People Outside the USA Smell

People outside the USA smell, otherwise, a lot of online retailers and other websites would treat them the same as USA customers. That is, with some respect.

The idea is very simple: a lot of websites mistreat their international audience. Over at Cre8, John Müller started a thread called 10 Complaints From An International Shopper. His number 1 gripe?

Tell me up front if you don’t want me as a customer.

Search, shop, pay — and sorry! we only send to the continental US + Canada! Duh, I should have known (if you would have told me ANYWHERE on the web site). Worst offenders are the small shops that let you order, send you a confirmation and then email you later to tell you that they don’t sell internationally. A simple link with “International shipping information” or even a text “no international shipments” would suffice.

The thread follows on with more complaints. I pitch in with discount vouchers, naming big companies that make this same mistake, namely Google, Yahoo, and MSN with their PPC vouchers.

But what really prompted this post: Microsoft recently started a website for people to test drive the about-to-be released Windows Vista. It said, it needed IE 6.0 or better (naturally), so I fired up IE, gave them an email address, installed the Active X control, and with uncontrollable excitement, I clicked through and found the first feature that had a "test drive" button… and got the following error:

The message in text:

Thank you for your interest in the Windows Vista Business test drive.

This trial program is available in limited geographies and languages,
and you are currently located outside of the available area.

Please check http://www.windowsvista.com for other Windows Vista
information and experiences that may be available to you.

Digging into the Javascript, the error message is triggered if a code is not US or CA – i.e., USA or Canada.

So my question is: Why didn’t they tell me this before I went through the sign up process?