The Breitling Watch Source Forums

This one has been bugging me for a while and in light of Driver8's recent thread on US sellers not wanting to ship internationally, I figured that I would rant a bit! My sister still lives in England and for Christmases and Birthday it is sometimes easier to be able to buy things from UK sellers for delivery than to try and ship internationally. For things like Amazon that works great, but why do so many UK based e-commerce sites / retailers refuse to accept that other countries exist on this planet? I can't remember how many times I have got through to the checkout at different sites only o be rejected because I don't have a UK billing address or UK credit card.

If it was shipping I could understand it, but even where they accept that people may want to deliver to a different address to the shipping address they can't accept that the billing address may be outside of the UK. Today I got stopped by a billing address field that wouldn't allow me to enter an address, just a house number and postal code with a mandatory address search. Of course because my postal code wasn't a UK one they suddenly didn't want my money. I assume that the same issue would have happened in that situation with an EU address.

This is 2014, and a credit card is a credit card, what the heck is it about UK sellers that makes this so difficult?

Hmmmm, obviously I've not come across this problem as I live in the UK, but I can't for the life of me figure out why they would insist on a UK billing address.

All of these financial "difficulties" drive me mad. In this day and age it just shouldn't be that hard to conduct international transactions. The annoying thing is, the infrastructure is clearly in place for commercial/business needs or else international trade and the stock market would grind to a halt.... so why is it so tough for joe-public at times? Daft.

_________________
Driver8

Site Moderator

I have not had the experience myself, except for once nearly. A German seller point blank refused to ship to Australia so I did not even get to buy.

I would think that laziness plays a part but perhaps a number of them can't get the exchange rate adjustments without being penalised financially.

_________________
Jim

"You have Control".

No exchange rate issues at all - charge credit card in GBP and let the card company deal with it.

No, I didn't mean that. But I think it's more to do with laziness anyway. Some see international sales as a pain. Different and even foreign customs & expectations, so better the devil you know. That sort if thing. Dealing with customer service over long distances can also be tricky. But what could possibly go wrong! Right........

_________________
Jim

"You have Control".

I don't see what's international about it. A UK seller sells an item for shipment to a UK address and processes a credit card. Who cares that the credit card is not from the UK, if I walked into their store they wouldn't turn my card away!

Have it your own way then.

_________________
Jim

"You have Control".