Restrictive Sales Practices on the Web? 736
"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."
"Can't be bothered..." (Score:5, Insightful)
It costs money and time and expertise to establish a world-wide shipping channel. You have to know a lot more about international trade law, and liabilities in cases of returns/exchanges/credits are much more complex.
Most small companies can't be bothered to grow that kind of capability, as the short-sighted shareholders (public or private) won't accept the large up-front cost in that kind of expansion.
Sounds like a market opportunity to me (Score:4, Insightful)
tarrifs, trade restrictions, VAT, etc (Score:5, Insightful)
BECOMING more US Centric? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Therefore (Score:3, Insightful)
So they should only put their website up on the USA Wide Web? I'd like to know how to access that.
If i find site that won't ship to me, i'll be unhappy, and maybe try to convince them otherwise, but i'm not going to demand that they leave and go make their own damn web.
You're blaming the wrong country (Score:3, Insightful)
*Please note that 42.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot, including mine.
Why not try hungarian sites? (Score:2, Insightful)
Can you say.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hightened security on shipping?
Cost to verify overseas c'cards?
Cost of refused delivery?
Cost of RMAs?
Import duties?
English only packaging?
Too many hassles (Score:2, Insightful)
However, there are a number of problems due to which a company would be reluctant to ship to any random country:
1) Local laws: the laws in each country could be different. Its too much work to figure out whether you are satisfying all the local laws, before you can ship there.
2) Fraud: as someone else pointed out above, chances of credit card fraud are much higher.
Here in India, we don't really have anything akin to the US social security number (nothing that works, anyway). So lots of people just stop paying bills (credit card, cell-phone, personal loan) before they move to a different city. And there's not much that can be done about it.
If this is a problem a local company faces, imagine what would happen to a company that doesn't even have an office here.
3) Lost in the mail: Often, items shipped internationally get lost somewhere en-route and never reach the recipient. If it is not stolen or damaged along the way, it might get stuck in customs clearance. Sending it through a reliable channel like Fedex cost a godawful lot of money.
And often, customers are going to blame the company if the goods don't reach.
4) Lack of interest: with all the above problems, it is rare that there is an item that is not available locally and easily, but at the same time is popular enough to justify going through all the trouble.
navin.
Word Wide Web != Word Wide Shopping (Score:4, Insightful)
That's like complaining that the front page of the New York Times on the web isn't world-centric (hint: it's not even US-centric, it focuses on New York)
Personal insight... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a pain in the ass.
An international package takes at least 3 times the paperwork to fulfill. There's a 4-part customs form, customs declarations, and not to mention ungodly postage. It also screws up shipping calculations. In the US, you can safely charge a flat rate fee for shipping and that's that. You can even run actual shipping rates through the current USPS And FedEx rate tables. Now, bump it up to international shipping. You HAVE To insure everything that goes international, since the package is handed off between organizations many times if you use the US Post Office. UPS and FedEx are ungodly expensive internationally and hardly pay to use. Not to mention that many international customers don't have English as their first language making correspondance that much more difficult.
Now what about your return policy? I sure as hell don't want to be sending a call tag for $100 to get a computer shipped back to me because they didn't like it and it's broken. It's just impossible to provide the same level of customer service to someone not in the same country as you.
So if you were wondering, that's why US Companies hate shipping abroad. Canada and Mexico are a little easier since they have more relaxed borders, but still a pain in the butt.
Re:The real reason (Score:5, Insightful)
So... Do you know where Hungary is? Can you find it on a map? Without Google?
I had a general idea when I started reading the story, and when I thought of this comment I was able to place it exactly in my head, and could even tell you nearby countries...(no hints for you!)
Enjoy!
Re:Can't buy G4 and G5 based Macs.... (Score:5, Insightful)
To get this back on topic: AFAIK, all of Apple's online stores (it has them for various countries) only sell to people living in the respective countries, and I'm afraid the feeling in Cupertino is that the Mac market share in Hungary is too small to warrant a localized online store with all the additional costs. (Call center, etc.)
And the ITMS is, as you probably know, all tangled up in complicated European licensing issues - there's no European equivalent for the RIAA and even within single countries, the labels can't seem to agree on a common policy.
Will Amazon.com sell you DVDs? They should - there isn't that much of a warranty issue with them and I can get them overe here in Germany without any problem.
(BTW, if you're in the market for US-DVDs and Amazon won't sell them to you, try play.com or dvdboxoffice.com )
As for the earlier post that mentioned Hungary's countryside: I sure hope it's beautiful; I'll be visting Budapest a month from now.
Welcome to the real world (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Let me sum it up in one word... (Score:2, Insightful)
Is it just me, or is it somewhat laughable, that the best payment method when crossing national boundaries, still seems to be cash in an envelope?
Foolishly, I thought that paypal would be easy, and work internationally, oh how wrong I was. I eventually gave up, there seemed to be no way at all to transfer money into a paypal account. I ask the same as in the article, "the money is in my account, I want to transfer it, what's the problem?"... Sigh.
I'm limited to
Ok, so maybe I can understand that banking everywhere hasn't progressed into www yet, but come on, should transfers really take hours, let alone DAYS!? *grumble* Actually, I could live with days, if it just would work for more than one country.
I'm straying from my original intent... To ask the slashdot crowd, for ideas on a payment system of the future. Do the banks in your country use a system which you like/dislike? The banks might not listen or care, but brainstorming can never hurt.
Re:"Can't be bothered..." (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [ibm.com].
If he wishes to buy direct from Dell, he should see Dell's Hungarian Website [dell.com].
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 [apple.com]. 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.
Web Retailer Experience (Score:2, Insightful)
People are too damn lazy (Score:1, Insightful)
Having lived overseas for many years, I can sympathize. However, that doesn't mean I stood for it. Get off your asses and make a difference rather waiting for someone else to do it.
Re:"Can't be bothered..." (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a real need for an expat friendly cross shipping service that will allow you to have a virtual US presence, e-mail you your postal mail, and ship your stuff further on, once it has arrived at your US address. If you can have a credit card issued to you with a US billing address nobody gives a damn that the check is drawn on a Hungarian bank when you pay your bills.
I've informally done this kind of work for a Romanian firm who needed to buy a copy of some specific variant of Fortran but couldn't get anybody to take their money. No, you can't patent it as I claim prior art but feel free to open a formal business on this plan.
I can find it (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
How many people in this article are defending business practices that prevent people outside the US from ordering from US companies?
Do I smell the scent of hypocrisy? Naaah...
Re:"Can't be bothered..." (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking as the manager of an international sales channel, I can hopefully fill you in on the big picture.
Re:BECOMING more US Centric? (Score:4, Insightful)
The guy was wrong from the beginning. It's not becoming more US centric. It's quite the opposite.
I say that as an American that has lived overseas for fifteen years. The world was infinitely more US centric to me back in the eighties. In order to understand this you need to realize that the definition of being from any particular place has broken down enormously in the last few decades.
It's like saying that Japanese automakers are edging out detroit. Well, that's a bit ridiculous since many Japanese automakers are largely owned by both European and American interests and vice versa. To speak of anything being centered on any one physical region is a rapidly deteriorating notion that was far more defensible in previous decades.
Re:The real reason (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, well. In senior high we actually had to learn about 200 countries (their locations that is) and had an exam on them. Sure, I can't remember all the countries anymore or name all the countries along the African coast, but I certainly can point to the right direction when I hear a name of a country anyway.
Not being mean or anything, but the average geographical knowledge of an american is pretty damn poor.
Re:your point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because I am visible to you over a network doesn't mean I am obligated to do business with you. The nationality independence of the web means Turkish people can buy things off Turkish sites, Japanese people can do business on Japanese sites, etc. and it works well for everybody. It doesn't imply that everyone doing business on the Internet is responsible for servicing customers from anywhere in the rest of the world.
People might have a whole bunch of reasons for limiting service to locations closer to themselves. There could be all sorts of paperwork and infrastructure that might not be properly set up to handle the transaction, or the associated overhead may overwhelm the profits from an extended market.
I don't understand where people come up with some of these strange beliefs about the Internet that they seem to have. How is it in principle any different from the global telephone network? For some reason, nobody has any common sense regarding the web, but phones don't seem to confuse people.
If I have a pizzeria in New York City and I install a phone, and you call me from Los Angeles trying to order a pepperoni pizza, I'm going to hang up on you. Having a phone number that is accessible to you doesn't mean I owe you my business. Even though you can dial my number and easily get in touch with me, there might be other problems, like the difficulty in getting a physical object like a pizza to you. The ease of the phone call hardly enters into it. "Why aren't you calling pizzerias in Los Angeles?" I'd ask, before hanging up. And that would be a reasonable response. How is having a web site any different? It isn't.
Re:"Can't be bothered..." (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The reason is (Score:1, Insightful)
Right, which is why my U.S born wife must get her orders from GAP sent to her mothers house in N.C and then have her mother forward them to us here in the U.K because gap.com won't ship outside the U.S.
Those other guys who ship straight from the U.S to the U.K must be getting suckered all the time! Oh wait, CC fraud is about the same in the U.K as it is in the U.S..
insurance (Score:3, Insightful)
So we bought a car, the travel insurance to Hungarije was 15% or so higher then if we would have gone to Spain or some other western european country.
The economy is low so companies do everything to save money/not pay money. Terrorism is the mainstream accepted excuse. And since Hungary was under Socialist/Communist (which one was it agian?) reign till 1991 or so, places countries as such in the High Risk Countries category.
I hope things like these will resolve when Hungary joins the European Union. Not that I really want that, cause wealthy west-europeans will move to Hungary and destroy the beautifull countryside to build office buildings and such, and Hungarians will probably move to the west so you culture will be lost aswell... But thats a different discussion..
Re:"Can't be bothered..." (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree with your payment comments except you can say 'payment on international orders (except to countries with overseas offices) must clear before shipment'. Again this is where people are asking you to sell them something, you're not looking for the business it's finding you. Annoying your customers is a good thing to worry about, but if you won't sell to them that's pretty annoying, and they aren't customers. True but mostly when I buy computer goods from stores in the UK they come with a multi-lingual, mult-national warranty/liability statement. The guy in Hungary is looking to buy from the likes of IBM, after all... Agreed if you are making an effort to sell to that country/language. But where you're not and people are coming to your English-language website and trying to order goods you don't want to sell them? Lots of companies do email support in English only.
I don't mean to sound like some Anglophone zealot, all my comments apply equally to Francophone and other websites if someone makes the effort to try and order from them.
You have some good points about international contract law but I suspect you could come up with a 'whitelist' of safe countries to sell to (probably most of the EU , NZ, Australia, Japan etc). I mean most sites say they will on sell to residents of the U.S. or Canada after all.
Re:Personal insight... (Score:3, Insightful)
As someone who gets a fair bit of stuff from the US and UK into NZ, I can see your points, but from a customer perspective it's lousy.
A few points:
PIA? Your call, but many businesses are built on exports, my own included. If you want to limit your market to your own backyard then fine, but remember that you're missing out on most of the world. The forms might be a hassle, but only until you get used to it and the processes involved.
Shipping costs and insurance? Of course they're different, nobody expects flat rate international postage, so pass the costs on to the customer.
Returns policy? Usual deal - buyer pays shipping. Most US shops charge a "restocking fee" anyway.
Customer service? Most of us do it for one of two reasons - cost or availablity. That's it. You don't order $300 worth of whatever from the other side of the world and expect to be talked through setup and install over the phone - you do it because it's not available locally, or not available for reasonable cost (eg passed through too many hands)
You reasons may be valid, but the feeling I get from many stores is that they think the world ends at US borders or it's just not worth bothering with foreigners, and that's not even getting into the "Made in China" electronics that can't be exported to some countries... My perspective is that a sale is a sale, and if I have to charge 10 bux to cover the 2 minutes it takes to fill in the forms, then so be it.
Re:"Can't be bothered..." (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The reason is (Score:5, Insightful)
The rate of fraud might be about the same, but have you tried looking at the legal burden of arresting someone overseas in a foreign sovereign nation vs. arresting someone a few states away? We might have extradition treaties with the UK, but to invoke it for a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars worth of fraud, every time such a crime is committed, would completely overrun law enforcement offices, making it impossible for them to deal with more serious matters.
Re:BECOMING more US Centric? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Can't be bothered..." (Score:2, Insightful)
The warranty period in Germany is NOT 3 Years but since 2003 it is 2 years. In the first half year the merchant has to prove that the good was ok at time of sale and any failure within this half year was due to misuse by the buyer.
BTW this applies to whole EU because the german laws were harmonized with EU Laws.
Re:"Can't be bothered..." (Score:3, Insightful)
Capitalist society is driven by customers. However, in this case, capitalism is restricted by international trade laws which make selling goods and services overseas difficult and often unprofitable. Consider this document [aiada.org]:
The 25 percent truck tariff evolved out of an agricultural dispute with West Germany. To retaliate against unfair treatment of U.S. frozen chicken exports to West Germany, President Lyndon Johnson imposed a 25 percent tariff on imported trucks valued more than $1,000 by Presidential Proclamation 3564 in 1963. Prior to this proclamation, imported trucks were subject to a tariff rate of 8.5 percent.
You mess with my frozen chickens and I'll drop a tariff on your light trucks. Crap like this is what makes it difficult to sell/buy overseas products.
Experience from a Mom & Pop Dotcom (Score:4, Insightful)
An order from there, especially multiple copies of items, books oriented toward teens such as comic book collections, etc., will raise a red flag, especially if a US credit card is used.
There's a issue with the credit card processors: They charge more for handling ex-US shipments, because of a higher risk, but if you put a foreign address in they make no attempt to verify the address. But what do they care? They don't accept any risk, except for the customer payment of the card. Everything else is risk to the merchant.
So our typical response is to request a photocopy of both sides of the credit card e-mailed or faxed to us. Often, the customer never replies in cases where we suspect fraud. We've only had one customer refuse to fax us the card (hey, we already had her number, what's the big deal), and she ordered it to her home in the US and shipped it overseas herself.
Politics and Greed (Score:3, Insightful)
The world wide web started in the US as a government program so it is difficult to make the claim that it is "becoming more and more centered on the USA".
These policies are an individual companies decision and they have the right to make such policies especially in the face of internet taxation.
I wish that the internet was as free as it once was however politics and greedy governments are working to destroy it all. It is only going to get worse.
Yup, it is. (Score:3, Insightful)
I assume that it is due to lack of enforcement of support from law enforcement in those areas
Get someone in the states to ship it (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering he's an American expat, I expect he prolly wants his crap in English anyway. I suspect this is the deal - he wants AMERICAN stuff while living in Hungary. Sorry, tho, that's just not how things work sometimes. The poster acts like this is some big US conspiracy to 0wnz0r the WWW, but it's generally a logistics thing - the few sales companies would get from Hungary isn't worth dealing with Hungary.
Considering the US has anachronistic laws dealing with export control of encryption and such, as well as other problems, it isn't worth the trouble of having the main sales unit deal with each country. For big companies like IBM, they have a unit for each country that are (hopefully) experts in local issues. So really, the only people with problems here are US expats who want stuff in English instead of the local language. In other words, him.
My advice to the guy would be to have some family in the states to order it for him and ship it. But complaining isn't going to help, and making it into some US vs. the world thing is silly.
Simple (Score:2, Insightful)
Doing everything by the "Book" when processing the card.
Finding out 2 months later the card was stolen, when the card company removes the funds from your account.
Getting NO help, support, relief from the card company, now thats fucking priceless!
Not Selling Outside the US (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"Can't be bothered..." (Score:4, Insightful)
No you aren't. You are a bunch of small and medium sizied markets, each with its own set of customs, tax, legal, shipping, and fraud headaches.
> It must be worth their while to sell to us.
It would be if your market was truly unified.
> If they don't we'll look elsewhere.
Of course you will. So what?
Re:Experience from a Mom & Pop Dotcom (Score:3, Insightful)
A question for you: The main issue in all this (aside from normal or corrupt shipping routes) really seems to be the payment method. Of courses, credit cards seem to be the method everyone uses, but that also seems like the method everyone is getting burned on. So, my question is, aren't there any internationally usable means of secured payment available to the average consumer? Isn't there a way to get a customer to jump through a hoop or two to ensure that they can order from a skittish vendor?
Perhaps I'm being naive, but this seems like a simple problem to solve (to my uninitiated eye anyway).
blame "protective" tariffs and laws (Score:3, Insightful)
-consumers
-nationalized industries
-subsidized companies
Imagine if you were to do business in the US and each state had 12 specific rules when it comes to completing a sale via the web...you'd basically go for California and maybe another populous state and write off the rest.
We thought about doing this awhile back, and here are just a few of the reasons why we bagged it:
French servers needed to be physically located in France, as did Italian ones.
There are at least 3 different sets of laws that constrain a company when it comes to returns: Imagine you sell something, and after a while, the user wants their money back...and you're obliged to give it to them or face the wrath of their country's laws.
Shipping can be a serious pain in the ass. Imagine getting your computer and Hungarian customs has swiped a few discs.
The VAT. Add 17% to the price of everything.
The rules are 'changing' (some of the above may no longer be true) so as soon as you're compliant with 12 countries, 3 others change the rules to make it 'easier' for businesses.
The fact is, Europe knows this is holding them back, but there are so many protective clauses that will get politicians slaughtered if they are rolled back. Your friendly neighborhood Hungarian PC maker would be quite upset if you could order from Dell.com.
Don't get me wrong, I love Europe, loved living there, and would prefer it to 99.9% of the places in the states, but for better or worse, our culture is set up to get business moving: one dot-com, 300 million potential customers. Europe: one dot-com per country, 2-20 million potential customers.
It's not going to happen until these countries release their grips on tariff mentality.
World Wide Web? (Score:2, Insightful)
Last time I checked I was using the WORLD Wide Web, and there seems little point wasting bandwidth to post your website to the world when only those living in the USA can buy and/or use the product.
Your telephone can call mine, too. That doesn't mean I have to do business with you. Get over it.