Tell me where you ship to and what the costs are. If you're going to make me jump through hoops to figure this out, well, your product is probably not good enough that I'll bother to do so!
from a technical viewpoint, yes, it's totally nuts.
from a business viewpoint, it solves a hole lot of problems very cheap. i.e. good enough
I have opened and I am met with "We can't ship to %MY_COUNTRY% yet, but we are expanding quickly".
I also wonder why some sites claim they can't ship into here. Virtually all of the post services of the world do ship into this country for years and years yet some sites specifically exclude it.
Import: That is paid by the reciever? I have to pay import for things from abroad.
Returns: Most companies tell you to arrange shipping yourself.
And customers in my country are quite aware of the custom fees. And this works for millions of other suppliers.
Postal rates vary by country, and we've experienced more lost packages in some countries than others. Along with 30-45 day shipping times for most international packages.
Having a distributor lets us guarantee inexpensive 2 or 3 day shipping, paperwork free VAT, and easy returns for a much smoother experience overall.
Hope this makes sense!
Yeah, I totally understand your point of view. Perhaps I would myself not ship to my own country due to the business issues you have mentioned. Still sucks.
It's been well known since the creation of www that users attention spans are non-existent and they will leave a page if they don't see the information that interests them within seconds.