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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."
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
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
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.
No one in the US can find Hungary on a map.
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.
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...
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.)
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.
IBM, Apple, and Dell are hardly small businesses, and I think the original question of "why don't they ship international?" is still valid. I also do not buy "(small) companies can't be bothered to grow that kind of capability..."
What capabilities are necessary to grow? Purchaser still pays shipping, and you create seperate national and international warranty/exchange programs. The national program is the standard warranty, international terms can be whatever you deem, eg:
"Warranty only good in the US."
"International purchasers are liable to shipping costs for returned/exchanged items..."
et cetera. It doesn't seem like much capability growth to me. Perhaps I'm missing something.
To answer the original question of "why won't they ship international" has more of a simple direct response. The poster of the original article was looking at the wrong places to buy. As stated in his original post, companies usually have a local (national, within the US) website, and an international one. If you ask the American division of Dell to sell you a computer, they will not (and should refer you to the correct division of the company that handles purchases for the location of the purchaser). Sadly many of those within a national division are unaware of their own corporations international offices.
For example, IBM (International Business Machines) allows you to select the country of your location on their webpage. To solve the authors ordering difficulties, he should visit IBM's Hungarian Website.
If he wishes to buy direct from Dell, he should see Dell's Hungarian Website.
Lastly, he said he couldn't buy Apple. I am not finding an Apple Hungarian website, but from Apple's main page I see they do have a european website, and also a site for neighboring Austria. I think if he inquired with Apple's european offices, as oppossed to inquiring the American, he could find how to have products shipped to him in Hungary.
This is not a troll, but I don't think the author of the original article has much merit to claim he cannot buy products internationally. I think he's a guy originally from Maine who doesn't speak Hungarian so he can't order of off the Hungarian website.
I think the companies listed in his example have uninformed or undertrained representatives who do not even know to refer a customer such as the original author to the Hungarian/European offices instead of simply telling him "we don't sell to anyone who isn't in the United States".
So, in closing, it's easy for companies to operate internationally, there isn't much of a "process growth" involved. Our original article poster doesn't really have a problem, he just doesn't know where to go to order his equipment. When he inquired at the wrong place to see if he could purchase, whomever he communicated with was unaware of where to direct an international customer and misinformed him that international customers are not desired.
Beware blue cats moving at
In the last three years I've been deployed to the Balkans twice by the US Army. I go nowhere without my laptop. But good luck trying to get updated software or Accessories, As the original article mentioned Amazon will at least sell books and movies, but little else.
The last time I deployed I had just purchased a new laptop, and realized after I was enroute that Norton System Tools 2002 did not support the XP the system ran, so I tried to order Norton System Tools 2003. Nobody would ship it, and it the PX didn't stock it. I ended up ordering it to my home and having my family send it to me. The same issue came up when I decided I wanted an ergonomic keyboard. Unable to ship the Norton, I could kind of understand as there maybe some export restirctions for some reason, but a funky shaped keyboard? And I have to note that all this stuff was being sent to my APO address. All I should have had to do was find companies that used the US Postal Service as all APO's are treated as stateside mail addresses. No Luck and again the Post Exchange(PX) system's lousy tech selection didn't help me either. Supposedly anything I want the PX has it online, right. At least Amazon would send my books and most important my DVD's quickly. (Hint to anyone deployed or looking at getting deployed, when ordering to an APO select the cheapest shipping option, they automatically upgrade it to first class mail at no charge.)
Try to order something of an electronic or software nature to an overseas address. Most online retailers have their systems set up to serve only the US and maybe Canada. They aren't limiting to trouble countries like Hungary, they usually won't even give any shipping option or purchase option outside the US, not even to APO's which are legally considered stateside addresses.
Again as I said above, I can understand it if the merchants are forced to balk on some items with export restrictions such as encryption restrictions. However, instead they have made it a blanket blockage on items that don't fall into those categories.
Okay you say, but I've just mentioned difficulties with APO addresses using US mail, and what about other forms of shipping. So add the higher shipping charges as necessary. UPS, DHL FEDEX and other shippers do ship overseas. I will grant some difficulties due to customs tarrifs, but wonder how much a burden that really is considering how widespead the aformentioned delivery companies's operations are.
Determining the shipping charges may take some additional time, but thats easy to handle. Simply put into the transaction software a point where the purchaser may have to wait a brief time until the purchase and shipping charges can be confirmed and then emailed to the purchaser with a link back to the purchase to complete the transaction.
In conclusion I agree with the Original Article, in this day of international commerce and the World Wide Web why can't we get basic electronics software and computers and components shipped overseas?
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
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
Speaking as the manager of an international sales channel, I can hopefully fill you in on the big picture.
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
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.
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Technically, we are beyond survival.
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?"