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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."
Get off the web and learn how to paint. The countryside is beckoning.
I have been pwned because my
It costs money and time and expertise to establish a world-wide shipping channel. You have to know a lot more about international trade law, and liabilities in cases of returns/exchanges/credits are much more complex.
Most small companies can't be bothered to grow that kind of capability, as the short-sighted shareholders (public or private) won't accept the large up-front cost in that kind of expansion.
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I don't know if it is a problem in Hungary, but some countries get blacklisted due to credit card fraud.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
If US companies are too silly to ship to your country, why not start your own e-commerce site? Lease a warehouse in the US, have them ship to that, and then fly it over daily and fulfill your own orders...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I'd imagine that a lot of small companies don't want to deal with this sort of thing. Why a larger company wouldn't, I don't know.
AccountKiller
You do know that the US is where DARPAnet began, right? that little network that was the precursor of the internet?
Do you propose that companies that aren't prepared to undertake the expense and risk involved in doing business with every last country on the planet not be able to do business on the web?
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.
I'm a little suprised that Hungary is on the list of "not worth it", but perhaps that's not universal.
The web is planet wide. Not every company on the planet is obligated to do planet wide business to participate.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
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.
Hungary is one of about ten countries worldwide that are responsible for a whopping 55% of credit card / bank / wire fraud. Serving the few legitimate customers in these ten countries often takes a back seat to preventing $3000 laptops from disappearing into the ether.
Sad but true. Even in the U.S., where our large cities are cesspools of scams and larcenies, the authorities have a better handle on the situation (mostly because the police forces here are rarely in cahoots with organized crime).
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.
So they should only put their website up on the USA Wide Web? I'd like to know how to access that.
If i find site that won't ship to me, i'll be unhappy, and maybe try to convince them otherwise, but i'm not going to demand that they leave and go make their own damn web.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Is anyone aware of any brokers who specialise in buying stuff from US web sites, shipping it to a US addess, then forwarding it to an international address?
No one in the US can find Hungary on a map.
I know, I know...what a crime it is that most places only ship to the US because that's where 99.8%* of the potential market that would actually buy the widget you want is, but instead of blaming websites for selling to their largest market, shouldn't you be complaining that there aren't enough Hungary-based web sites that well sell you stuff locally. ...How did this make the front page?
*Please note that 42.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot, including mine.
Why are you visiting american websites? Aren't there any Hungarian internet stores to buy from? If not, opening one up could prove profitable.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
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.
I work for a webhosting company. We've had a couple instances where people have set up accounts via credit card, then we later were notified that the owners of the cards had no knowledge their cards were being used.
In each instance the cards and billing info were from overseas. None yet from within the US. I'm guessing that credit card fraud is a little more common in other coutries.
For us it's not a really big deal. We shut off the accounts and refund the money. However, if we were actually shipping a physical product I'm not sure we'd be as willing to deal with customers from overseas.
Credit card companies are one of the major stop gaps to allowing truly online, global commerce from happening.
No major credit card company will validate a credit card from one country to the next. Hence, if I live in Canada, and want to purchase a product from a company in the UK, Visa (or Mastercard, Discover, American Express, etc) won't do a check on my credit card for the company in the UK to ensure that I'm the cardholder, that my address & postal code match, etc.
If credit card companies would allow cross-border validation to occur, online commerce would see an enormous increase in activity. Unfortunately, fraudulent purchases would be one of those increases, hence why the credit card companies won't budge. If there is a solution to the fraud issue (.NET? Liberty Alliance?), then convincing the credit card co's/banks/financial institutions to allow cross-border validation would be much easier...
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'.
EU taxes?
...need more, let me know. I've been around this tree over and over, for years now.
Hightened security on shipping?
Cost to verify overseas c'cards?
Cost of refused delivery?
Cost of RMAs?
Import duties?
English only packaging?
I live in India, so I can feel the OP's pain.
However, there are a number of problems due to which a company would be reluctant to ship to any random country:
1) Local laws: the laws in each country could be different. Its too much work to figure out whether you are satisfying all the local laws, before you can ship there.
2) Fraud: as someone else pointed out above, chances of credit card fraud are much higher.
Here in India, we don't really have anything akin to the US social security number (nothing that works, anyway). So lots of people just stop paying bills (credit card, cell-phone, personal loan) before they move to a different city. And there's not much that can be done about it.
If this is a problem a local company faces, imagine what would happen to a company that doesn't even have an office here.
3) Lost in the mail: Often, items shipped internationally get lost somewhere en-route and never reach the recipient. If it is not stolen or damaged along the way, it might get stuck in customs clearance. Sending it through a reliable channel like Fedex cost a godawful lot of money.
And often, customers are going to blame the company if the goods don't reach.
4) Lack of interest: with all the above problems, it is rare that there is an item that is not available locally and easily, but at the same time is popular enough to justify going through all the trouble.
navin.
maybe also because of price differences? - I don't speak for hungary, but the below situation is my understanding of some tricky thing that goes on between danmark and germany:
danmark has 25% VAT, and germany 13% (VAT = sales tax); to equalize final prices, car manufactures price the cars so that the final price (after the VAT) is about the same in both countries.
a lot of germans used to go over to danmark, buy a car, go back to germany (get a refund on that 25% on the way out of danmark) and pay the VAT for germany. pocket a good chunck of change.
manufactures were not happy about it, so that changed in a zippy (lobbied some legislation, IIRC).
so, for example apple products are 30% more expensive in japan than the US. I can't imagine them being happy about me shipping a powerbook over here.
on the other hand, amazon japan seem to be all for shipping things to the US, though - any maybe to other countries like hungary too; so maybe give them a try.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Does that mean these sites should post a disclaimer listing the countries they don't ship to...oh, wait...
U.S. SALES ONLY
The Apple Store sells and ships products only within the continental United States, Alaska, and Hawaii. No shipments can be made to APO or FPO addresses, United States territories, or addresses outside the United States. You may not export any products purchased at the Apple Store.
Why does it mean that just because a site is on the web it must provide all its services to the entire world? The web is worldwide, not the services of each specific site.
That's like complaining that the front page of the New York Times on the web isn't world-centric (hint: it's not even US-centric, it focuses on New York)
Having been in a small mail order business for quite a while, I can tell you why US companies hate shipping internationally:
It's a pain in the ass.
An international package takes at least 3 times the paperwork to fulfill. There's a 4-part customs form, customs declarations, and not to mention ungodly postage. It also screws up shipping calculations. In the US, you can safely charge a flat rate fee for shipping and that's that. You can even run actual shipping rates through the current USPS And FedEx rate tables. Now, bump it up to international shipping. You HAVE To insure everything that goes international, since the package is handed off between organizations many times if you use the US Post Office. UPS and FedEx are ungodly expensive internationally and hardly pay to use. Not to mention that many international customers don't have English as their first language making correspondance that much more difficult.
Now what about your return policy? I sure as hell don't want to be sending a call tag for $100 to get a computer shipped back to me because they didn't like it and it's broken. It's just impossible to provide the same level of customer service to someone not in the same country as you.
So if you were wondering, that's why US Companies hate shipping abroad. Canada and Mexico are a little easier since they have more relaxed borders, but still a pain in the butt.
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
Department of Homeland Security Chief Patriot Tom Ridge just announced a new push aimed at thwarting economic aid to you-know-who. This glorious new program will result in all financial transactions being monitored and recorded and archived forever. In this way credit card fraud will be stopped. In fact, it's going to be called the War On Credit Card Fraud And Money Laundering. Once appropriate policies are in place in the U.S., other nations of the world will also adopt the same standards. Or else. Recent action by the OECD and the FATF in blacklisting offshore tax havens was just the opening salvo in the War.
So, be Happy! Soon, thanks to the efforts of the patriots at the Department of Homeland Security, the entire WORLD-Wide-Web will be safe for you to reliably conduct credit card transactions. More importantly, it will be safe for merchants to collect their payments and banks to earn their interest. (You didn't really think anyone cared about you, did you?)
Fortunately, a few local companies (it's been mostly airlines here) have realized this is good business and so have created the service for anyone to use. You pay with your card, set the shipping address to some US P.O. box they give you (usually in Miami) and once it gets there (transparently for the vendor) they take care of getting it to your house, charging you for all the taxes involved, checking all relevant regulations, etc (obviously you pay a little more for the service but There Ain't No Such Thing As Free Shipping). This is extremely understandable and is, I believe, the way to go (except for the LARGEST companies - I'm sure, say, Amazon could afford to ship here).
(What DOES remain a problem is when they definitely do NOT take any sort of international credit cards. I mean, you HAVE to pay some way! Hello, this is not a fraudulent country!)
It used to be like that when the G4 came out, but the policy has long since been revised.
:-)
To get this back on topic: AFAIK, all of Apple's online stores (it has them for various countries) only sell to people living in the respective countries, and I'm afraid the feeling in Cupertino is that the Mac market share in Hungary is too small to warrant a localized online store with all the additional costs. (Call center, etc.)
And the ITMS is, as you probably know, all tangled up in complicated European licensing issues - there's no European equivalent for the RIAA and even within single countries, the labels can't seem to agree on a common policy.
Will Amazon.com sell you DVDs? They should - there isn't that much of a warranty issue with them and I can get them overe here in Germany without any problem.
(BTW, if you're in the market for US-DVDs and Amazon won't sell them to you, try play.com or dvdboxoffice.com )
As for the earlier post that mentioned Hungary's countryside: I sure hope it's beautiful; I'll be visting Budapest a month from now.
Don't blame Apple for this one (even if you aren't, sorry). Apple wants to expand overseas with its music service, but at the moment, the big 5 record labels either aren't interested or won't do it for some More Ominous Reason(tm) like distribution control fears or something else stupid. :-/
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
Believe it or not there actually are differences between the differnt countries in the world. Companies that don't sell to a foreign market usually do so because they have either found it to be more costly than profitable or they haven't found a reason to expand into that market. Comapnies are usually trying to make money and if it costs more to setup your company to do business in some foreign company then more than likely you aren't going to. Its not as simple as just telling UPS to ship to some country. There are lots of hurdles to doing business in a foreign country. Logistically, financially, and legally. And if anything the amount of small business transactions has improved tremendously. 10 years ago the average consumer wouldn't have bought a damn thing from some other country, even with mail order. The fact that we dont have universal commerce between all countries shouldn't surprise anyone.
I used to buy a lot of software (mostly games) from the US and Canada. The local versions are all in Japanese, or the manual is in Japanese. Recently however, in the last 2 years or so, the companies I used to purchase from have refused to sell to me as I am in Japan. I can buy books, CDs, DVDs, but not software. The policies surrounding this is by no means consistant either, some places simply refuse, others will sell to me if I fax a photocopy of both the back and front of my credit card and a recent credit card statement (yeah right). I could simply (and beleive me it is simple) get an unauthorised copy, but I actually want to give the developers money for their product.
Some of this is probably due to trade restrictions, but I can see little difference between selling a DVD and selling software, though they are probably handled by seperate trade laws and agreements.
A lot of the response posts are centering on reasons as to why companies would not ship to other countries at all. However, this person has stated that many companies have localized (country-centric) sites, however, these sites only have a partial catalog when compared to the US version of the website. Why is that? What is stopping, say, Dell from selling Model A, B, and C in Hungary rather than just Model A and C.
Along the same lines.... why is it that Amazon will ship this person books, but nothing else? I can see region coded DVD's, but not CD's, or consumer electronics?
In this day and age, if a country is willing to ship some products overseas, there really isn't a reason why they can't ship all of them. They've already got the infastructure in place, yet they aren't fully using it.
This might be an opportunity for a someone in the US to handle shipping for people outside the US. They could also proxy returns, if they felt adventurous. Sure, they'd be exposing themselves to the aforementioned fraud, but if the business plan was well designed, there could be profit.
:).
That just leaves services like iTunes. I'm sure Apple would not take too kindly to that service being proxied. But what's the harm in a merchandise proxy service? Not that I'm too interested in getting into that. Sounds too complicated for me (read: I'm just the idea man
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
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.
damage, warranty (shipping costs and you have some chances that the product is damaged during transport)
international transactions taxes and costs (it is basically like converting money into another currency, you'll have to pay the banks for this operation even if it is virtual money, not real bills, one side is still paying using another currency)
increased costs for support (hotline, manuals, ...)
laws, you will have to ensure that your product is legal in other countries, it may sound easy but that may be difficult for products as children-related products, software which use encryption, ...
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
Hungary is currently a candidate for entry into the European Union. If it is accepted it will reduce the barriers of entry of American firms in your country. It is then that you will be able to take advantage of the American and European segments of the Internet.
I work for two small web only retailers and know the business practices and policies. International shipments are a pain in the ass. And this goes for receiving shipments (large bulk orders) into the US and shipping from the US to the end customers. For the Importing into the US, the main problem is documentation. You have to file so many damned forms it is ridicules. Right now, the shipper of our products forgot some form, and customs told us to get some form from the manufacturer, who is the only one who can create it, and give it to the customs office or they will DESTROY yes destroy $20k worth of products. Now that is our cost, retail is 5 times that. As for sending customers items.... FRAUD Everyone gets this one. Of all the fraud we run across, most of it is from outside the US CA and UK. Of course we get it from inside the US too, but most are outside. Credit Card Companies rules on fraud We have US customers who call their CC company after they get their items, tell them they didn't order the stuff, or say they sent it back, then the CC take their money back. We are out products, CC service fees, and shipping. We can fight this type of fraud inside the US, not outside. Cost of shipping It is damned expensive for packages over one pound. Time It takes minimally twice as long to ship an international package vs. a domestic. Some take longer depending on the items being shipped. Some require extra paperwork, some items can't be imported at all. With all that being said, we still take most international orders. But we usually do a manual verification of the credit card with the CC processor. Which takes time. But some we just refund outright and don't contact the customer. Like UPS Express Expedited (More or less next day) for a $5 item, and shipping is $200, and going to Indonesia. Not likely a good order. We have added some extra steps to get international orders out just to try and make people happy. But they are only a small percentage of our daily orders. Problems with international packages take much more time and money to get resolved than US orders.
Fear Is the Only God
The only countries I suspect an average American knows is USSR/Russia, France, Italy, and England. And Australia, I suppose. And for good reason. There is not one good thing from knowing where a European country is if one doesn't care.
So, you admit that the average American doesn't know where their largest (non-American continental) trading partner is?
Or the second largest?
Or the third largest?
Here's the answers for those of you who are American:
#1 Japan
#2 China
#3 Germany
A lot of people seem to think that selling internationally involves shipping a product and accepting a payment. It's not that simple. Every country has customs inspectors who are charged with making sure that whatever is shipped inot the country is legal and has appropriate tarrifs paid. So you have to have an import license to ship some kinds of things. And then there's the tax issue. If I sell something in Germany, I own the German government a VAT. (17% as I recall.) So you have to be prepared to deal with that. Most companies export their products to local sales subsidiaries at a transfer price, which substantially lowers the tax consequences and moves the profit from the US to the foreign operation. Yada Yada Yada.
Selling internationally and meeting the legal requirements of both the selling and receiving countries is not easy.
--Hi. I'm in Portland and it's raining. This appears to be a permanent condition.
And the other one is Nigeria?
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
But I think you've hit on something that is much deeper. Many times Americans will say "So what? Who cares about country X?" (See reply at same level) but as an American who has lived overseas most of my life, I have to say that it has helped a lot. It helps you understand where everyone else is coming from, especially in regards to their view of the US. It's similar to finding out who your neighbours are down the street. It may seem trivial, but it will help you understand your neighbourhood better and also understand what they think of you (and if you're a different race, what they think in general). Knowledge is always a good thing, and once we start to understand where people are coming from, we are better equipped to communicate and create solutions instead of blunders.
/soapbox
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
How many posts have I seen on /. bitching about how people can't get their hands on the latest games/PlayStation/laptop/gadget/whatever from Japan?
How many people in this article are defending business practices that prevent people outside the US from ordering from US companies?
Do I smell the scent of hypocrisy? Naaah...
When I occasionally see something I want on ebay, the seller has usually listed it 'US Only' or just as bad, seems to have found the most expensive possible means of shipping.
:(
Being a poor student who lives in New Zealand, I just send a note to the seller asking if they'd be willing to sell to me, but most importantly, including details of USPS's Global Priority Mail - Flat-rate Envelope (large) which is US$9, and asking if they'd be willing to send the item (usually books) in that, and that I'll be paying by Paypal (maybe not the best, but the most accepted).
Most sellers are just worried about the hassle of shipping, and making sure they get paid. If I make it easy for them, most people have no problem.
Of course, getting a company to do so is a whole different ball game.
---- I've fallen, and I can't get up.
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.
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?"
A Dell representative explained to me why they don't ship to Hungary. They're answer: "My hovercraft is full of eels."
Hope this helps!
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
I have the same problem in Europe. Nearly all of website with this problem are U.S. based websites. It seems like most U.S. companies forget that there exists a civilized world beyond its borders.
Try using Western Unions website to send money from France to Holland for example. Cant do it. You cant even call them and use the phone service. Its all for U.S. customers only.
There are loads and loads and loads of examples. Even more often its for stupid reasons, like it requires a phone number, and when you enter your phone number it comes back with "Oops youve entered too many digits for your phone number. Please enter your full 10 digit phone number with area code first" The same problem exists with postal codes.
European websites dont have this problem. Its just the American ones. Its quite frustrating, as I am also American, and would often like to order stuff from there. I usually just bring an empty suitcase when I go just so I can bring back what I cant buy over the web.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
Then again, is this yet another example of the Internet and the rest of the world becoming more and more centered on the continental USA?
No, that is most companies trying to sell a product in thier country on the web.
For example, I race radio controll cars. Japan has the newest and more "professional" kits (carbon fibre, titanium, etc). Many not available in the US because of tarriffs - companies just don't have enough demand for them at the price. I make enough and want one. Unfortunatly it is VERY difficult to find someone that will ship what you want, replacement parts, and other misc items needed to run the car to the US.
One of my friends like "foreign" films (not made in the US). He has players for the regions he wants. It is difficult to get many of the DVD's shipped to the US.
There has never been the implication of everything on world accessable servers to sell to the world, wasn't using gopher, usenet, or the web - all of which had parts that were world visisble. In fact, it is not horribly uncommon to find web sites that will not sale outside of thier states as they do not want to deal with fraud issues and legalities between states, let alone international.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
Quite simply, Apple has less marketing; they tend to go for the larger markets (such as Poland, Austria, and Norway), and leave alone the smaller countries in between (such as Lithuania and Hungary). If you want an Apple in Lithuania, you can (1) go to the one store in Vilnius, place an order, and wait two weeks, or (2) Go to Warsaw on a bus, get your computer same day, and return.
Clearly, the Vilnius operator just consolidates #2 for those who don't want to go to Warsaw.
Aside from that, there are still the issues of international law, taxes, tariffs, and dealing with criminality. Quite simply, if you send something valuable through Lithuanian post, it has an excellent chance of disappearing, computer equipment especially. Apparantly international studies point one finger (bribes) at the Customs department, but local people say no, it's the post workers themselves. I myself am kindof divided on the issue: I don't really know where the stuff disappears, just that it definitely does. I also know that I had tons of trouble even getting stuff through UPS, and UPS did not even inform me that it was held up! I had to start calling around, asking pointed questions before I finally found the item, convinced them that there was no legal way to apply a tariff, and they then sent it on. Note that they did not even send a note asking the intended recipient for the product. It seems they were just going to delay it until a time limit ran out, and take it. And UPS did not seem to have any ability to help, except to tell me where in their system the package had disappeared.
But that being the case, there's not a lot of point in paying a 500% insurance rate on shipping. Maybe it's the same in Hungary.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Second, The main reason that most online merchants block orders from certain countries is because of the HIGH fraud originating from these countries.
Free Instant Site Inclusion
Yeah but that isn't relevant. His point went straight over your head.
Just because I am visible to you over a network doesn't mean I am obligated to do business with you. The nationality independence of the web means Turkish people can buy things off Turkish sites, Japanese people can do business on Japanese sites, etc. and it works well for everybody. It doesn't imply that everyone doing business on the Internet is responsible for servicing customers from anywhere in the rest of the world.
People might have a whole bunch of reasons for limiting service to locations closer to themselves. There could be all sorts of paperwork and infrastructure that might not be properly set up to handle the transaction, or the associated overhead may overwhelm the profits from an extended market.
I don't understand where people come up with some of these strange beliefs about the Internet that they seem to have. How is it in principle any different from the global telephone network? For some reason, nobody has any common sense regarding the web, but phones don't seem to confuse people.
If I have a pizzeria in New York City and I install a phone, and you call me from Los Angeles trying to order a pepperoni pizza, I'm going to hang up on you. Having a phone number that is accessible to you doesn't mean I owe you my business. Even though you can dial my number and easily get in touch with me, there might be other problems, like the difficulty in getting a physical object like a pizza to you. The ease of the phone call hardly enters into it. "Why aren't you calling pizzerias in Los Angeles?" I'd ask, before hanging up. And that would be a reasonable response. How is having a web site any different? It isn't.
I don't have a problem, and I have friends in Hungary that I send to. What part of Budapest do you live in? I lived there 9 years ago, and just came from a vacation there. I noticed all the Burger Kings have Internet access for 99 forints for 20 minutes. That's progress. Back when I was there, you had to wait up to 14 years for a phone.
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
Fraud is a small part, and even with cash theses companies will not sell to you.
The main reason comes because of taxes, warrenties,customs,shipping and other legal problems.
It costs alot of money to make sure that the company complies with all of theses and until a the time a company sees they can profit they are not going to spend the time and money to sell in theses countries.
Until then ship the product to somone you know in the US and then have them ship it to you. That way the person shipping to you has to deal with customs and all that mess.
In Russia there is a company called Pregrad.Net (means "no barriers" in Russian). They take orders for products sold in any online store, then they buy them in the US and deliver to Russia themselves, taking care of customs, credit card problems (you can pay them with domestic money transfer), etc. They even buy products on eBay.
Of course, that doesn't directly help you in Hungary, but anyway...
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
I found out last weekend that some media companies are actualy blocking domains outside the US. A friend in Japan tried to view sho.com (showtime) and they blocked him, saying they dont allow showtime outside the US, so there is no reason for people outside the US to view it.
The stupidity of companies doesnt even phase me anymore...
>o a Ukranian, a 3 year warrenty means that in 2 years, 11.5 months you bring your product back in for a replacement no matter what.
That is horrible. They don't have to spend 90+ minutes talking to a level one script reader to be escalated to level two support who will curtly cut you off and make you fill out a form demanding everything from the the original reciept (you do keep those in a fire-proof safe right?) to promises of handing over your first born if the product isn't really damaged or the damage was found to be your fault.
Or those retail scams to buy 'Super-warranty service' from the retailer only to find it means they ship your laptop off to the local "service center" where their tech monkeys poke at it with a stick for two weeks before just sending it to the manufacturer.
It gets worse from there.
>for example, the ass-backward EU and their mandated product warrenties
Business 101: the customer ends up paying for everything anyway. This means foreign companies are simply going to up the price for a localized version of that product. Problem solved. It happens all the time.
Put that Ayn Rand book down and you'll find that some of the real issues regarding the financial problems of Eastern Europe is fraud and lack of accountability.
Also, internationalism costs money regardless of what the local law is. Your organization still need to get hire regional experts/lawyers, translation services, beefier insurance, etc. Many Eastern European countries are not only havens for fraud but just poor to begin with; thus its still a niche and its not in the interest of many companies to even bother.
I visited Hungary just a few weeks ago, we wanted to rent a car to get there, but they wouldn't rent it to us because they cannot get the insurance for the car in Eastern European countries.
So we bought a car, the travel insurance to Hungarije was 15% or so higher then if we would have gone to Spain or some other western european country.
The economy is low so companies do everything to save money/not pay money. Terrorism is the mainstream accepted excuse. And since Hungary was under Socialist/Communist (which one was it agian?) reign till 1991 or so, places countries as such in the High Risk Countries category.
I hope things like these will resolve when Hungary joins the European Union. Not that I really want that, cause wealthy west-europeans will move to Hungary and destroy the beautifull countryside to build office buildings and such, and Hungarians will probably move to the west so you culture will be lost aswell... But thats a different discussion..
The rate of fraud might be about the same, but have you tried looking at the legal burden of arresting someone overseas in a foreign sovereign nation vs. arresting someone a few states away? We might have extradition treaties with the UK, but to invoke it for a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars worth of fraud, every time such a crime is committed, would completely overrun law enforcement offices, making it impossible for them to deal with more serious matters.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
My wife runs an internet children's book shop (I won't plug it here), and while there are no countries we have 'banned' there are several areas we flag as high risk: Eastern Europe, especially Rumania, and Southeast Asia, especially Singapore and Indonesia.
An order from there, especially multiple copies of items, books oriented toward teens such as comic book collections, etc., will raise a red flag, especially if a US credit card is used.
There's a issue with the credit card processors: They charge more for handling ex-US shipments, because of a higher risk, but if you put a foreign address in they make no attempt to verify the address. But what do they care? They don't accept any risk, except for the customer payment of the card. Everything else is risk to the merchant.
So our typical response is to request a photocopy of both sides of the credit card e-mailed or faxed to us. Often, the customer never replies in cases where we suspect fraud. We've only had one customer refuse to fax us the card (hey, we already had her number, what's the big deal), and she ordered it to her home in the US and shipped it overseas herself.
Design for Use, not Construction!
I am Hungarian and a frequent webshopper. Some company have asked me to send an email with the scan of the credit card itslef. If you do not hold the physical card, only a stolen number, it's indeed hard to do... Someone else asked for a copy of a bank statement which has the card number and holder name on it. And so on. If a company _wants_ do business, it will. There are solutions. Yes, they are a bit inconvenient, but as a customer I can understand the sellers' concerns about fraud and I'm happy to cooperate.
again, is this yet another example of the Internet and the rest of the world becoming more and more centered on the continental USA?
The world wide web started in the US as a government program so it is difficult to make the claim that it is "becoming more and more centered on the USA".
These policies are an individual companies decision and they have the right to make such policies especially in the face of internet taxation.
I wish that the internet was as free as it once was however politics and greedy governments are working to destroy it all. It is only going to get worse.
The reason is because you have a ton of countries all with unique shipping requirements and laws and blah blah...but the USA has good customers and it is all uniform. You can us the US Postal service, or UPS and you know it will be easy. For example if I have a customer doing a website and they inquire about shipping internationally, I have to tell them....well how much are you going to charge? They don't know because each country is different, whereas the USA is the USA and they know what to charge. I had a customer who did international shipping and got burned on a sale to New Zealand - her shipping to N.Z. made it not worth even selling. And yes there is a lot of fraud in Moldavia and places like that. It's too bad the crooks are ruining the repuation of their whole country.
-------------------------------------
Technically, we are beyond survival.
Another problem is VAT. The EU has decided, in all it's wisdom, to charge web vendors, no matter where that company resides, VAT. That means a retailer in, say, Idaho, now has to register, collect, and remit VAT in Europe for any sales to a European customer. Is it any wonder some retailers outside Europe may consider closing sales there? And people say Socialism cannot work ;-)
Oddly enough companies outside the US are almost always willing to sell to US customers. I've ordered things from Canadian, UK, French, Italian, Dutch, German, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japanese, Taiwanese, and Austrailian web sites and companies. I've rarely had a problem
Sure, it's a matter of size and being worth their while. America has a 280 million potential customers and a $10 trillion economy and a single, well established (fairly) predictable legal system. Singapore by contrast has 4 million potential customers and a $106 million dollar economy. Setting up the infrastructure to sell to that market (translation, understanding & adapting to local laws, etc. etc.) is difficult & expensive the market is so small it may not even end up being profitable, why bother when there are so many more people in America (or perhaps Europe, or the larger "anglosphere" countries) that have yet to buy your product. Even Austrailia where there is no language barrier and the legal system is essentially the same (also based on English common law with presumption of innocence, jury trials etc.) but still has only 19 million customers and a $528 billion dollar economy is not necessarily going to be worth bothering with if you're a small or medium-sized American business. Still most large American (and very many small) companies DO sell to all or most of the countries you mention - they just don't sell to them from their American web sites.
My SO works for a large online transaction processor; they don't accept transactions from entire countries or regions, due to rampant fraud in those areas.
...
I assume that it is due to lack of enforcement of support from law enforcement in those areas
Considering he's an American expat, I expect he prolly wants his crap in English anyway. I suspect this is the deal - he wants AMERICAN stuff while living in Hungary. Sorry, tho, that's just not how things work sometimes. The poster acts like this is some big US conspiracy to 0wnz0r the WWW, but it's generally a logistics thing - the few sales companies would get from Hungary isn't worth dealing with Hungary.
Considering the US has anachronistic laws dealing with export control of encryption and such, as well as other problems, it isn't worth the trouble of having the main sales unit deal with each country. For big companies like IBM, they have a unit for each country that are (hopefully) experts in local issues. So really, the only people with problems here are US expats who want stuff in English instead of the local language. In other words, him.
My advice to the guy would be to have some family in the states to order it for him and ship it. But complaining isn't going to help, and making it into some US vs. the world thing is silly.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I send it by US Mail. About 7 to 12 weeks later he recieves them.
We had that same problem in New Mexico.
Glad you mentioned customs delays and "disapperances" of packages inside the post office. both have happenied to me. And, don't forget that custom officers often assume that anyone who can afford to ship something from the U.S. can afford to slip them some cash. It's amusing how money can help find you "lost" package.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
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!
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!
What I do is if the order is from outside the U.S. *OR* from inside the U.S. but uses a free-email account as a contact, or there is any question about the validity of the order, an email is sent to the customer asking them to fax a copy of the image of both sides of their credit card along with their signature and a note of the amount to charge. If it is charged back that gives me some documentation to dispute the chargeback with Visa/MC.
Of course, American Express is an entirely different set of nonsense. If you do more than 50% of your business on the Internet AMEX puts you on a "Full Recourse" plan which basically means any chargeback against you CANNOT be disputed, even if you have the above documentation. It's basically a cop-out on the part of AMEX in its duty to do a good-faith investigation into a chargeback. Basically, if the customer disputes the charge you're screwed. For that reason, our company will not accept AMEX orders over $50--which kind of defeats the purpose of accepting American Express. But I happily tell my customers to just use Visa or Mastercard instead. Seems AMEX is shooting itself in the foot.
Take an overseas order for $11,000.00
Doing everything by the "Book" when processing the card.
Finding out 2 months later the card was stolen, when the card company removes the funds from your account.
Getting NO help, support, relief from the card company, now thats fucking priceless!
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
I currently work for a very large online retailer. As everyone has previously suggested, fraud is the answer. From our fraud department, nearly 33% of the orders that we received from over sea's, when we did oversea's shipping, were fraud orders. It's just not worth it.
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?"
Back in early 1999, I was involved in a business venture with my roommate. We opened an online music store to sell electronica vinyl and CDs. Our goal was to offer an alternative to the 800lb gorilla (Satellite Records).
Fast forward to mid-2000. Sales were starting to increase significantly and my roommate's wife began to run the store full-time (my friend and I still had normal dot-com day jobs). We used Worldpay, or some other international credit card processing and verification service. Over a 4 or 5 week period in the summer we got orders of $100, $200, $300. Record bags and orders of 20+ records. At the time, this was relatively normal as business was picking up. The credit cards were all checked through the service (matched 1st line of mailing address, city, state, zip/postal, country).
Suddenly, in one day we got about $900 in chargebacks on 2 or 3 cards. All were orders placed in the Czech Republic and as far as we knew, the order information was verified. Over the course of several days we received more chargebacks as people received statements. When all was said and done, about 4 cards were used. We incurred about $3000 in damage because of it.
The credit card processing company was less than helpful, and the FBI even got involved as it was an international fraud case. We never got any money back, no one was ever caught, and ultimately this relatively small case of fraud caused us to close up shop a few months later.
The whole experience definitely soured my ambition in wanting to reach a global audience. We sold a lot of records to people in England, France, and Belgium. I'd estimate 60% of our sales initially were from overseas, but thinking back it's probably because no on else would sell to them. Perhaps things have changed since then, but there is no cheap, easy, or compelling reason for anyone that isn't Amazon or Outpost to sell to people overseas. Logistically it's a huge pain in the ass and as I learned first hand, it can also be devastating.
I own a small business, and I do ship internationally. The majority of my business is US based, but we do ship all over the world.
And, boy, is it a pain. First, UPS and FedEx, while nice, charge an arm and a leg to ship internationally. The one pound rate for UPS is about 5-20 times more expensive than the post office depending on the location. Customers won't pay for the expensive shipping.
Second, when the customer chooses the cheap shipping, you can't track it. The US Postal Service tosses your box into the void, and who knows where it goes from there.
Third, after the post office loses your package, the credit card company comes back after you saying that the item wasn't received. Charge back time. That's a $25 charge plus you lose the money for the sale.
And, if it does go through, there's the paperwork. I need to fill out a form in triplicate for packages over 5 lbs. The US Postal Service doesn't have software that does this automatically, of course. By hand, every time.
Oy.
Fraud of course is a issue. But shipping and customs clearance is a larger issue which prevents many companies from shipping internationally. What one usually does is to hand off the shipment to a Freight Forwarder who handles all the paperwork and shepherds the package through ALL of the customs agencies. Every time a package crosses a international border it is "inspected" and taxed (or stolen) the forwarders job is to ensure that the paperwork and shipment of the product actually occurs instead of the package langushing in a customs hold area. That at least is the theory most of the forwarders are not automated so tracking packages is a manual process and remember not all shippers operate in all countries so you can have a situation where the package is intially shipped via Fedex then to DHL then to BAX and finally back to fedex for final delivery. In short most businesses who are not in the international logistics business do not have the resources to handle international transshipment of product.
There have been some useful answers as to why you can't get stuff shipped to Hungary: credit card fraud, excessive credit card handling fees, possible need for export/import documents...
Fine, but I live in Canada. None of these apply. Our credit cards have very similar fraud rates, and there are no extra fees for merchants charging a Canadian card. Heck, I can even get a US Dollar card drawn from Citibank if ya like.
Even those merchants who don't flatly refuse to sell to me make it prohibitively expensive by making their lowest tier international service "DHL 1-hour delivery - $529.99." Thanks guys, but you can just throw that in a box and send it parcel post. I'll pay the duty when the mail carrier comes to my house. I've had this argument with ThinkGeek a few times, and they cannot even comprehend the basic concept of mailing something to a non-US address.
For me, at least, this is maddeningly frustrating. It should be entirely transparent to the merchant to send stuff to me in Canada. The credit card gets charged in USD, and it bills me with the current rate. Merchants don't need to fill out any forms; Canada Post (or UPS, or FedEx) does that for me when I get the package. Same as above with duty and taxes.
Considering that this process is transparent to the merchant, those who say "Only ship to USA" or those who only offer expensive shipping to Canada are making a very clear statement about their priorities. I don't know what that statement is, considering that I'm trying very hard to give them my money, but there's a statement in there for sure.
50% of all credit card fraud is for consumer electronics. Online fraud is the fastest growing form of credit card fraud. Shipping from the US to non-US addresses is more difficult to track, making it more difficult to collect enough information to prosecute. And eastern Europe is wher the largest chunk of online credit card fraud is coming from.
Unfortunately, that means you're hosed.
BTW, it's not the web sites that are your problem, it's the banks that issue the credit cards. They are increasingly willing to refuse transactions on the slightest hint of anything suspicious, using arcane and complicated rules. The merchants can't even find out why a particular transaction was refused, but they don't want to tell that to you, so you get whatever reasonable sounding excuse they can think of.
I totally agree that AMEX's policy is very vendor un-friendly-- problem is, the internet's a big place, and when online you're usually buying a commodity that can be bought elsewhere. And from a customer's standpoint, I'm not as much worried about other customers defrauding the supplier (though I probably should be, to keep costs down). I'm far more worried about suppliers/whomever defrauding me, selling my info, or "losing" it. So if a merchant won't take my 1-time AMEX number (generated by the handy-dandy smartcard reader on my desk, and fraud-proof since it's only good for one transaction), I'll try to find another merchant who will. My real number doesn't end up in anybody's database, to be snarfed at random when they forget to secure their machines.
I've never had to deal with an ID-theft or fraud (knocks on wood). My GF has, and it was absolute hell. She now gets a phone contact any time her credit gets run, on the assumption it's a fraud. From my point of view, preventing this makes going to a little extra bit of trouble, finding alternate vendors, whatever, very much worth the small amount of extra time. Just my $0.02
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
My company www.streamzap.com does ship to as many countries as possible, but here are the many challenges we face which may explain why others just don't bother:
1. Unless you do a ton of shipping, the major carriers (UPS/Fedex/DHL/Airborne) charge about $50 USD to send a 1 lb package to most countries. What customer is willing to pay this much for S&H?
2. The only reasonably cost effective method is US Air Mail. US Air Mail does not have reasonable insurance rates (At some point I looked into tracking and/or insurance, but this brings the cost closer to the UPS/Fedex rates).
3. International packages require filling out customs forms... BY HAND (USPS claims to be beta testing a way to print these by computer, but they have been claiming this for over a year now). This costs another few $bucks$ in time for an employee (incrasing the already high S&H costs for the customer)
4. Credit card fraud
About 90% of my incidents of credit card fraud come from International orders. This is not to imply that people outside of the US are more scrupulous than Americans. I would guess most countries have a similar rate of fraud; However when you commit inter-country fraud, it's nearly impossible to find and prosecute the criminal due to the sheer costs involved.
5. Credit card companies don't give a shit about fraud because they just make the vendor of the goods ("merchant") not only refund the money charged, but they also pay an extra $20 fee just for the "trouble" we made the credit card company go through in processing the fraud claim. In other words--ALL RISK of fraud is passed on to the vendor. One indicent of fraud costs you:
a. Lost goods
b. Lost $ from S&H
c. Charges from credit card company
d. Wasted time
Even if you could tell the credit card company every detail about the criminal (where they live, IP address, real name, etc..), it means nothing to them. Why should they bother to investigate it when they can just charge the merchant all of the costs of fraud? As you can see this is a broken system. There is currently a class action suit in progress against the credit cards surrounding this. And I hope they get sued up the ass for it.
6. Customs & import taxes Many customers will end up being charged an additional tax and/or their packages will be delayed for weeks OR MONTHS by customs. Invariably the customer thinks the vendor is at fault for this and should refund their money 100%. (Tip: Don't even bother shipping to Belgium--you'll be lucky if 1% of your packages get through)
7. Accounting and shipping software is not usually set up to handle International addresses. Every country has a different way of writing addresses. And most (reasonably priced) programs don't handle them well.
Overall, it's still worth it for us to ship overseas (i.e we make more money than we lose).. but there are many challenges and frustrations, so I can see why many vendors don't bother.
Jonah
www.streamzap.com
Why do US companies mostly sell in the US? Don't blame us, blame the archaic EU and their maze of rules to protect:
-consumers
-nationalized industries
-subsidized companies
Imagine if you were to do business in the US and each state had 12 specific rules when it comes to completing a sale via the web...you'd basically go for California and maybe another populous state and write off the rest.
We thought about doing this awhile back, and here are just a few of the reasons why we bagged it:
French servers needed to be physically located in France, as did Italian ones.
There are at least 3 different sets of laws that constrain a company when it comes to returns: Imagine you sell something, and after a while, the user wants their money back...and you're obliged to give it to them or face the wrath of their country's laws.
Shipping can be a serious pain in the ass. Imagine getting your computer and Hungarian customs has swiped a few discs.
The VAT. Add 17% to the price of everything.
The rules are 'changing' (some of the above may no longer be true) so as soon as you're compliant with 12 countries, 3 others change the rules to make it 'easier' for businesses.
The fact is, Europe knows this is holding them back, but there are so many protective clauses that will get politicians slaughtered if they are rolled back. Your friendly neighborhood Hungarian PC maker would be quite upset if you could order from Dell.com.
Don't get me wrong, I love Europe, loved living there, and would prefer it to 99.9% of the places in the states, but for better or worse, our culture is set up to get business moving: one dot-com, 300 million potential customers. Europe: one dot-com per country, 2-20 million potential customers.
It's not going to happen until these countries release their grips on tariff mentality.
Last time I checked I was using the WORLD Wide Web, and there seems little point wasting bandwidth to post your website to the world when only those living in the USA can buy and/or use the product.
Your telephone can call mine, too. That doesn't mean I have to do business with you. Get over it.
I work at one of the larger (US) e-commerce companies, and can reliably state that while fraud is a concern, it's typically near the bottom of our list on global expansion obstacles.
Much larger concerns (in decreasing magnitude) include:
1) Fulfillment. Most consumers will balk at the shipping costs to ship something overseas. For example...who's going to pay $30 to ship a $25 book from US to Europe? Even in-country air delivery will deter most consumers. This means that you need a distribution center within the general proximty of where you want to deliver so that you can offer affordable ground shipping. Setting up these distribution centers require significant capital (both for the facility as well as the inventoried goods), dealing with foreign regulations, staffing and training employees overseas, etc.
2) Commerce. Most e-commerce sites (unfortunately) did not build their systems with international commerce in mind. This means that their site and financial systems need to be overhauled in order to handle multiple currencies (and possibly languages), complicated tax laws, cross-border duties, etc. Supporting returned products across borders presents the same issues, just in reverse.
3) Distribution rights. For whatever products you sell, there are typically long-standing distribution relationships already in place with brick & mortar companies (or large wholesalers)located in the target country, and manufacturers are extremely reluctant to damage these relationships by granting new distribution or licensing rights to companies (e-commerce or otherwise) moving into that territory. This means that you may have to launch with a limited product assortment until you can prove long term viability and establish credibility with manufacturers. However, the expected revenue from this limited assortment may not fund the (short-term) expansion into the new country.
So...it's an assortment of issues, all of them fairly complicated. With that said, I know a number of e-commerce companies that are building the infrastructure, processes, and relationships for all of this now, and my guess is that you'll begin to see an influx of US e-commerce companies in Europe in the next 12-24 months, and Asia a couple years later.