Buying in the States was Re: HP analyzer probes

From: Joe R. <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com>
Date: Wed Jun 30 06:58:15 2004

At 02:26 AM 6/30/04 -0400, Der mouse wrote:

>
>Europe is civilized. Europeans understand that the world is a
>patchwork of many countries and many societies and are prepared to deal
>with that.
>
>The US is not so lucky. Yes, there are plenty of people in the US who
>are internationalized - but there are a depressing number to whom the
>world (apparently) consists of the US plus assorted debris not worth
>bothering with. An overseas buyer yes, is perceived as "just one o'
>dem furriners",

    BS! You've been watching too much television trash! Americans DO NOT
have that attitude. They have a more integrated society that includes more
races and regilions and foreign visitors and immigrants than any country
that I've ever been to and I've been to a LOT of them. I HAVE a Canadian
citizenship and I've lived and worked in Canada as well as several other
countries and I'll be happy to discuss the differnces with you if you'd
like! Even with the problems here I'd rather live here than any other
country that I've been to! But to get to cases, the big difference is that
for the most part we have common customs, common practices and a common
language which makes it simple to do business between states. For example I
can ship from Florida to California just as easily as I can ship to the
next town down the road. Canadians can't say that! You even have customs
duties and sales taxes when selling things from one province to another. In
fact, most states in the US reguire that you collect sales tax on items
sold. However if it's going to another state then you are not reguired to
collect tax so in some ways out of state sales are even easier. The
opposite is true in Canada and most other countries. You also have to do
everything in two langauges (by law, no less!). Europe can be maddening to
deal with! Every country has different rules about what size and weight
packages you can send there. Futhermore you can't use some shipping classes
to some coutries. For example you can't send Global Priority Mail to Italy.
EVEN more, if you want to insure the package then you can only send it
certain classes in some countries. Within the US you can insure any package
of any shipping class.

   Something else that most Europeans aren't aware of is just how big this
country is! (Yeah Canada is bigger but less than 10% is really populated).
We don't need to deal with foreign countries. I don't mean that in a
negative sense but what I mean is that we can find everything we need here
(including plenty of E-bay buyers) without the hassles of foreign
currencies, languages, quirky shipping regulations, customs duties, etc
etc. For example just last week I found two books that I wanted to buy from
a dealer in the UK. By the time that I went through the hassles and money
conversions and getting the money to them, paid shipping, dealt with
customs, etc etc it was going to cost over twice as much as the sales
price. I gave up and bought the books in the US, it ended up being cheaper
and a lot less trouble. All I had to do here was to pick up the telephone
and call them in Massachusetts (at no charge), give them my credit card
number and address and told them what I wanted. The books arrived
yesterday (all three are first editions of the MIT Radiation Lab books).
There were no fees to pay and no forms to fill and and zero hassles.

  speaking of hassels I guess I can throw in one barb here. I have found
that service in some European counties and in some places in Canada is
LOUSY! They act like they're doing you a favor to wait on you or to sell
you anything. They only thing that I can says about that is that they would
not have a job long here with their attitudes. French Canada (Montreal
specificly) was particularly interesting. They REALLY push the French
language there and they are required by law to greet you in French and to
try and initiate the conversation in French. I found that they frequently
refused to speak English to other Canadians from outside of Quebec since
they expected them to be able to speak in French. But if you let them know
that you were an American most of them would happly speak to you in English
since they didn't expect Americans to speak French. AND if you let them
know that you were from Florida, many of them couldn't do enough for you!
It seems that they all dream of retiring and moving to Florida :-)


    Joe





and the potential market is seen as so small as to be
>not worth the hassle. (The problematic people most likely have never
>even tried to ship internationally and perceive the hassle as far
>greater than it actually is. I'm talking about the sort of person who
>thinks of euros as play money because they're colourful instead of
>being "good honest greenbacks".)
>
>It's a baffling mindset to wrap your head around if you're not trapped
>in it yourself. But I've become convinced that something very much
>like it is all too real.
>
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Received on Wed Jun 30 2004 - 06:58:15 BST