5 Reasons Why I Pay for Digital

I don't live in the US, nor am I a US citizen. I'm from Poland, and I live in Taiwan, that means the Internet content, free or paid, is very different for me, compared the "average" Internet user we seen often described on social media. Among my circles, paying for digital services and content is still considered stupid. It's ridiculous, but when I talk to my friends, I'm actually a little ashamed to admit I buy apps, or pay to download music, because my friends think that's waste of money (and they voice it out loud). Yet, I'm willing to pay, more and more.

In the past, I was on the "Internet should be free" side of the story. Generally, no private person (or even not many businesses) was paying for software in Poland in 2000s. I haven't been living in Europe for a while, and I do think some things are slowly changing, but generally, there is this strong thinking, we should be able to download things for free. Of course, there's plenty cool free stuff, but I must say… less and less as the companies are realizing how to monetize the "e-".

So here are my reasons, why I'm moving from free to paid:

1. Because I can.

I've started using the Internet when I was 16, and that was considered early for Eastern Europe standards. I know what modem is, I had one. Social media? The first I've used was mIRC. At that time, as long as you had the PC and the modem, things were free mostly. No one even considered if it was legal or not, because it was considered a nature of the Internet that its content was free. With time, the pirating issue grew, especially for downloading movies and music, with some spectacular cases of arresting the pirates. At that time, I could not buy anything on-line, even if I wanted, simply because I was still a student, I had no money really, and surely I had no credit card.  

Now I'm an adult, I have a debit card (credit is not necessary anymore to pay on-line), and spending 10 USD is not such a big deal anymore. I easily spend $10 for a coffee (very overpriced coffee) or for lunch, so why not spend $2.99 on an app that I will enjoy using much longer? Yet, I see around me, many of my peers did not make the leap, and stubbornly cling to the idea of "everything should be free". 

2. Convenience.

Obviously, as most of the apps is really just selling you convenience as a product. Obviously, I can still download almost any album or e-book, but sometimes I want them right now, without the hassle of going to shady websites, converting files, without waiting. Even though I have a pack of 1000+ e-books somewhere there on some DVD disc (LOL! I mean, disc! My new netbook doesn't even have optical reader), I prefer to purchase through Amazon, so that I can read the same book on my netbook, phone, and Kindle (I love how it syncs to the last page read).

3. Because there's no other option anymore.

In the past downloading "free" Windows or MS Office was not complicated, or there was always someone who could give a copy to you. Not anymore. Companies have learned how to protect their software, and it is not easy to pirate, unless you have some decent hacking skills.

4. Cloud subscriptions.

You can't pirate that. It's somehow interlaced with the convenience, but even deeper. Having your files, photos, books, music, contacts on the cloud changed the way we do and plan things. As I mentioned, I'm an expat, and cloud helps me so much with handling my matters between my home country and the place where I live, especially when I travel.

5. Quality.

Seriously, the quality of free stuff is getting worse. "You pay for what you get" is very true with digital.

Saying all that, there are still some barriers that are too high for me to cross, and often really annoy me and influence the way I feel about brands. This is what still needs to be done:

1. Geographical barriers!

 

Taiwan is beautiful, but not everything is available here
(Photo by 28andstillcounting)

I.HATE.IT.SO.MUCH! Yes, that much. Around five years ago I wanted to buy a movie soundtrack in mp3 form. I was in Taiwan, with Polish credit card, and Polish iTunes account. I literally have spent a day looking for a website that would sell this album to me. I found none! It's getting better in 2010s, I can buy on iTunes and Amazon now (not everything though), but still I feel discriminated. Even when things are restricted to Poland only, based on my IP address, I am blocked out anyway! I wrote more about payment problems in my previous post, but I am continuously frustrated every now and then. Brands are marketing things so well, creating needs in me, and then won't let me buy because of my location or nationality, or both.  I know there are legal issues here, but please, we need to solve this ASAP so companies can make more money and users can get the products they want. I would love to have Netflix, I really want to buy Kindle Fire, but I'm not allowed.

2. Prices.

I say I can pay, but you need to be reasonable. I know you've invested a lot of money and time in your service, but unless the price goes down I will not consider it. I mentioned MS Office above. Last year I've bought new netbook, and it came with Windows 8 built in, however no MS Office. I was thinking of buying it (I think Microsoft's cloud is actually really well-done and would work great with the Office), but for my private light use, the price is not adequate. Instead I'm paying for more space on my Google Drive and use Google Docs. Also, I was delighted to get e-mail from Google, about a month ago, informing me that monthly fees will be cheaper now. If your app costs below $10, I will not think that long before hitting "buy", but if it costs more, you will need to really use some convincing.

3. Free Trial.

That convincing is a free way to try your services. Fortunatelly, most companies already offer this option, but not all of them. Headspace is not cheap at all (really, I'm still shocked that I've actually subscribed, and I'm scared that my friends will find out about it!), but the 10 days free program got me so hooked, that 3 weeks after ending it, trying other similar apps, I just knew I couldn't live without it. I don't really regret, because I love it and use it daily. However, it was not an easy decision for me, and the free trial was the best hook.

So these are the reasons to buy or not, from my perspective. I think it's different than, for example, perspective of people from the US or the UK. When I talk to them, they tend to see less of a problem with the price levels than me ($100 a year? no problem for them). But I hope my parts of the world won't be overlooked by tech companies anymore. Otherwise, don't be surprised that "we" find other ways to access your products. One of the biggest reasons why I like Amazon and continue to buy from there is because they are quite open to international clients (I think they were one of the firsts to accept foreign debit cards as payment), even though their newest products are US-only. I hope they will continue pushing on the geographical barriers and truly make the Internet a global platform.

Shopping On-Line Globally – My Christmas Shopping Nightmare

"Despite the reluctance of governments to liberalize immigration policy, however, the number of people living outside their countries of origin has risen from 120 million in 1990 to an estimated 215 million in 2012 (The World Bank, 2012), which is approximately 3.05 percent of the world population." (1) And it will most likely continue to grow. As Polish citizen, I am one of the 3.05% too, as I have been living, working and paying taxes in Taiwan for over 6 years now (well, working and paying taxes for 3 years). Also, it is now estimated that 1.5 million Polish people lived abroad in 2012 (2). I just want you now to remember this numbers, while reading my "rant" below.

In recent years I have observed big growth of on-line shopping/stores in Poland (and obviously globally, but in Poland the process was somehow slower that, ie., in the US). It is also now possible to use debit cards (Visa, MasterCard) to make payments on the Internet. It is possible and more widely used, yet this Christmas I am still frustrated that the use is still not wide enough.

When you live abroad, however you might love the country you stay in, you will start missing familiar things from your homeland and culture. Many things is not available locally, so it is only natural that migrants like myself need to search for products on the Internet, and that means on-line stores from different countries or even different continents. Not only I shop on-line for myself (women's shoes in size 41 are almost impossible to get in Taiwan) but also I use it to shop for gifts for my family. It was like an enlightenment when I have first ordered flowers from a local florist in my hometown as Mother's Day's gift for my beloved mom. This year I bought a TV that was shipped straight to my parents house, as it was easier to support them this way than sending a money transfer (which would require me to physically go to a bank -which in Taiwan means I have to take off from work, since banks' working hours are 8:00AM-3:00 PM, and no weekends - fill tons of documents, and pay almost 17 USD just as transaction fee).Going with the new way of shopping, I thought I will do all my Christmas shopping on-line this year. In Poland, we have now a few companies that service on-line payments for stores, with range of options to choose from for payment methods, but most importantly they do allow credit/debit card payments. These companies (at least that I found on my search of stores who will be willing to take my money) are PayU, DotPay, and Przelewy24. I have had successful experiences with the first two, so I have been especially looking out for stores that uses these.

I am an organized person, so I have prepared a list of people I want to buy gifts for, then thought of what would be the best stores that I could find most of these items at. I came with Leroy Merlin, which is a huge DIY retailer in Poland. In their on-line store,  I could find presents for my parents, sisters with their husbands and even for my niece and nephew. It took me around four hours to browse the store and decide on the right things for the right people.

Leroy Merlin on-line store claims PayU is one of available payment methods, so I placed an order and was redirected to the payment site...but not to PayU, but Przelewy24. Ok, I have never used this one, but it seemed they also accept card payments. I have tried to make my payment, input all the information, clicked enter... and sorry, but it's not accepted. Bummer! I have then mailed both the LM store and the payments company for help (I was out of Skype credits so couldn't call them). After few hours Przelewy24 answered me (till this day I did not receive LM store's answer), and explained it was the settings of the store itself that block payments from accounts with different  country and the card location settings. But the problem was, it was not possible to change the country setting while creating LM account (Poland was a fixed preset), which generally means you cannot make payment from abroad. Two days spent on this website wasted, leaving me with rather negative feelings about this company, especially that such restriction was not clear to me (a customer) throughout the initial steps of the process. However, I must say, I felt that Przelewy24 handled my case very well, and the service person was truly caring and tried to help, and I would  not mind giving a try to their services again. Such basics as Customer Service, but even huge company like Leroy Merlin overlooked it.

Already upset, I have started looking for same items in different on-line stores in Poland. Sadly, it meant I had to buy each thing in different store (which obviously wasn't good for my shipping fees). Took me another two days to find such stores that allowed credit/debit card payments. Again, I have placed five orders in five stores, from which two were successful (payment) and I was clearly informed of that. To the other three did not offer clear information about success, so I wrote my e-mails again, and also e-mailed PayU that was a service provider in these three payments.

What is interesting, only one store had automatically informed me about unsuccessful payment, while two other stores, neither PayU itself, did not. Surprisingly, one of the successful payments that day was also made through PayU, which proved they are not consistent in giving their authorizations (because all payments were authorized by my bank, it was PayU's employees choice to cancel them as potentially risky).

Furthermore, only one store replied to my e-mail within a day, another one after two days with suggestion to try again, and also saying they have contacted PayU as well, but I need to call them myself. So in the end I had to call PayU, because their support team did not react to e-mails, and did not provide any other communication channels.

That meant I had to add Skype credits, and it was not easy. Not only Polish E-commerce treats me as a "worse kind of buyer", but it's the same with Taiwanese side, as here I am a foreigner that is not to be trusted. I had to e-mail scans of two ID documents to Skype, wait for their authorization, after which I still could not use on-line payment to buy credits! Even I wrote to them in English, they kept answering me in Chinese. Thanks for nothing Skype! They advised I buy credit voucher from local 7-11 convenience store (according to Google Translate), so I did. There the clerk told me it will be automatically added to my account - but it was not. My Taiwanese boyfriend had to spent ten minutes to figure out how to activate it. At least he succeeded. In summary, it took me half a day and a lot of frustration to recharge my Skype account. I remember in the past that was actually easier. 

Finally, I called PayU, and they asked me variety of questions, and made note to my account that I'm abroad buying gifts for family. Then they told me it improved my reliability to 90% now. If still PayU decides that my payment is suspicious they can still block it and I can do nothing more (because a Taiwanese hacker who would stole my card would surely be ordering a Snuggie with a delivery to a Polish address!). That day, I have at last received e-mail response from PayU, about inqury I made 3 days earlier, saying that sorry, but they have right to cancel suspicious payments, and with no solution being offered. Fortunatelly, their staff on the telephone support was more practical.

I replaced the three orders, and at last... after a week of fighting and testing my determination, all my gifts were successfully purchased (not yet shipped as I write it).

I have decided to write this experience down and share as widely as possible because I love all "E-" things, I like how globalized the world is becoming. I have expected on-line shopping to be easier. I have believed on-line shopping was made especially for people like me - global people, whose lives are spread out around the globe, and so they need globally accessible services. And yet, I feel that as a person living abroad, I am discriminated by service providers globally and locally (3 years ago I have tried to buy mp3 album on-line, but I had to give up, since no store could sell it to a Polish citizen living in Asia due to localization restrictions. Now I can use Taiwanese iTunes at last). That is probably the price I need to pay for the choice I made in my life to be where I want to be, but still... we have technology, it is possible, and it should not be so difficult. I put the statistics at the beginning to show that there is market, and I believe that most of emigrants, like me, is much more willing to shop on-line, that consumers that actually have a choice to purchase same product physically. I feel that marketers loose by not addressing our needs, and I hope that by chance such marketer will see this article, and try to make a change at least in their own stores, so next year, my Christmas shopping will be a little easier.

(PS. I know that a lot of barriers I met, is caused by security policies, but I think they're overall "overprotective".)

(1)http://www.globalization101.org/migration-introduction

(2)http://forsal.pl/artykuly/683141,mapa_emigracji_1_5_mln_polakow_wyjechalo_z_kraju.html