plain pixl

Estimated reading time: 3.0 minutes, 13.0 seconds, containing: 639 words

So today I've opened my twitter client up, and I was super surprised to see a good advertising that was retweeted by a lot of designers that Peachpit is having their deal of the week where they are selling right now for the lovely price of 9.99$ the book:

Undercover User Experience Design

I thought to myself, what a great looking book, at such a good price even someone from my country could afford to buy it, so I decided I should buy this e-book, since I knew that I had just got my PayPal account and my Visa to accept international payment.

All my enthusiasm went down the drain, when in the country list... I couldn't find my country listed as a country where I could buy anything from them, whether it was paperback or e-book.

I tried to select the nearest country from my country, and I've placed my credit card information, only to be announced that my credit card information doesn't match the country that I have selected.

Seeking help from the contact department brought some shocking news to me

Being eager to find out how come a country in the European Union is not allowed to buy books from a store that sells even to small islands, I figured I would give them an email to find out what is going on.

Can you imagine the shock that I've got when I've received this short reply stating the following:

"I apologize. Unfortunately we do not process and bill or ship orders to your location due to a high incidence of fraud. I am sorry. Sincerely,

-- cut out name, unimportant

Customer Service"

What do you know, all of a sudden I just found out that because of past experiences I can't order from them... but for how long?

A day? A month? A year? Ever?

How are they trying to help me make a purchase from them by telling me that my country is off-limits?

When are they going to start checking if my country is safe now for purchases? And what kind of threats are there for fraud when you pay by credit card or PayPal account for a 10$ e-book?

Banning a country will result in no gains in trust or sales

I know that my country has a high piracy rate but this kind of attitude help no one... you can imagine that if you can't buy something then you will try to get it in any ways that you can, whether that is legal or not, so why not just make it easier for the people to buy from you, to see that it's better to buy things from you rather than pirating them.

Look at Itunes, people buy from them because of the shopping experience... rather than pirating, or even look at Microsoft, where in my country they even had special prices for licences of Windows, knowing that the piracy rate in my country was high.

Should they have pulled their sales all together because of piracy and fraud or try to make it easier for the genuine people to buy things that they sell?

Calling for help in this unjust behaviour

If you think that this behaviour is wrong, help me spread the news about this incident, because I don't think that an online store should just ban an entire country, without telling you what plans they have at least for the future to enable paying again for a country... after all things have changed a lot, where Romania is right now in the European Union, and we can use PayPal to pay online, so you can't bring the argument that we are an entire nation of cheaters and fraudsters, and neither has anybody the right to label an entire country as fraudsters so let's just ban them all!!!