Online Shopping Outside the US? 20
Michael Roy asks: "With the boom of online shopping, especially eBay-esque sites, those of us north of the border (or anywhere outside the US) have noticed a problem: most online stores are in the US! In Canada we have North American Free Trade Agreement, but even so we wind up paying huge tarrifs, taxes, and brokerage fees to buy from US websites. While there are a few online stores outside the US, most US stores with Canadian locations don't have Canadian sites. I don't mean to bash Americans, but is online shopping a US-only thing? Is the rest of the world just more expensive to buy for?" If online-shopping is going to become a thing of the future, this is something that we really need to address. It seems the internet has gone a long way in erasing the political borders that sit between the people, but maybe it hasn't gone quite far enough. Is this even a problem that can be solved with technology (as taxes, tarrifs and brokerage fees are political creatures)?
Us problem? (Score:1)
I think it would be closer to everyone else bashing being that they have not set up sites outside the US border.
Malk-a-mite
Canada = US? (Score:1)
Okay (Score:1)
Things to take into account (Score:2)
2) Shipping. Hey, it costs more - that's the way it is.
3) Taxes, customs, etc.
These are all issues to take into account.
It's hard enough to start up a business in ONE country (any country), without the added expenses of dealing with clients in multiple countries. Being online doesn't make that any easier. I doubt the true value of free trade will be realized until all countries participate equally and fairly . And that isn't going to happen any time soon, if at all. *sigh*
The .CA rules are partly to blame (Score:5)
The importance of a .CA name is that it indicates strictly Canadian content. To register a .CA domain one had to have offices in two provinces, or be federally incorporated, or have a trademark. Even so, only one domain name was allowed per organization. And the process takes well over a week.
Finally, after many years, this will change as of November 1st 2000 when any Canadian resident can register as many domains as she or he wants. Still, what about companies that did meet the requirement? Can you explain why (until recently) more Canadians bought books across the border from Amazon.com than from Chapters.CA? That has to do with marketing, plain and simple. Amazon was first to market and has built up an excellent user experience. I still go to Amazon for the reader's book reviews before buying from Chapters.
Perhaps more important that domain names is the issue of payment. Canadian banks have been slow to offer online credit card merchant account systems. Small companies just couldn't open a site and sell strictly to Canadians in Canadian dollars. Only the large bricks-and-mortar stores had the resources to implement online payment.
It's not an issue of consumers being scared away from online payments, either. Look how Canadians have taken to debit cards, telephone banking and online banking! We're ready to spend, but there's nowhere to go!
Regarding the observation that most US stores with Canadian locations don't have Canadian websites, don't forget that the Canadian operations are different entities, and make their own decisions independently from the parent company. It would be a poor business practice for a multinational to attempt to force its branches to be exactly like the US parent company, including selling online.
As the issues are addressed, I think we'll see more Canadian online e-tailers. Be prepared to invest in Canadian banks as they start to rake in more profits by offering easier online payment systems in the form of turnkey solutions for startup web companies.
David
Not just an eBiz problem (Score:1)
Politics (Score:2)
any recommended places to shop? (Score:1)
Re:Things to take into account (Score:2)
Online shopping outside the continent of America (Score:4)
As a resident of the UK, I've been online shopping for 4 years or so - bought my first Slackware distribution from Walnut Creek in mid '96. I'd class myself as a moderate online shopper ,averaging 1-2 transactions per month. I can only offer my own experience but anyway...
The hassles have been covered already, and fall into the areas of:
Availability. There's a very marked difference here between companies that "get it" and those that don't. There are a *lot* of online vendors (both within the US and outside) that aren't aware of, or can't be bothered with shipping internationally. Smart companies will take business from anywhere; hey - they've gone to the trouble of setting up a mail order distribution business so adding the minor hassle of international distribution is trivial.An excellent example is Thinkgeek [thinkgeek.com]. Counter-examples I can't provide - whilst shopping for cheap GPSes a while back I came across a few (mainly US) shops that just couldn't deal with the concept of places other than US states. My response is to instantly forget all about them. The lesson should be obvious.
Shipping, by which I mainly refer to hassle and cost. For many reasons it's a lot cheaper to go with "local" companies. In the UK we're a fairly enlightened bunch so by preference I'd usually by from a local distributor - Amazon UK [amazon.co.uk] rather than Amazon US [amazon.com] for example. However there's always something you can't get locally (such as ThinkGeek's Map of the Internet [thinkgeek.com], for example) so it's a simple trade-off: Do you want it bad enough to pay shipping?.
In fairness, intercontinental shipping is usually not too bad - you guys in the States have things *so* cheap that can still be cheaper for me to buy (shippable) electronic goods from US stores, pay shipping, customs AND Tax, and come out ahead of the local offerings... Certainly for more esoteric gear (like GPSes).
This feeds into Delay. Generally if I buy from a UK store it gets to me within a week. Your Mileage May Vary. Shipping from the States is highly variable - my Inet map arrived 10 days after ordering, my last Walnut Creek order took 6 weeks. The simple answer is: Do you want it bad enough, can you afford to wait, is it cheap enough to go for it? (It's that whole time value of money / money value of time thing).
Lastly the whole area of the legal & fiscal obligations. For consumer goods, it's (nearly!) always going to be legal, but you can get hassle from local Customs folks trying to prove it. Given the amount of this trade going back and forth 'cross the Big Pond, however, I'd estimate that maybe 1 in 5 packages is actually inspected at all. This is a good thing, from a delay perspective. However you can view it as a downside - it's your responsibility to report incoming good for import duty so if the Customs folks don't do it for you that's one more hassle (or you can just ignore it...).
I sorta went off on a fuzzy one here, but hopefully brain-dumped some of the thought processes I go through when online ordering. In practice, as time goes by I'm doing far far less international shopping because the whole internet revolution is (slowly!) driving down costs in the UK as well as increasing availability. Hell, we can even do our groceries online here now.
Conclusion: Online Shopping is NOT an Americans-only thing, it's widely available throughout the Western world at least. Whether it's right for you depends on a range of factors, not least of which is your own circumstances - For instance, my job keeps me away from home during the week and I value my weekend time. Online shopping lets me use little dead spaces during the week to "batch up" stuff I need (or more commonly want) ready for quick weekend processing of the incoming parcels.
Oh, and one last comment. Online shops are *exactly* the same as high street ones. There are those I keep coming back to (see above), those I've tried once or twice and will never use again (no names, no packdrill [jungle.com]) and those I just plain don't like the look of. Generally the ones I've had most success with have been big, recognisable web-only firms (Amazon, Thinkgeek) that got in early and/or know the business. Johnny-come-lately .COMs and high-street shops trying to get their heads around this "internet" thingy are generally... less satisfying :-).
Canadian problem NOT world (Score:4)
It sounds to me like the problem has more to do with Canadian lack of national identity on the Web. Shame, as I would rather have a Canadian web than an American web, but that's digressing
Seriously, it takes entrepeneurs to start e-businesses (Like the infamous Boo.com, Boxman or Letsbuyit.com which are large Swedish / UK successes). Who was the last successful Canadian entrepeneur? I don't mean any disrespect to Canada, but you guys are living in the shadow of the US. Talking to my Canadian friends, they are all in agreement that if you want to start a successful business as a Candian, you move to the States.
"Give the anarchist a cigarette"
Re:Recommended places to shop (Score:1)
I don't want a store that caters to American tastes. I'm a career expatriate. I want one that caters to career expatriates
-dan
Re:Canadian problem NOT world (Score:1)
Glenn Ballman from Saskatchewan instantly became the richest man in Canada when his company Onvia.com went public in March 2000. Onvia.com has a strong Canadian content section under the name Onvia.CA.
ATI and Matrox are both Canadian companies, too.
However, I certainly agree with your assessment that Canada lacks an identity on the web.
David
2 things (Score:2)
The other, EBay Canada is a piece of crap. Sure, we don't have to pay a huge currency exchange rate, but there's barely anything on there. I buy from Canadians when I can, but I usually can't find stuff I'm looking for in the country.
never had a problem (Score:2)
The only time I ran into a problem was when I bought from Canadian companies...Once from www.dealsdirect.com [dealsdirect.com], they lied to me, ignored me, and in general gave really crappy service.
And once from ATI...they are a canadian company, but absolutley refuse to sell products in Canada.
Gotta Love those Patriotic companies....
Suggested Canadian based online stores (Score:2)
So, for DVD's, I'll reccomend www.cnl.com [cnl.com] based out of Vancouver. I've only been dealing with them for about 2 weeks now but I've been very happy, and they come highly reccomended to me. Consider, around midnight on a Wednesday I ordered 5 DVD's. Late Thursday I got a shipping confirmation, and I had the DVD's in my hands on Friday afternoon. All for $8 cdn shipping. Prices are quite reasonable, only a little bit more than buying from Express once you factor in shipping and customs fees, plus you get 'em in 2 days (or less), not 2 weeks.
For CD's, I usually buy from Chapters Online [chapters.ca], but the trick with Chapters is to only buy items that are listed as "shipping in 24 hours". If it says anything else, especially the dreaded "1-2 weeks", expect to be waiting 1-2 months, if you get it at all. Other options are HMV [hmv.com] who's prices seem okay. I preordered Moby's new CD from them because I came across a $5 coupon
For books, again, Chapters Online [chapters.ca] is your best bet. Really good prices, especially with a Chapters One Card (you pay a $15 yearly fee and get 10% off everything, along with $5 in coupons for every $100 you spend). But again, only order if its in stock (shipping in 24 hours), otherwise its a real crap shoot as to when you'll get it.
For computer hardware, the best is easily Onvia [onvia.ca]. Great prices, and even better free shipping. Nothing better than buying a 21" monitor at a decent price and not having to pay for shipping. Service is great, shipping is fast (they courier it, so 2-3 days or so), and prices are competitive. Fairly often they have $25 and $50 off coupons, too. I've also done a fair bit of shopping from NCIX [ncix.com], based out of Vancouver. Their prices range from really good, to comparable to my local prices, to a bit high, but they're worth checking out. I got a killer deal on my IBM Deskstar 7200rpm 30 gig from them a while back, and got my Pioneer 10x DVD player from them last year when virtually no stores anywhere in North America were selling them. I'll definately continue dealing with both.
Someone forwarded www.goldfishlegs.com [goldfishlegs.com] to me the other day, and they've got reviews of Canadian E-Tailers, along with coupons and other goodies. I didn't agree with some of their reviews, but it seems like a useful site to keep bookmarked.
In general, my dealings with various Canadian online stores have been positive. Through harsh experience I've learned how to deal with Chapters (thankfully they're very responsive to e-mails), and I've only been ripped off once (www.stupidcomputers.com, they closed up shop and dissappeared, taking a lot of people's money with them. VISA refunded my money, thankfully). In general I'm willing to pay the little bit extra to buy from Canadian stores (support the economy _and_ get it in less than 2 weeks), except for extreme price differences and/or unavailability in Canada.
Hope this helps =)
Don't Deal with Insight Canada, they're deadbeats (Score:2)
I ordered two quantum 10000 rpm SCSI Ultra 160 18 GB hard drives from them about five months ago.
Even though their US parent company [insight.com] listed those drives as in-stock, the Canadian subsidiary had to order them from a distributor and estimated they would take a month to arrive.
After repeated phone calls about where my disks drives were going unreturned, I gave up on ever getting my order. I figured they'd lost it. Finally after I moved out of my house in St. John's and left the country and was in the US again, they shipped the drives and charged my card. I'd long since spent the money on the card that I'd set aside for the drives, thus prompting a call from my bank's security department wondering where their money was.
Question - why did the bank authorize the charge when there couldn't have been more than 50 dollars in available room on the card?
What followed was days and days of struggling with Insight Canada to get my card refunded. Eventually my bank got tired of waiting and covered the charge just by taking the money from my checking account.
It's been two weeks since Insight Canada claims they refunded the money for those two very expensive drives, and my card still has not been credited. I check with my bank every couple of days.
If anyone at Insight is reading this and wants to investigate this, my sales rep is Jordy at x5087.
Re:Canadian problem NOT world (Score:2)
(Notice the use of the word infamous) What these do have in common though apart from all being no more, is high visibility.
You made me laugh though
"Give the anarchist a cigarette"
Well that lit a fire, I'm told my card is credited (Score:2)
Note that I was told my card had been credited about two weeks ago, and I've been checking with my bank every couple days to try to verify that, to no avail.
Well since I posted the above comment and forwarded the URL to the comment and this discussion to Insight Canada customer service, I received an email from someone in their credit processing department informing me that she just credited my card for CDN$1944.62.
Thanks Slashdot!
She said it would take three or four days for the credit to appear, but I will post a note here once the credit has actually appeared.
Lack of High-End Components a Serious Problem (Score:2)
The whole reason I wanted to buy those two Ultra160 hard drives was because I wanted to use them in my work. One for use in a high-end Linux server, and one for use in a Mac 8500.
I couldn't find such drives in St. John's Newfoundland, or a SCSI Ultra160 controller (to be fair, I did get my 39160 controller from Insight, although it still took several weeks).
I didn't want to run an e-commerce site. I just wanted to have fast machines for use in my office. The Linux server was going to serve source code via Samba to a Mac and a Windows machine, to enable simultaneous cross-platform development.
To make matters worse, I wanted to use the Ultra160 drive on a SCSI-2 50 pin single-ended bus. You can do this - see http://www.scsifaq.org [scsifaq.org] - but you need a 68 conductor to 50 conductor adapter which terminates the high byte in the manner specified for Ultra160.
Just try finding one of those in Canada! I ordered it from California from one of the cable vendors listed in the SCSI faq.
With all the little components I was wanting, as well as technical books (Chapters in St. John's is decent, but not as good as a Silicon Valley bookstore), I was frequently being awakened from bed for weeks by the Purolator man delivering some widget or other for weeks after I moved to St. John's.
With Insight's interminable delay in getting my drives to me, and being able to locate a good dual-Xeon motherboard with the extra widgets for clustering ability (out-of-band control), I never did build my server.
And then when my Compaq 1800T laptop [goingware.com] had power connector problems and wouldn't charge, Compaq wouldn't send the new power adapter to Canada, even though they have a Canadian subsidiary; it's a US only model that I bought in the US. I had to have Compaq express the new power adapter to my dad in Washington State, and he expressed it to me in Newfoundland, at a cost of $59 - coincidentally, the price of buying a brand-new power adapter.
It turns out that the new power adapter does not completely solve my charging problem, so I'm getting ready to contact Compaq about sending the CPU in for warranty repair. I'm figuring they'll tell me I have to ship it to my dad and then they'll have FedEx pick it up at his house. Maybe when I'm home for thanksgiving...
Now, these are annoyances for me, but multiply them across the whole nation of Canada and I think you have a serious impact on the whole Canadian economy. I'd never have stood for bullshit like this when I was living in Santa Cruz [cruzio.com] - there are too many computer dealers in the area and in nearby Silicon Valley for anyone to stay in business with such poor performance.
Yes, this is annoying for me but what if you're trying to set up a Canadian e-commerce site? Where do you get your components? Can't get them at the screwdriver shop around the corner like I could in Santa Cruz. SCSI? What's that? Don't even ask about Ultra160 SCSI. It's not just a matter of having to pay the brokerage and shipping fees - it's the time to wait for things to ship and to clear customs, in such a competitive world as the Internet economy, it is simply absurd for anyone to attempt to make a real computer business in Canada.
I'm sad to say it, as I love living here in Canada (for reasons unrelated to the computer biz here), but being unable to deal with business matters effectively such as the lack of components and the lack of access to technical information like well-stocked technical bookstores where I can actually go in and flip through the pages to evaluate a book, is a significant factor in choosing to move back to the U.S.
There are other reasons, but that's one of them.
Funny, I'd thought that being away from Silicon Valley might be a problem in terms of not being able to find clients for my consulting business [goingware.com], but it's not, I still get lots of work from the Bay Area and elsewhere around the world. It's the grunge work like putting together a new machine in a hurry when my main development machine (that laptop) is down that I'm not able to do effectively here.