Re: [NTLK] Purchases in Germany

From: Andrei Chichak (acpmiedm_at_telusplanet.net)
Date: Thu Apr 22 2004 - 11:15:02 PDT


At 07:01 PM 4/21/2004, you wrote:
>The reason that US sellers will refuse to ship outside the US is that
>VISA/MC do not do address verification outside the US (not even in
>Canada, I think).

Canada DOES do address checking. I find that a lot of US companies do not
do shipping outside of the US because their banking system is so screwed
that they will not clear cheques or money orders in a timely fashion when
they are drawn on foreign banks. The Royal Bank of Canada even has branches
in the 'states, but the local banks will not clear a cheque until they have
the money in their accounts (probably plus a bit of time). I have even had
problems with money orders drafted by Canada Post. Now I send travellers
cheques.

The other problem that US companies have is their attraction to UPS.
Shipping UPS to Canada is "a bad idea". You can expect a brokerage charge
of a significant portion of the original cost of the goods (or even higher
than the price of the goods). Some US companies have UPS so engrained in
their systems (whether through bribery or convenience) that they have no
ability to send via regular post.

Andrei

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