by admin
If a web site doesn’t deliver products to your country is there a way to get it delivered by a proxy service?
December 26, 2009 in SOA Answers by admin
Shopping online allows people to purchase products that can meet their specific requirements. So it’s annoying when you fall in love with a product and are unable to purchase it due to the fact that the website does not sell or ship to people overseas. Products are usually available from other web sites which can make it possible to get the product you want, but some products are not available from other web sites and or those web sites do not sell or ship to people overseas. So I’m wondering if there is a way to get items that wouldn’t be normally available to your country through a proxy service? Since I live in Australia, and many products are only sold to people in the US, I know how frustrating it can be. It’s obvious to me that I’m not the only one who encounters this problem, and that there is obviously a market for this kind of proxy purchasing service. So is there one that is reliable, trustworthy, and affordable?
I live in Brazil and frequently bump into this situation. I haven’t yet used any of the possible solutions and they might be slightly different for people in Australia.
First of all, it’s necessary to define what kind of barrier you’re bumping into. I know of these:
1) Credit card billing address is not in the US. The main concern here is credit card fraud. The site is woried that it won’t be able to collect/prcecute you if you deny this purchase. If you buy alot, maybe you can open a checking acount in the US and have a credit card linked to it. Also, it seems to me that credit card compannies (Visa and Mastercard) are trying to address this issue and it seems that one solution will be thru the use of debt cards (Electron and Maestro) with enhanced seccurity. In these cases, smaller sites, in which you can acctually ring in and talk to someone might accept money order or some other solution.
2) Another barrier is that a site might not have international delivery. One thing that might work, and I’m not sure this is what you were calling proxy, is a US address. I’ve received several e-mails offereing this service, but since I buy mostly books and cd’s, I wasn’t interested. Basically, you register and receive a US address. When ordering, you enter this address and the sites will ship your orders there. The company offering this virtual address service will then mail it to your real address. The only company I know that does it is LanBox. It is a Lan Chile group company which should qualify it as a reasonably serious company. But it operates only in some Latin American countries (I supose the ones Lan Chile flies to). Its site is at http://www.lanboxusa.com .
What you might want to be aware of in these services is if the companny offering this service is giving you a P.O. box or and actual address. I’ve seen some sites stating that they do not mail to PO boxes. Also, this service is not cheap. There is a flat fee (or rent if you will) and a cost per order. Plus the delivery cost that the site will charge you.
3) Finnally, another kind of barrier I’ve encountered is when attepting to buy a downloadable item like music or films. itunes and Google Videos, for example, do not allow sales to Brazil. I guess there concern here is that the legal system and law enforcement agencies will not do enough to prevent piracy. I think there are proxies that might be of use if the downloaded file is not limited to one computer only. There are a few questions on Answers concerning proxies and following these might give a clue.
I know none of this helped you much but it might help some of the other readers.
PS: Don’t have to give me the points.