buy buyer cart checkout code computer cover difference dvd dvds free handle offer option order page payment paypal probably problem processor products purchase request sell settings shipping site various

We offer free shipping for deliveries worldwide, but to cover the higher cost of shipping, the product price is set higher if the buyer is outside the US.

In order to accomplish this we have set up two different websites operating two different e-Junkie shopping carts: http://worlddancenewyork.com
and
http://worlddancenewyork-worldwide.com

Not surprisingly, some buyers outside the US try to use the US website because they want the lower prices.

They use the US shopping-cart pull-down to say they are in the US (actually that's the only choice in our US shopping cart) and then they enter a fake zip code (like "90210" HA!)...and when they land at PayPal enter their real address (like, AUSTRALIA!), hoping we will ship to them at the US price.

E-Junkie sends a sensible message of warning about this, so no one gets away with it...but is there a way to force an end to this abuse? I'd rather not have to be always 'on the lookout' for this problem.

Honestly, the best way to address this situation is to forego the duplicate-sites/-products approach and have just one site and one product range with Domestic and International shipping calculation configured appropriately. Just explain to us how you want your Domestic vs. International shipping fees to add up, we can tell you exactly what settings you would need to enter where -- here's some examples:
http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.shipping.htm

To address the problems you're seeing with your current setup:

There's no method to determine in advance that the country selected in the Cart will match the address they'll provide later during checkout, nor even to determine that the country selected in the Cart is accurate for their actual location. There are services that do a pretty good job of "guessing" where a person is located based on their IP address, but they're not perfectly accurate 100% of the time, so would you want to risk insulting a prospective buyer who's selecting their location honestly when the computer is telling them otherwise?

Okay, that said, how about just blocking completion of Checkout entirely, or sending the buyer back to the Cart for a correction, whenever there's a mismatch with the address they provide during Checkout? Unfortunately, not every payment processor provides a method to accomplish that; when they can support that, we support it too, and when we can tell the Checkout page to "lock in" the country selected in the Cart, we also do that.

Even so, what would the Aussie buyer do when they're sent back to a Cart that only lets them choose United States? They only wanted to purchase something from you and weren't given the option to select Australia, so they decided to forge ahead and see if they could request an Int'l shipment anyway. They probably don't realize you need them to visit a different site and rebuild their order from scratch there, so they'd likely just give up on ordering entirely.

I suspect the real problem is that people just plain don't "get" that you require ordering from one site for US buyers and another site for everyone else. If they're even aware of the two sites, they only see two sites that offer "free" shipping for the same products but one has them cheaper, so maybe they go for the bargain not realizing the difference, or maybe they only found the one site to begin with?

Thanks, Tyson - great, great reply. Your initial suggestion would solve the problem, but then we would be just like everyone else. We want to offer free shipping - worldwide. That's really unusual, and we came up with the 'two-sites, two-carts' solution to accomplish it. Also, the two-carts solution is very much in keeping with the global DVD market as it truly is: The fact is that DVDs sell at enormous discounts here in the US, but not elsewhere in the world. Our approach, offering a discount in the US but not elsewhere is just a reflection of "how it is" in the world of DVD selling. Well in any event we are going to stay with the the two-site two cart solution, at least for now. The site is only 5 days old.

I like the idea of blocking completion of checkout, with the payment processor sending the buyer back to the cart: Does PayPal offer that?

Regarding the well-meaning Aussie buyer who just happened to be in the wrong cart: We agree with you that many of the buyers who end up in this situation may be there innocently - and we now view this as our fault. So we are going to institute the presence of a 'reminder' next to every 'buy' button on both sites, indicating whether that buy button is for US or non-US buyers -- and place next to it a link to the correct site for those who happen to be in the wrong place. It will be interesting to see to what degree that reduces the problem...

So thanks again - but please let me know if PayPal offers that 'send-the-buyer-back-to-the-cart' option - that would be a help.

I've just added this FAQ entry to our Shipping help page, more clearly describing how the various payment processors' Checkout methods handle a country mismatch:
http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/What-if-the-Shipping-address-country- provided.htm