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Message: <blockquote data-quote="vkalia" data-source="post: 1220296" data-attributes="member: 19756">I'll submit that these are more issues of perception than reality.  Even with the original poster on this thread, the problem was not customs or taxes, but the fact that Optics Planet didnt tell him for 6 months that he wasnt going to get a replacement, which caused him to lose the tax refund.  His main issue is the slow communication - the fact that his loss is greater (more postage + taxes) as compared to that of a US-based customer doesnt change the issue. Arguing that unreal expectations of international customers is a reason for not selling internationally is specious - you might as well argue that any unreasonable expectations of domestic customers is a reason for not being in the retail business altogether.    These expectations are very easily managed - and lots of companies do manage them successfully.In reality, for the vendor, the additional burden is merely a single page on the website detailing their refund policy.     All the vendors who sell internationally make it very clear that taxes, customs, etc are the responsibility of the vendor.The fact that LOTS of vendors - ranging from big ones like B&H to small, owner-run operations like naurephoto.co.jp - are selling globally indicates that perhaps the problems are not as severe as some would make them out to be.And there are people who dont use online payments b/c they are worried about credit card fraud.  That doesnt mean online payments are significantly (if at all) riskier than physical payments.Some of the world's largest online retailers of specialty goods sell overseas.   B&H has happily shipped me $10k worth of camera gear to India.   And in this day and age of electronic payments, there are lots of options for managing fraud risk.  To use "credit card fraud risk" as an argument is ridiculous.    Any vendor who does that is working out of ignorance and perception of risk rather than actual risk - and here I speak from personal experience, having gone through the whole exercise in conjunction with my bank for our international payments.This is self-referential, circular logic.  You are, in essence, saying "they dont ship overseas - therefore, shipping overseas must be more complicated." The reason that they limit themselves to domestic sales is because of their *perception* that selling overseas is riskier or more complicated - as echoed by you.   Anyway, we are hijacking the original poster's thread, so let's leave it here.  We've both said our pieces.  Vandit</blockquote>

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