No...they're listening to their fiscal forecast, which is telling them they're going to miss out on previously guaranteed, recurring TurboTax revenue because they were a bunch of idiots.
If they were listening to their customers, they would have issued this apology back when they screwed us all over...not when the time comes for us to pony up for another copy of tax software.
As an aside, another piece of info that seems to have been overlooked in this whole mess is that Intuit shipped a ton of CDs with the wrong activation code printed on them. It took me 4 phone calls and 2 weeks before I could even use their software because the activation code was for the wrong version. I've seen numerous posts with people mentioning the same problem. I can't beleive Intuit is that retarded.
This has turned me not only into a lifelong TaxCut user, but I've switched from Quicken to MS Money also.
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.
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No...they're listening to their fiscal forecast, which is telling them they're going to miss out on previously guaranteed, recurring TurboTax revenue because they were a bunch of idiots. If they were listening to their customers, they would have issued this apology back when they screwed us all over...not when the time comes for us to pony up for another copy of tax software. As an aside, another piece of info that seems to have been overlooked in this whole mess is that Intuit shipped a ton of CDs with the wrong activation code printed on them. It took me 4 phone calls and 2 weeks before I could even use their software because the activation code was for the wrong version. I've seen numerous posts with people mentioning the same problem. I can't beleive Intuit is that retarded. This has turned me not only into a lifelong TaxCut user, but I've switched from Quicken to MS Money also.
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.