"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".)
