Thread: Very odd customer service from the US

Originally Posted by Woodwould

I was interested in purchasing something from Hartville Tool in the US, so I checked their policy to establish whether they catered for international customers. Under 'Shipping' I was pleased to read "International destinations. Please call for shipping options and quotes", so I emailed them and and asked about the cost of shipping the item to Australia. This was their reply:

"Thank you for contacting us! We do accept international orders, under the
following conditions:

1)The delivery must go to a USA address (Canada and Mexico excepted)."

This has happened to me several times with scientific parts and instruments. Their assumption is you will ship it to a "local to them agent " who will handle your international shipping. A PITA for us but it avoids them dealing with international shipping. They probably also have contracts with various couriers who can only handle all of North America. We eventually found a shipping agent to handle this for us but he started charging too much and we stopped using him - now we use a private individual.

I used to have an account with a forwarding agent in the US. After a certain volume/value of goods were accumulated, they would forward the lot to me and process Customs clearance etc. However, those were commercial purchases and quantities. One would have thought the majority of Hartville's orders would be for less than $2,000 and be from private individuals.

I am fortunate in having a friend in the US who will receive any purchases I make, then combine them in to one parcel.

This is not only from companies who won't ship outside the US, but also orders larger than a small Flat Rate envelope so that they can alll go in to one Flat Rate box.

He is a very helpful individual

This sort of thing annoys me, it shows I think just what the Yanks think of those outside of their borders. I could go on, maybe I'm right, maybe it's just me

FWW is an example. I subscribe to the magazine and online, but if you live outside of North America, you don't exist in their eyes, so far as competitions (yeah, I know, cost of freight etc. )

Happens in the UK aswell, lots of UK mags don't allow overseas entries in the competitions.

It's more trouble to ship overseas, they have to decide if the sale is worth the hassle, esp if stuff arrives damaged or customer is unhappy.

Anyway there are many retailers in the US and elsewhere who ARE happy to deal with us.

I realise some overseas companies take the parochial stance, but if you advertise international shipping, then b****y well follow through with it. It was such a waste of time and effort.

I did fire this response back at them though:

How utterly ridiculous! What's the point of stating you accept international orders on your site when you don't ship internationally? Am I supposed to select a random beneficiary in the US and send them an early Christmas present? Has the US-induced global economic decline now forced you to attract charity from overseas?

Rockler got my order plus another item I spotted on their site.

The issues with competitions is every county (and sometimes states, South Australia I'm looking at you) have different LAWS about competitions, making it very difficult to have a global competition.

I hope you told them you purchased from Rockler instead

Originally Posted by echnidna

I hope you told them you purchased from Rockler instead

I didn't place my order with Rockler until after I responded to Hartville, however, I think I should let them know they lost a deal as a result of their nonsensical policy.

Sadly, I can just imagine the Mgr's reply to his assistant when such an e-mail is brought to their attention...

"See? This is why we don't bother with that market."

It's amazing how people can twist things to support their opinion.

Another problem you can run into is that the US company will ship overseas but will only accept credit cards from a US address. (AVS - address verification system)

Originally Posted by Waldo

This sort of thing annoys me, it shows I think just what the Yanks think of those outside of their borders. I could go on, maybe I'm right, maybe it's just me

FWW is an example. I subscribe to the magazine and online, but if you live outside of North America, you don't exist in their eyes, so far as competitions (yeah, I know, cost of freight etc. )

After 35 years in Greater Los Angeles, we came down to our new home to make wine on the Big Island and, originally, to Tassie to chase down some Blackwood for guitar manf. friends in the States.

Having been involved in import/export of Australian and Cali wines, may we proffer a bit of personal insight:

- There are 330 million bodies in the US and another 100 million in the rest of NA - a BIG market as opposed to 21 million here.
- Customs in both countries (US & AUS) is a quagmire to deal with.
- International shipping of certain items is prohibited.
- Many companies in both countries have a she'll-be-right-mate attitude when it comes to market share expansion... esp, overseas. (Try and get Maton to ship you a guitar if you live in LA)
- We agree that it is a PITA not to be able to get what we want - there are a gang of things that I would like to buy from suppliers over there and it takes a bit of educating of vendors at times. i.e. StewMac, Grizzly, i can go on, but won't
- Freight consolidators and freight forwarders make a living sorting things like this out.
- The particular instance mentioned in this thread would me off, too.

Our point: Business people are business people. Some are on the ball and some blow balls. Not a flag-waving red neck (well not a flag waver anyway ;-) here and not sticking up for the US per se, but the assumption that there is some form of national arrogance that causes bad business practices is off-base IMHO. And, brother, trust me when I say I love Australia.. this is home.

You want a helluva time getting things like this handled, buy raw materials out of Thailand, Burma, South Africa or Brazil... from our experience there is a whole lot more of "national arrogance, ne poor business practice" in the developing world than one would find in the G8 countries. Just sayin'...

steps off the soap box

- Riggsy

VAsia offer forwarding service from US, Asia, and Europe. Not overly cheap at first glance but may sometimes be viable for one off deals that can't be repeated, particularly if you don't know people in the source country that will forward packages for you.

This is common with many USA suppliers. If there is no one else, there are a couple of places that give you a USA address and they forward ship when the goods arrive there.

I use MYUS.com but there are others as well. They can even buy for you direct from US stores or Ebay, if its more convenient.

http://www.myus.com/index.shtml