Google Checkout Sees Poor Customer Satisfaction

Aryabhata writes "Ars Technica reports on a survey by investment firm J.P. Morgan Securities, stating that Google Checkout has had a relatively quick and modest market penetration of six percent since its launch in June of 2006, but lags behind in customer satisfaction vs PayPal. On the customer satisfaction front, only 18.8 percent reported having a 'good' or 'very good' experience with Google Checkout, while 81.2 percent indicated a fair to poor experience customer experience compared to PayPal's 44.2 percent reporting good experiences. Some users have reported anecdotally that Google Checkout mistakenly canceled sales without warning or that the checkout process took too long."

Comments

Huh?

[ecuador_gr]

This is very weird. I used google checkout for more than 15 checkouts so far (and about a similar amount of paypal checkouts - mainly ebay - for the same period) and I was impressed by how much faster google checkout was.
I admit I only tried google thanks to the amazing $10-$20 off promos, but it really did seem to me way better than paypal. I guess if I had an order cancelled I would complain - but in such a case do we know for sure it is google's fault and not the merchants?
Forgeting about ease of checkout, I always hoped for a paypal rival, since paypal has a severely bad track record of not paying or at least widtholding amounts with absurd excuses etc.

Re:Huh?

[Liquid-Gecka]

Yea same here. I have had several purchases go completely south with Pay Pal. Money got locked up and I couldn't get refunds until the problem was completely resolved. I have never had any problems with Google Checkout merchants so I have not had a chance to see Google react to a bad purchase, but the TOS for Google Checkout seems much friendlier for both Buyers and Sellers (See the disputes section here. The ability to do dispute resolution actually seems nice compared to PayPal's hit or miss resolution and that makes me trust Google a bit more. Then again, it helps that most Google merchants actually have some screening done on them, where paypal allows anybody to anybody money transfers.

Re:Huh?

[LordKronos]

I have heard people complain that some merchants had poor integration with Google Checkout (GC), and that it was taking a lot longer to get orders processed and shipped. If that were the case, I could see how orders get canceled. If the integration is poor, then by the time the merchant loads the GC orders into the system, the products could be out of stock, already being sold to customers using the stores native payment method. If that's the case, its hardly Google's fault (other than maybe they could have tried rolling it out several months before the holiday season to get all these kinks worked out with the merchants earlier).

I've used GC twice at Buy.com and once at Toys R Us, and it worked smoothly each time, and I very quickly got confirmation from the merchants.

Re:Huh?

[Rakshasa Taisab]

As the report said, they have a higher penetration amongst early adopters. These are usually much harder to please, so unless the report compared satisfaction amongst the same groups, it won't be entirely accurate.

Re:Huh?

[PietjeJantje]

"This is very weird (...) it really did seem to me way better than paypal"

Thank you for your anecdotal evidence, now we can throw away the empiric data on 1100 customers.

Re:Huh?

[almostmanda]

I had problems with GCO from the start. Apparently, someone had attempted to pay with their adsense account with my card number, but didn't have the name, expiration date, or 3 digit security code. This was still enough to put my card on their internal blacklist. So, because someone else unsuccessfully tried using my card number, it was forever untrustable in Google's eyes.

It was a hell of a time getting that information from Google, though. I got about three mysterious "order cancelled" messages with no indication of what the problem was. I was convinced it was buy.com's fault. It took three or four messages to customer service and 2-3 weeks before someone finally explained this to me. It doesn't make sense to me that *I* was put on their blacklist because someone had unsuccessfully tried to use my card, and there was nothing I could do to prove to them that I was myself. I did cancel the card, and my new debit card works fine with GCO, but it felt like they could have been a little more up-front about it instead of expecting me to magically know how to solve the matter.

I'd wager the low satisfaction level has something to do with this general disorganization, but also with the stores they associate with. Buy.com, the Sports Authority online, and bluefly.com are all stores that have notoriously bad customer service. People were shopping at places they normally wouldn't touch because of the GCO discount, and found out that dealing with them probably wasn't worth the $10 or $20 they saved.

Re:Huh?

[Tacvek]

There are two different levels of integration of Google's checkout service. One of them is more minimal, and easier to integrate. You need to use google's order management system with this. You are also FORBIDDEN to use this integration level if you accept any type of coupon code on your web site.

There is a more complicated system that allows more features and allows you to integrate this into your normal invoicing system. It requires some significant programming, and it requires you to be able to inject information into your invoicing system. It looks like some companies find it easier to setup a second invoicing system then trying to inject the information int their main system. This is not acceptable and WILL cause problems. This is the sort of thing that causes orders to be cancled for no valid reason without alerting the buyer.

Basically the API is very complex and if a merchant messes it up there will be problems, and the user experience will be less than satisfactory.

Re:Huh?

[avdp]

Hum... The package handling and (mis-)delivering parts, how does that have ANYTHING to do with Google Checkout? All they do is process your credit card. The shipping and handling is still (mis-)handled by the merchant. And then, a carrier of the merchant's choice. Google has absolutely nothing to do with any of that.

Re:Huh?

[hobo sapiens]

were I in your shoes, I would say the same thing. However, when I called the merchant, they (mis?)informed me that Google actually chose the shipper. Unless I am confused and Google also has some shipping service, it was Google checkout. At any rate, the merchant laid the blame at Google's feet.

Well?

[ms1234]

It's in beta so it is to be expected? :)

Useless

[FooBarWidget]

For me personally, Google Checkout is useless until:
1. It supports merchants outside the USA.
2. It supports buyers outside the USA.

I've been looking for Paypal alternatives for years now but I've yet to find one which satisfies the above requirements, is cheap enough *and* is trusted by enough people.

My order was abruptly cancelled

[DragonWyatt]

Some users have reported anecdotally that Google Checkout mistakenly canceled sales without warning

This happened to me. Ordered a Creative webcam from buy.com and used Google checkout to get $10 off.

A few weeks later I wondered where it was, went to Google's and buy.com's status pages, which reported "Order was cancelled. Reason: Order was cancelled." Great. Did not even receive an email notification. They did postback the charge to my credit card, though.

Re:My order was abruptly cancelled

[slashkitty]

uhg, the Buy/Google integration is pretty bad. I've had problems with 3 google checkout orders. The main problem is that after you place the order, there is not a good integration with the order process system. This is fine for smaller companies, but for Buy.com, it's a disaster. For example, to cancel or return an item, it takes much longer to get a response through the google checkout than through the regular process. I'm still waiting for an Xmas gift replacement that was ordered in early Dec.. Two other items I've never gotten, they were canceled. With one of them, I only got partial credit.

Checkout availability

[rumith]

I'll say that Checkout is mature when I see it among the methods of paying for Slashdot subscription :)

Horrible Experience with Google Checkout

[tsurikomi]

I purchased a back ordered lens from Ritz Camera and used Google checkout for the $750 purchase. I realized it would take some time to get the lens and was prepared to wait. I was pleasantly suprised, one week before xmas, to receive and email saying the lens had been shipped and my CC charged. I waited a week and called Ritz Camera to check on it's shipping only to learn it hadn't shipped and this was a mistake on Google Checkout's part. Then the horror began. Many calls and emails to Google and Ritz failed to resolve the issue. Google would just blame Ritz. Ritz was obviously very frustrated with Google and told us they were trying to get them to resolve the issue because it had affected lots of customers. This went on for 3 weeks without resolution. My CC billing cycle was at the point where I'd have to soon pay this amount or challenge it as I couldn't seem to get a credit. My only option, and the option I took, was to cancel the order with Ritz. I promptly received a wonderful email from Google telling me the order had been cancelled and the money credited. I then placed the order at B&H Photo.

Re:Horrible Experience with Google Checkout

[ecuador_gr]

Sorry my friend, but it seems that Google's fault here is to have added Ritz Camera to its Checkout service. Why am I saying this?
1. Did you notice that Ritz Camera has a 1.37 reseller rating? http://www.resellerratings.com/store/Ritz_Camera_7
2. On the above link there is at least one story similar to your own where Ritz had to admit it was their fault (that customer apparently did not take their BS) and even offer a $25 gift card!
3. It should have been obvious to you that for a system, especially from a company with such an excellent track record in online applications, it would have been a little hard to send an event to the end user without receiving an event from Ritz Camera. Similarly, when Ritz send the cancellation event, Google Checkout send the cancellation message as it should.

Re:Horrible Experience with Google Checkout

[ecuador_gr]

They are just getting more reviews (google's promo gave them customers it seems). Their rating was always lousy:

      Month Reviews Rating
      1 January 11 1.14
      12 December 31 0.73
      11 November 3 0.00
      10 October 3 0.83
      9 September 0 n/a
      8 August 0 n/a
      7 July 7 1.07

UI = Everything

[tehSpork]

In comparison to the PayPal website, the Google Checkout site is not very user friendly at all. The PayPal site is very easy to understand and very well designed, providing a lot of useful information that's easy to access. The Google Checkout site is maybe a little too simple and very lean on helpful information. Also, resellers like Buy.com maintaining separate invoice systems for Google Checkout is a pita.

I was one of the many who signed up for a Google Checkout account due to the $20 off $50 discounts avaliable through some merchants over the holidays and have since stopped using it. It's nice, but I definitely prefer PayPal.

Seemed All Right to Me

[imemyself]

I've only used it once, but it didn't seem too bad to me. Maybe a little ackward going from the seller's site (buy.com IIRC) to Google Checkout, but it worked fine. I also liked the fact that there was a special at the time where you got $20 off of items over $50 if you used Google Checkout. I don't know if that was just through buy.com or not, but it was a good deal considering the thing I was buying cost just over $50.

Re:Google's touch

[PhoenixAtlantios]

That's an interesting point of view, because as far as I was aware the only Google services that have "taken off" have been their Search and GMail - anything else was either bought or has only had minor impact. Sure, they've dabbled in just about everything, but they certainly haven't expanded far past Search yet (unless I somehow missed something huge?)

Re:Google's touch

[gravesb]

Earth and maps are doing pretty well, I think

Re:The world is bigger than the US

[Roliverio]

I have placed a lot of orders trough google checkout, and i live outside the US.

I had no problem so far, very fast and secure.

I have one complaint. tracking numbers have to be get by phone when you select to protect spam from the seller (as in google receives the store's email to you so they can filter it.)

The only catch is to have an US physical address to get shipments , but your billing adress can be an international one, the one linked to the credit card for example, you can even pay with an non-US Credit Card, wich is nice because paypal sucks badly and freezes accounts for no reason, but i assume you all know that.

Re:The world is bigger than the US

[PartickMonkey]

So if one needs to have a US based address doesn't that render the service useless to anyone living outside of the US, who is buying goods for themselves or others?

hopefull teething troubles will get ironed out and service expanded. I know a few scots that are creaming to use it

//can't believe its not butter

Re:C'est la vie.

[nospam007]

Well, most services coming from US-based companies only support US residents. Most US merchants won't ship outside US - google checkout or not - and many won't accept non-US credit cards even for shipping within the US. It is unfortunate,...
---
Not for the rest of the world. If US merchants refuse 6 billion customers, it's their loss.

Re:C'est la vie.

[dangitman]

Well, most services coming from US-based companies only support US residents. Most US merchants won't ship outside US - google checkout or not - and many won't accept non-US credit cards even for shipping within the US.

Say what? Nearly every US merchant I've come across ships internationally, and I've never come across one who wouldn't accept a non-US credit card.

But thats just like microsoft...

[imsabbel]

They just bought keyhole and put their own nametag on the keyhole viewer.
I know another software company that happened to drown in money and used it to just buy everybody and everything they might find usefull...

Re:But thats just like microsoft...

[DrScotsman]

They just bought keyhole and put their own nametag on the keyhole viewer.

Don't you mean namelabel?

Re:Google's touch

[Frankie70]

this is the first time i've heard of something touched by google not instantly turning to gold!


Hardly. Google has a lot of stuff which haven't really made an Impact
Orkut - successfull only in India & Brazil, not even close in the USA.
Google Talk - barely in the Top 10 IMs.
Google Finance - barely in the Top 50 finance sites
Google Blog Search - far behind Technorati

Lots more probably.

That high?

[Guppy06]

"compared to PayPal's 44.2 percent reporting good experiences."

Are you sure you don't want to not use a non-credit card account to not complete this transaction? Give us access to an account you can't issue a chargeback with and we'll give you a shiny raffle ticket!

Seriously, with a numeric majority of those polled saying they didn't have a positive experience with PayPal, just how hard can it be to top them?

Re:I am not surprised..

[iDope]

That is if everything goes perfectly. But its not that simple. You forgot issues like fraud, refunds, chargebacks, disputes, user errors, etc. You need need humans to handle such issues (especially when money is changing hands).

Why is Google doing Google Checkout?

[MojoRilla]

I have been thinking about why google got into this business, and why they were offering ridiculous amounts off (I used the $20 off of orders over $50 myself) to use the service.

Clearly, there is money to be made in the third party credit card processing biz. Witness Yahoo and Paypal.

Also, I think there is an advantage for them to have their own ecomm facilities. They are starting to offer pay services (one of the earliest I have seen is charging for more space in Picassa's online web album), and having a well established ecomm service will allow them to charge for a variety of other things easily. And, the more credit card orders they process, the better rates they get from credit card companies.

Finally, once they associate your financial information with your google account, they can use it to target advertising. If you read their privacy policy, they admit to doing just that (sharing non-transactional data from Google Payment Corporation and Google), but there is a way to opt out, although you can only do that through email, which seems really lame.

Is it problem with Google or the vendors?

[Giometrix]

I had an issue during the Christmas season that occurred with a Google Checkout purchase, though I'm not sure if the problem was with Buy.com or with Google Checkout. I ordered a last minute gift on December 14th. Apparently the order was canceled, but I didn't receive and email telling me this until the 21st, which meant that if I wanted to get a gift for this person by Christmas morning, I had to partake in mall madness - fighting for parking spaces, huge crowds, and all of the good stuff being sold out.

I'm sure I wasn't the only one that had this issue, and I'm sure that this sort of thing happens much more often during the holidays, so I'm wondering if the approval rating would have been higher if Google had launched this service well before the holidays, where there would be less vendor (and Google) screw ups.

Also, getting from Buy.com to Google Check Out wasn't very intuitive, it took me a few minutes to figure it out. This isn't Google's fault, though this definately had a negative effect on my buying experience. Had Google not been offering $10 off of my purchase, I would have given up and used a credit card instead.

Re:C'est la vie.

[SephirothInferno]

Say what? Nearly every US merchant I've come across ships internationally, and I've never come across one who wouldn't accept a non-US credit card. I don't think so. I live in South America and the selection of stuff that you can send over here is very limited. Basically, you can only buy music CD's (are people still using those?) or books, and there's also limitations on those. On top of that, there are sites that limits the buying process to US billing addresses, so, no international credit card support. There are a lot of stuff that should be done in that particular case

What do you think?

[N8F8]

First, a lot of the usability problems from the vendor poorly implementing the payment and order status process.

But it is more important to note that they appear to be completely different services. Paypal is a service for making payments and GCO is a service for making purchases. As far as I can see, the transaction is passed entirely to GCO once the order being placed (like a payment gateway). Paypal is treated more like a credit card at most merchants. I speculate that there could be some advantages in terms of security and possibly tax benefits if the govt ever starts taxing internet transactions and GCO can claim any state/country for transaction purposes. But I could be wrong.

Won't touch PayPal, not even for simple payments

[Dogtanian]

Personally, i would use paypal.

Personally, I wouldn't. I'd already heard enough on them withholding payments on dubious grounds that I won't even consider setting up an account (which I might otherwise have considered for buying/selling stuff on EBay).

However, a while back I wanted to pay for something, and PayPal gave the impression you could do this through them without setting up an account. Yet when I actually tried paying, every step seemed to want account details, or be forcing me in that direction. I concluded that (at best) it *might* have been theoretically possible to pay without an account, but that the process was deliberately designed to make this hard, and to bully and niggle you into setting one up.

That wasn't going to happen, and I wasn't prepared to fight this nonsense over God-knows-how-many screens. Partly because I didn't have the inclination, and partly because it confirmed that PayPal were a lousy, self-interested company who didn't give a damn for their customers' interests. From what I've read elsewhere in this thread, this was the right conclusion; PayPal don't even look like a good bet for simple payments.

Half their BS "guarantees" don't even apply in the UK (where I stay) anyway.

PayPal is a deal-breaker; I won't use it, period.

Re:Google's touch

[Temporal]

AdWords and AdSense probably qualify as "huge".

No Bank Acount ties.

[goombah99]

Google checkout has two things Paypal does not.
1) no ties to your bankaccount so they can't freeze your assets
2) a trustworthy company that actually has contact information.

Re:The world is bigger than the US

[Przepla]

I have billing address, shipping address and owner's address in Poland (EU) and Google Checkout works for me.

Fraud Protection

[Bastardchyld]

I can sympathize with your problems, however I also understand why Google would have done what they have done. I mean seriously Google cannot just tell you that your number has been blacklisted. Theoritically if you were the bad guy you now know not to use the number at Google, or even at all. If they don't say that will allow the Credit Card company to collect more information, and possibly catch the bad guy. Otherwise he simply moves onto the next poor fool's card number.

Now I do find it odd that your CC company did not call you to let you know. But perhaps that was because Google did not notify said company.

Re:Fraud Protection

[honkycat]

I disagree. Google should tell you that your number is considered compromised/blacklisted so that, in case you are the legitimate holder, you waste no time in getting the situation resolved.

If a scammer is using the number and it gets rejected without explanation, he's probably already going to move on to the next number in his pile. You're not giving him much advantage by providing an explanation. He's got a good reason to suspect that he may be detected and will likely view any out-of-the-ordinary problems as a sign he's been noticed.

The legitimate owner, on the other hand, will presume that he's going to be allowed to do what he's trying to do. If there's a generic problem like repeated order cancellations, it's not at all obvious to conclude it's a problem with his credit card. My first guess would be that the store is having inventory problems or just has a lousy ordering system. Being told to contact your bank to change your credit card number would be extremely useful to a legitimate user.

Giving the reason for the rejection gives little benefit to a scammer and great benefit to a legitimate user. It'd be better to provide the reason.

Re:Fraud Protection

[almostmanda]

I don't buy your "catching the bad guy" excuse, and here's why: my bank had no idea this was going on. Google never notified them. Not when the adsense attempt happened (which could have been YEARS ago), and not when I attempted to use GCO. Me calling them up to cancel the card was the first they'd heard of it.

I would PREFER if the "bad guy" knew not to use my card anymore. I don't really think we should pretend everything's peachy just so he can continue attempting to use my card. If he gets a "THIS IS BLACKLISTED" message, maybe it will occur to him to stop using the card because someone has caught on. And If the legitimate holder gets this message, then they know to cancel it instead of just assuming buy.com is a crappy website.

Google could have handled it better. I did my part and canceled when they told me, but shouldn't they be obligated to inform me that my account had possibly been compromised?

Google checkout is complicated, slow

[rock217]

A few months ago I developed a checkout system that used a number of payment options, I found google checkout to be the most complicated and the slowest when compared to paypals array of payment processing options (payflow pro, etc) or other merchant account setups.

Google checkout was the only processor (that I used) that had a distributed processing engine. Unlike say paypal where you execute a POST request and the response code comes back in the same transaction, google is more "fire and wait for a callback", you setup a callback URL to process the google checkout responses, then you start submitting your XML shopping carts and...just...wait...for...8...XML...transactions.. .to...finish.

I'm not blaming XML here mind you, but after the user hits "submit" with their credit card information it takes 8 requests to fully process, and in the case of AMEX that timeframe is usually 30 minutes to an hour(ouch!) Compare at paypal which I've never seen take longer than 2 minutes, or a merchant account setup which takes 1-5 seconds.

This may be OK if you sell an actual product as the consumer is accustom to waiting a few days for their package to ship/arrive, however it is quite unacceptable when say, selling a service where most users are used to seeing (almost) immediate responses.

Also (at the time of my development) you cannot remove the shipping protocols out of the transaction, google requires you to acknowledge that yes in fact your order has shipped, even if there is no shipping of a product (very confusing for users when they receive a "your order has shipped!" email.)

As for the project I was working on, the clients decided google was too slow, they ended up dropping them as a payment option even though they had better rates than paypal.

Re:Google's touch

[appavi]

Google Blog Search - far behind Technorati

According to Hitwise, Google Blog Search traffic over took Technorati's traffic in December.

Re:PayPal: Adversarial and tricky.

[Dogtanian]

Billionaires often feel that they are better than everyone else, and that they don't have to be open and honest. The billionaires who run eBay seem to think that way.

That's because eBay is verging on being a monopoly when it comes to online auctions. If there were an alternative that got anything like the audience eBay gets, I suspect a lot of users sick of their BS would switch over very quickly.

Re:Google's touch

[Zaatxe]

Orkut - successfull only in India & Brazil, not even close in the USA.

So, if it's not successfull in the USA, it doesn't count?

Re:Google's touch

[bberens]

Video isn't doing too badly either yet in comparison to YouTube it's fairly bad.

Sorrty to pick nits, but Google owns youtube. So, Google is doing quite well in the on-demand video market. I wonder if the next step will be a netflix-esque movies on demand service. For all I know, the Netflix thing could be powered by Google. *shrug*

Re:Google's touch

[kernelistic]

Orkut is used by millions of Brazilians worldwide!

Re:Won't touch PayPal, not even for simple payment

[ScrewMaster]

Fortunately it was fairly simple to go in and delete the credit info.

Remember the Iran Contra hearings. Don't you know that just "deleting" something doesn't necessarily make it go away? Particularly in the case of a Google, which replicates data continuously to multiple datacenters.

Re:PayPal: Adversarial and tricky.

[BiggerIsBetter]

If there were an alternative that got anything like the audience eBay gets, I suspect a lot of users sick of their BS would switch over very quickly.

Chicken, meet Egg.

Spam!

[seebs]

I bought something through Google Checkout from a vendor I've been buying from for years, never had any trouble with them.

Despite my clear indication of the "don't spam me" preference, I started getting regular, frequent, promotional mailings.

The "stop getting mail from this merchant" thing didn't work.

Google's support desk didn't respond to queries.

The merchant couldn't do anything about it, since they have no control; they can forward mail to Google for "our customers", but that's it.

Google's only "unsubscribe" option is "prevent any messages, whether they're order-related or not, sent by this merchant, from reaching me."

Pretty much never gonna use that again, believe me. They don't allow you to opt out of purely promotional bulk mailings without completely severing all contact. If you later use their system to buy from a merchant, then you are immediately back on ALL the promotional stuff for that merchant, because you were never actually removed from the list; they were just blocking mail to you from that merchant. You can't have a way to communicate, without being spammed.

Will they fix it? I don't know. After multiple spams and heroic efforts to get anyone in the checkout group to do anything, I did eventually stop receiving mail, but so far as I know, they have no plans to fix the underlying system.

I was surveyed and I gave it a poor

[Cardoe]

I actually got surveyed and I'm one of the people that gave Google Checkout a poor rating. I had used it about 10 times over the holidays to take advantage of the promotions. I purchased Zelda for the Wii from Buy.com. Google sent me an e-mail the very next day saying the item had shipped but clearly Buy.com's site said the item was "Sent to Warehouse" for a over a week. I finally had it and canceled the item, to which I received a very quick e-mail saying I can't cancel shipped items. Checked the status and still "Sent to Warehouse", about 2hrs later it finally send "Shipped" and they sent me an e-mail saying it had shipped... A bit shady on Buy.com's part... Well now the story takes a downhill turn. I live in a brand new section of a previously built complex. The UPS driver had NO idea where my building was and returned it to Buy.com saying the address was wrong. Buy.com received it as can be clearly seen on the UPS tracking page. I contacted them for a refund, for which they told me I needed an RMA number. It took 3 back and forths for them to understand the issue. Well almost 2 weeks went by before I realized that I didn't have my money refunded to me. So I contacted Buy.com (all of this is via Google Checkout's Contact Buyer), to which they could only tell me they were looking into the issue. So I had enough and contacted Google through their ONLY means of contact... a crappy interface web form. They sent me an e-mail which just had my rant to Google then a copy of the Google Receipt and it was sent to Buy.com's plain support page. This got ignored for a day so I did it again... and again... every day of the week. NEVER got anything else from Google. Buy.com finally wrote me an e-mail saying my case had been already escalated, to calm down and they'd contact me when they had an answer. A few more days went by and Google sent me a survey for how they did to resolve my issue. Which I told them was terrible. Buy.com never refunded me a dime after 3 weeks of receiving the product back. I printed everything out, went to the bank and issued a charge back. Google then had the nerve to send me an e-mail threatening me to charge my card for ALL promo's I had gotten on ALL my orders. THEN this survey came along... Now you can guess why I gave them a poor rating.

non US cards

[bbn]

Some won't accept non-US credit cards

I think I have once had this happen to me. Since all I was buying was an ebook, I simply entered a random US address that I pulled from a website. This worked fine.

So in reality, they accepted non-US cards just fine. They did not accept non-US addresses - even for a download able item.

I have observed a few things about my european VISA card on american sites: All they are able to verify is the card number, expiry date and the 3 digit security number. I am able to enter completely random information for all other fields, including the name field (the one they always ask to be spelled exactly like on the card).

In fact, I often have to enter wrong information, as my address include non english characters, and many american websites are apparently still made by people that live in a 7 bit ASCII world.