Exclusive Internet shopping
Published: 29 May 2001 20:13 BST
The checkout assistant simply ignores you.
After ringing your stock-broker and asking for the name of the financial director, you finally get through to a chief assistant to the assistant chief of customer rejection, who says: "We don't sell to people who don't live in the US."
If you go to the Lloyds TSB site you'll discover that it will offer you a chance to register -- on a "free online resource from Lloyds TSB that helps you build and manage a successful business." Register, and you'll discover that "this site ... is only to be used by persons who access it from within the UK."
Recently, I found my favourite sailing sandals, made by Teva, were falling to bits. I went onto the Web to find a shop selling them, and discovered their US site selling exciting new products. And it has a nice "find a local store" button.
You can enter your London postcode in the box saying "enter your zip code" and it won't reject it. It will just say "sorry, there were no dealers found in that area." No button saying "overseas customers press here" or "international" or anything. And yet I know perfectly well that Teva has a UK operation and that it will find you a shop.
This sort of thing is depressingly common.
Now, the excuse that some pundits will offer you, is that it's a matter of 'jurisdiction' -- the laws of precedent don't cover a banking transaction carried out in two countries using software provided in one. And, I dare say, there are possible legal problems for which the solution isn't obvious.
Being an old codger, I was around when ball-point pens were first released onto the market. And I can remember being vastly amused when banks refused to accept cheques written in ball-pen, or Biro, on the grounds that they might not be legal.
But the fact is, international finance using electronics over wire is not a new trick. Banks have been gaily authorising each other to do inter-bank transfers, across international boundaries, for years. You can use your London-issued credit card in Singapore, Hawaii, Australia or Peru -- yes, over the Internet -- without causing the international monetary system to collapse.
And you can write your cheque (or even your check, in America) using felt-tipped pens, as well as with ball-point scribers.
I asked a friend of mine (who has worked with accountants and lawyers for so long, he is starting to show signs of turning into a troll himself) what the banks and international businesses were doing about this.
His opinion, expressed with a vehemence which surprised me, was that "banks have to be grownup about this" and that jurisdiction was a time-bomb waiting to explode under e-commerce and international software licences. And, I dare say, he's right... but what are they doing about it?
Nothing. They have their heads in the sand.
For a start, you'd have to have very clever software running to be able to detect an overseas Internet call. It's perfectly possible to set up something that would alert you to the possibility of such a call; but they don't have it. So, in fact, you can happily log onto these sites and carry out business.
Their theory is that if they pretend they don't know, they can repudiate a transaction that goes wrong, on the grounds that it wasn't valid. This sounds, to me, very similar to the theory that normal rights of purchase for software are invalidated by a shrink-wrap "licence" statement in the box. In short, it's cobblers.
As my half-troll friend admitted, the people who are writing these terms and conditions, are just hiding their heads in the sand. They may think they are covering their backsides in case of trouble; but if the time-bomb does go off, they won't find this sort of form of words any more protection than a cob-web in a blizzard.
If, and when, the financial community wakes up to its need to support international transactions over the Internet, it will formulate mechanisms that cover it, and it will enforce them -- as it has done with credit cards, and inter-bank funds transfer, and will ball-point pens.
Until then, they are just hiding from a disaster, which is waiting to befall them. And it will.
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