I got the urge for this rant trying to use Yahoo’s PayDirect service (which is supposed to be a good alternative if you don’t like PayPal). Of course, it is impossible for me to use this service, because my credit card is from Canada – they will only accept USA credit cards.
Why? What is the frikkin’ point of setting up a service on the WORLD-WIDE web if you are just going to close it off or make it difficult to any part of the world that doesn’t happen to be south of Canada and north of Mexico?
Now regional services, like Joe’s Flower Shop, or whatever, all have excuses – likely, nobody outside the region they service is going to want to order from them. But when you run a popular site like frikkin’ Yahoo or Amazon, you bloody well better be ready to provide service to the WHOLE WORLD.
Amazon won’t deliver PC games, DVDs, videos, and certain other products outside of USA, and what they do deliver they slap on a huge frikkin delivery charge (plus it takes roughly 17 weeks, unless you’re willing to pay a metric fuckload). Many other sites out there are exactly the same – it’s cheap for USA, not cheap or not possible for anywhere else.
What is an English-speaking person in Asia, for example, to do when he wants English products? Where is this frikkin’ world-wide electronic marketplace I’ve heard so much about? Looks more like an American-wide web from where I’m sitting.
Maybe Yahoo are testing this ‘Yahoo PayDirect’ in the States first before they offer it elsewhere. If it didnt take off the way they wanted they could be hit with massive losses.
And as for your beef with Amazon, go use a different localised site, theyre cheaper and quicker anyway.
Its hardly American Wide Web just because your having problems with sites that are predominantly American.
You’ve touched on something that’s been bugging the hell out of me.
Y’see, South Korea apparently doesn’t want the rest of the world all up in its bidness. They set up most of their websites so that you have to log in using your government-issued ID number. Some not olny need the number, but also the corresponding name and place of residence, which they check against each other in order to determine that this is, in fact, YOUR ID number. So if you live in Korea, but are not a citizen, you’re out of luck. If you are a citizen of Korea, but live in a different country, forget it.
I don’t think that’s entirely fair. I realize that this is done probably for security reasons, but do you really need to alienate people like that?
Unless you know of a place in the world where better football players play than in the NFL, name it. Otherwise accept that the league with the overwhelming best players in the world are the world champions.
You can blame the computer lobby and the U.S. government for that. It is illegal to ship certain electronic related components outside the U.S. because of encryption and other BS regulations.
I can’t even (legally) send a legal U.S. version of say, Photoshop, to my uncle who lives in Mexico. I could do it but it could be siezed by Customs and either one of us could be in trouble for illegal trafficing of, yeah, software. Imagine that.
I’ve tried in all the time I have been in computers to understand it and it makes no sense.
BTW, when I was working for a client doing upgrades to Internet Explorer 5.x to get the 128 bit encryption, they had to verify that the IP address the computer was on (well the network) was registered with ARIN as a U.S. IP address.
I believe that has more to do with Revenue Canada than anything else , they want to set up stuff so you dont withhold money in the US from the gnomes in ottawa.
Yeah, I wanted to order some stuff from an American site and the shipping would have cost me $30 American. (For some clothing, for crying out loud.) Forget it!
Meh.
And I wish more eBay users would ship outside of the US. I hate finding something I really like, only to scroll down and see I need to be in America to get it.
I am trying to make sense out of that. China and India have more english speaking people than we do, and they have more It computer trained people than we do. Furthermore, as far as electronics, arent most of them actually “made” in asia? When was the last time you bought electronic components that were physically actually made in the USA?
I live in the US, and it is very difficult to find any clothing that is made in the United States.
Most of the clothing that americans buy is from china, india, pakistan, mexico, vietnam, etc. Americans have it easy to buy things made in asia and elsewhere.
Your problem is not that you cant buy “american products”, your problem is that you are having trouble buying foreign products brought into the United States.
I think if you were trying to buy an actual american item that was 100% made in the US in american factories by american workers, you would have less trouble.
The United States imports 40 billion dollars more goods than it exports each and every month. The emphasis in the United States is to bring in goods that are made in other countries, not vica versa. It is not a goal nor an interest of the United States to make actually goods in america to sell to people in foreign countries.
Amazon, clothing retailers…ANY US business would be more than happy to sell to anyone anywhere but the reality of seeling goods internationally is problematical.
First off you have exchange rates which can fluctuate hourly. Buy something in the US with Yen or Canadian Dollars or whatever and the value could change before the business can get around to converting the money. It might benefit them and it might hurt them but in general a business wants to be able to count on $X.XX per sale and not wait and see what they really got.
Second it usually costs money to deal with foreign currencies. If nothing else the company itself needs to setup its own operations to be able to handle foreign money. That will cost a fair amount of money so unless they think there will be a lot of business to justify that they won’t bother. There also may be a handling fee from a bank to convert money but I’m not sure about that.
Now you get into shipping issues. Certainly the US vendor needs to be aware of US export regulations but they also must consider each and every country they ship to and their import regulations. China, for instance, would almost certainly prohibit certain books from Amazon coming into the country. If Amazon doesn’t comply in keeping that material out of China the Chinese may well yank their trading privileges in that country. Once again tracking all of this is quite expensive for a company to deal with as each and every country they ship to will be different.
Now you get into issues of payment. If you’re in Canada and do something to keep the money away from the merchant they must seek you out in Canada to sue you. They will have to do this in every country they accept payments from. Canada probably isn’t too much of a trouble for US companies but can you see Amazon chasing someone down in Mongolia for a $20 book?
Then there are shipping charges. It usually isn’t cost effective to have something sent from the US to a foreign country (except maybe Canada or Mexico). Books, for instance, are usually printed somewhat locally. Books are heavy and expensive to ship. They either go on a slow boat for a 17 week world tour or they fly at a much steeper price. Depending on the country a merchant may lose all control over what happens to the merchandise once it leaves the US. If UPS loses a book Amazon and the customer have recourse against UPS. Who’s responsible in a place like, say, Liberia?
There are so many pieces to this puzzle you can hardly blame the US for all of it. If Amazon could profitably expand to sell worldwide be sure they’d do it in a second (as would any merchant).
I understand the problems that occur with international trade, and how some companies might not want to bother with the headaches, but I’ve noticed a lot of the US-centric (and UK) sites don’t actually tell you that they don’t ship their shit outside the US. In some sites I’ve tried to buy things from, it’s not until I get to the very last part of the order form and discovered that they only accept US/Canada addresses. If you’re not prepared to sell stuff to us, for goodness sake tell us, you idiots.
This is not true. I buy DVDs from Amazon (US site) all the time. I think they ship software too - I recently bought a CD-ROM dictionary from them. (Though that may be classified as a book and not software) Shipping cost usually turns out to be around 10% of the purchase price for standard shipping (7 to 10 days) which I find quite reasonable. I used to get books from them too, but Amazon Japan has a very good selection of English-language books now. Amazon does have restrictions for some electronic devices because the manufacturer has a strict control over distribution. It usually means that it’s available in my country too but at a higher price. It’s not Amazon’s fault.
I haven’t had too many problems using online services and mail order. I can send flowers to US addresses using my Japanese credit card. I buy bike parts from US and UK mail-order stores all the time. PayPal accepts my Japanese credit card. Once in a while I come across mail order shops that only accept money orders for overseas customers, but I’ve usually been able to find alternative stores that do accept credit cards and sell the same products.
I have used PayPal to buy from sellers in Canada without any problems. I’ve also bought a few things from Amazon.UK with no worries about currency exchange.
