not let me logon to the system.
Amazon.com are willing to sell me books but nothing else.
The reasons for this policy range from the (almost) reasonable to the downright silly. Amazon cite difficulties with warranty returns as their reason and while most of the rest won't tell me why they don't want my business Power Notebooks told me that recent anti-terrorist legislation stops them from exporting equipment. Quite why they cannot export a notebook originally manufactured in the Far East is beyond me.
Getting the kit to me in Hungary is no problem either. FedEx and UPS have local offices and if that fails there is always the Hungarian Postal Service. Shipping time from the USA can be as short as two working days, I know this because my company obtains spares from the USA for our products."
The reason, as far as I can figure out - shipping costs, and paying appropriate taxes.
Even between the US and Canada, anything being shipped across the border gets taxes and a brokerage fee tacked on, and extra postage. Handling all of that for a wide range of countries, automatically, would be a logistical nightmare.
A simpler approach would be to set up a branch office in the target country and sell locally.
So true !!
But wait, I can't buy Yopy 3700 Linux PDA in US.
(The Yopy 3700 is developed in South Korea and is currently available in France, Austria and the UK for a MSRP of $499 US.)
Credit card clearinghouses charge more money to US companies for clearing international credit card transactions. Hence a lot of US retailers do not accept foreign credit cards for online orders.
...extend this list at will...
Fraud is more likely to occur on international shipments where the receiver is harder to track down.
Foreign people's credit information/scores are not easily available to US companies (this applies to financing options).
Music businesses may not yet have acquired the rights to distribute the music outside of the US. Local monopolies hamper global distribution.
There are issues with international shipping and customs. Customs may confiscate or return shipments. Export restrictions may prevent exporting certain technologies and goods.
--- Eat my sig.
The chargeback levels from some countries are enormous. When a country accounts for only 2% of your business but makes up 20% of your chargeback, it doesn't take a business genius to decide that country's purchases aren't worth it.
Your best bet is to look for a localized site so that it's not only easier for you to return the product but also save on postage.
It would probably be better to buy things from either European or Hungarian resellers. Instead of Amazon.com, use Amazon.co.uk. Instead of Dell.com, use Dell.hu IBM, again, use IBM.hu instead of IBM.com. Simple really.
IBM, Apple, and Dell probably have a channel for selling their products in Hungary, with agreements not to compete with those distributors. The distributors may not have a web presence, but that would be the Hungarian distributors' problem, not the manufacturers'.
At one point the level of chargebacks almost drove me out of business. Imaging you selling so many copies and then a month or so later almost all of them get charged back!!
It leaves a pretty bad taste in the mouth.
Now, my friends and family in Jamaica will ask me to purchase stuff for them and ship it. I am glad to do it. The submitter better find some friends here that can do it for her/him.
Until the day comes around when the laws and financial instutions play catch up in those countries, we will always be reluctant to do business overseas.
Newsfollow.com
Someone's already doing it:
http://www.myus.com/
(I have not used them, just remembered seeing a company that does it, and a Google search revealed this one.)
I'm sorry but I don't see the basis for complaint in the original poster's musings. It costs MONEY to, for instance do business in Hungary, handle transactions and currancy conversions, and deal with fraud. If a particular market doesn't offer enough profit to justify the expense, that market simply isn't worth doing business with.
.com domain for themselves to offer their business internationally. Otherwise they really should consider sticking to a .co.uk, .com.au, .com.us, or wherever they do restrict their business to.
Of all the online stores that ship worldwide, I'm yet to see one of them charging in different currencies depending on their ship-to location. Pretty much all business charge in the currency of their own location, be it Canada, UK, USA, or wherever. The buyer pays whatever it costs to convert the currency. Fraud can be an issue, and often is, but many countries are at least as easy to prosecute fraud in as the USA, and it's not that hard to build up a "safe list" of countries. Shipping is easy, many of the standard shipping methods in the USA will ship internationally, they just charge a different rate--again, this is paid for by the buyer.
The web is planet wide. Not every company on the planet is obligated to do planet wide business to participate.
Certainly, but it's not unreasonable for the business that specifically choose a
Disclaimer: The above comment was made while under the influence of too much coding and not enough sleep.
Fraud is the answer. Since the source to compute the checksums for credit card numbers of openly available, script kiddies in foreign countries run their little scripts in an attempt to get free services or products from vendors.
This is why various merchant banks now require those of us accepting credit cards to either take the 3 digit cvs number, a zip code or city name as part of the merchant verification process. Therefore, it's up to the merchant to decide whether to accept credit cards from outside of the U.S. Many online merchants will simply pass on non-U.S. cards because getting too many chargebacks can get your merchant fees to skyrocket or get your merchant account cancelled altogether.
As mentioned elsewhere in the comments, this company seems to cater exactly to people like you. They're a bit pricy though, by the looks of it, unless you're buying a lot of stuff.
Random and weird software I've written.
I remember reading in a Business 2.0 or some other high-tech business magazine that transatlantic shipments of packaged goods *average* 20% loss rates. This is shipments of goods from the US to Europe. Not Africa. Not Asia. Not South America. Europe. The article sited a number of reasons, including fraud (it seems that credit card fraud is harder to catch with transatlantic shipments) to post office theft to simple lost packages.
Oh, and my experience with the German and UK posts are that the US is generally every bit as good if not better than European postal services. Of course, you must realize that the distance from El Paso (Texas) to Beaumont (still Texas...we're just in one state!!!) is farther than the distance from Edinburgh to Rome. In my experience, most of the European postal services are top notch when delivering intra-country. But I've had better luck with prompt and reliable delivery sending stuff within the than shipping from France to Scotland.
--Be human.
Since the source to compute the checksums for credit card numbers of openly available, script kiddies in foreign countries run their little scripts in an attempt to get free services or products from vendors.
No, that's not it. When you run a credit card thru various payment gateways, such as Verisign's Payflow or CardServices LinkPoint, the accounts are being verified online, in real time.
Meaning, that if I ran my otherwise valid credit card over limit 20 minutes ago, the transaction won't go through right now.
All the script kiddie false numbers in the world would have little or no effect on something like this.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
ok, i accept that reasoning for Hungary.
but what about Canada? i live in Vancouver and it seems like a majority of online retailers based in the US won't ship here! i mean... i live less than 3 hours away from Seattle (by car) but Seattle-based online retailers won't ship stuff to me. what a joke.
there must be something else.
*sigh* Hungary is NOT a 3rd world country. It is a first world country. That's right. There is no such thing as a 2nd world country anymore, btw, because there is no soviet union anymore, and the definition of 2nd world depended on the existance of a superpower to rival the US. And no, I can't name every country out there. One thing you must consider though, is that there are more countries in the world than states in the US. Can you name all of the states in the US? Without any help? Go for it. Even for Americans this is tough, apparently. Most get 45 or so and can't think of the rest (there are 50, if you need a hint).
====
Crudely Drawn Games
While air travelers can bring SARS with them halfway around the globe in hours, they can't bring their Dell laptop. Not legally anyway - Dell customers have a contractual obligation not to do so.
I don't know if that's still the case, but it was when I decided against purchasing a Dell so I could work during a long trip to Canada. I lived in California at the time.
Compaq, on the other hand, will not service a U.S. purchased unit outside the U.S. I was very happy doing my development on my Compaq Presario 1800T while living in Newfoundland the year of my wedding, but the unit failed and I had to send it back for service.
Good thing I had a recent backup.
First, Compaq Canada wouldn't service it because, although Compaq sells Presarios in Canada, they didn't sell that model. They connected me to the U.S. support center.
The U.S. support center wouldn't accept shipment from Canada, not even if I paid the shipping. There was no question of them expediting me a shipping container and getting it picked up after I packed my laptop. They simply said it had to be shipped from within the U.S.
Newfoundland is a long way from anywhere in the U.S. While it is geographically considered part of North America, it is actually an island separated from the mainland by a seven-hour ferry ride. Air travel to the U.S. from Newfoundland is quite expensive.
What I did was ask my client very nicely to FedEx me a check, paying me in advance for work I hadn't done yet, then I bought a brand-new Pentium III box from a screwdriver shop in St. John's. I restored my backup onto it and continued work until my next trip to the U.S., several months later.
I finally brought my dead Compaq to my parents' when I visited them for thanksgiving, in the U.S. Only then would Compaq agree to repair my laptop. But I had to fly back to Canada before Compaq returned it. They wouldn't return it to Canada either - they sent it to my parents' house. Then I had to ask my mom to FedEx me the laptop. FedExing a laptop is expensive.
The icing on the cake was that although Compaq had agreed to do a warranty repair, they said I voided my warranty by installing Windows NT, BeOS and Linux on it - the Presario came with Win98. They charged me $400 for a new motherboard.
They did so just as the dot-com crash started to affect my consulting business. It took several months for me to raise the money for the repair, during which my dead laptop was stored in Compaq's repair facility. They telephoned me periodically to ask about the money, and each time I said I was working on it.
Then, when I finally sent them their damn check, they asked for my authorization to "rebrick" my laptop. They wanted to erase my hard drive and put a factory-fresh Win98 installation on it. I had lots of files (not my development work) that weren't backed up. I didn't give them permission, but was very anxious until I got the laptop shipped by my mom, with my files, Windows NT, Linux and BeOS still intact.
By the time I was able to pay for the repair, I'd moved back to the U.S., to Maine. But they wouldn't ship to anywhere but the address the laptop came from. So my mom had to FedEx the laptop from Washington to Maine.
I will never, ever purchase a Compaq product again.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
So you accept the shipment and refute the charge afterwards on your credit card. It's almost impossible for any company to recover those damages. If you were a US customer, there's the civil court system to get them their due or the product back. If you have to deal with foreign jurisdictions, it becomes much more difficult.
"Light is faster than sound." - "Is that why people tend to look bright until you hear them speak?"
Texas is huge, but you're off by quite a bit. It's roughly 850 miles from Beaumont to El Paso (the I-10 milage sign in Orange, closer to the Louisiana border, reads 867, iirc). Edinburgh to Rome is something like 1200 miles (straight line).
But then again, I could be wrong.
I've worked for some major e-commerce sites (unfortunately I can't name them), but they're top-10 outfits. On the inside of these businesses, there are huge mechanisms in place specifically to deal with credit card fraud. Romania was the number one when I was involved -- basically every transaction that could be connected in any way to Romania was assumed bad -- but Hungary was on the list as well.
The incredible volume of credit card and other kinds of fraud occurring in this handful of countries basically created a kind of sour taste in these businesses' mouths. Pretty much the only two trusted non-US sites were the UK and Canada.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Tolls at Customs: I recently shipped myself software that I had bought in the US a few years ago. When you ship things internationally you have to note the value. I was charged about 30% of the value that I notated in order to get my own possessions back from the post office. Companies also have to pay import fees and they vary by country. Often they also have to pay sales tax in the country in question. Unless you want to piss your customer off with unexpected expenses, you have to include this in the price you state up front.
Export laws -- The US prohibits the export of certain types of goods to certain countries. The laws are often complex and subject to interpretation. Some companies choose not to hire an expert to look at questions of this nature alone. These companies have to limit the countries in which they will sell. It may well be that the easiest way to deal with this is to only sell in the US.
Warranties -- in Germany electronic goods are required to be warrantied against failure for 3 years. If you read through one of those warranty books that is printed in several languages, and you are multi-lingual, you'll notice that the warranties have contents which vary by language. Some companies don't make their goods to last 3 years, and as such don't want to be subject to warranty law in Germany. These companies don't sell their goods in Germany. I imagine that a lot countries have highly varying warranty law. If I were a business person, I wouldn't be willing to go blind into that potential mine field. I would either choose not to go, or hire someone who knows the territory.
Varying demand curves -- People in different cultures have different average incomes and differing desires to buy a product. This leads to varying intersection points between the supply and demand curves. A company that wants to earn more money won't just choose an average from the global market -- they'll adjust their prices locally to reflect local demand. In order to do this though, they need to isolate the markets. This means that the web-sites need to become country specific. We can argue about morality, but it's not illegal to run a business this way, so many businesses do.
Oh and your argument that US salespersons/websites should direct international customers to the sales site set up for them runs face first into the problem the original poster stated -- that the local product offering may not include the product the customer wants. It also may be selling locally for a higher price than it does in the US.
Sigh... nobody posted this, as far as I'm aware:
A comparison matrix of the 6 major Mail Forwarding Services.
They all work the same way: They give you an US address, and everything shipped to this address is forwarded to your real address anywhere in the world.
Have fun!
This results in some amount of trouble. If the person simply feels like it, they can deny the charge. If they decide tech support did not kiss their @$$ enough, they can chargeback. If they don't want to pay for it but want to keep the software, they can deny the charge. There is no real penalty for perjury on a chargeback form because in most cases it's a matter of "he said, she said". Proof is nearly impossible in cases where the person is complaining about the quality of service. It's software. People devise bugs out of their own ignorance, and never have a clue as to what they are buying. The merchant bank is just as dumb too, and will believe almost anything the customer says because it pertains to that nebulous field of "compu-tators." Hyuk.
While in some cases they may not be able to say "It wasn't me", which is the most common by the way, they can simply say "The merchant did not deliver as promised." No matter what EULA or signature we provide in response to the merchant bank, they have told us they will always side with the consumer in these cases. Unless your a very large company who has already worked out an airtight agreement with the bank, your screwed. We have been told this 3 times when asked why we do not respond to most chargebacks. Our response is usually "We were told it does not matter because you always side with the customer. Besides, you make money off chargebacks, so you don't care who the money goes to. Should we really bother?" They say "Well, your right. Ok, nevermind." *click* That last item is a quote from the last time we were contacted. If it's near impossible to handle chargebacks in this country, why accept purchases from even higher risk locations? Going after someone in this country (US) for payment would cost more than the software in legal fees. If it's even possible in the target country, you can triple the legal costs.
In my business, we wouldn't accept a purchase from the original poster. We will sell to some other countries, but not many. Netherlands, UK, Spain, Russia, Croatia, Georgia, NIGERIA, most of Europe, Africa, and Asia, actually, are all places where we simply delete the purchase. In our 7 years of business, not 1 single good purchase has resulted from those countries. Not one. All have charged back as being fake.
Until merchants can be better secured against fraud and weak chargeback claims from @$$hole customers, then I doubt you will be seeing US companies offering much international service. I know it's a two edges sword, as I have seen it needed to chargeback myself a few times when companies screwed me. As much as I would hate to see my power to do so diminished, I do realize that many small merchants are getting porked by the current setup. So, the system can be left as is for now, but definitely do not expect service from the US as long as it does.
"Victims, aren't we all?"
Why is that?
Because by doing that you and the forwarder assume much of the legal and financial responsibility.
For example, if it was illegal to export some item from the US to your country, it is the you and the forwarder who are responsible, not Thinkgeek.