I mean, start out basic, and from there we can help you to turn the engine to a more potent helpful engine for all individuals across the world.

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Okay then....let's get opinions everyone!

I don't know what else to say then I don't qualify as an international customer and don't know what hardly goes on.

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Do you have a list of all the outside U.S.A stores?

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Thats a great idea, There are alot of us from England who would like to see this happen. I can recomend www.dvdzone2.com.

Lie back and think of England!

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Nevertheless here´s some thoughts, all of which are from an European point of view.

1. Currency conversions: not needed really. Brits, at least those who use internet, are used to buy in dollars and rest of Europe is using Euro. EUR is targeted to go at one dollar, and so far during the currencys history it has only been priced between 0.9 and 1.1 dollars, making "conversions" something everybody can do themselves or even obsolent.

2. English speaking sites: not needed really. I´ve ordered discs from four continents, in eight languages and this is what you can except from other Europeans as well. If you look at the DVD forums where availability and differencies in pricing or quality of mainstream releases are discussed in detail, you´ll find that anyone whingeing "I´m not buying anamorphic David Lynch titles, because they´re german releases" will be kicked in the head, and for a good reason.
Some language related difficulties will arise, but that´s one of things why we have these "talk before shopping" forums.

3. Secure shopping: must be figured out. In most parts of Europe, e.g. Nordic countries, Mediterranean countries and Netherlands, banking still lives the dark age: credit cards and related software are hard to get. Most customers will expect full security in ADT`s affiliate stores, and will more or less hold you responsible for misguidance if something bad happens.

4. Shipping destinations put in a database at ADT: too much work without major output, don´t bother: Most suppliers will propably follow Fivestar´s footsteps, and graduatelly increase the number of countries that they ship. A consatntly varying database of two hundread countries and tens of shops would be pretty hard to maintain, and I think most people check shipping policies and prices when they enter the site for the first time anyway.

5. Titles translated and put to the database in their current entries: awful lot of work. Nice feature, but it might not be worth doing this right away. Except some re-releases an so on, most titles should be bought from the country of their origin.

And some thoughts on suppliers

1. Dvd Zone 2 and DVD Go should be included. These are obvious ones, so no further comment.

2. Danish shop or two would be nice addition. Their geographical position is very good for most English speaking interrs in the European Single Market.
Danish postal system charges relatively little on shipments made using card-board boxes.
Danish shops have to deal with a relatively large amount domestic, but non-European customers so they´ve already have to had figured out some of the bureaucracy involved when serving "foreigners" (This isn´t always how shops react, I buy British discs from Play 247 in Jersey, U.K who doesn´t ship outside Europe, places like Jersey U.K ).
Danes speak pretty well foreign languages.
And of course Danish vendors carry their local quality films like ones by VonTrier´s Puzzypower (and maybe someday some classic titles like the Agent 69 line).
I´ve so far only used dvdoo.dk. I think their customer service is outstanding, other similar opinions are found at the DVD forums.

3. Australian vendors are needed. They have cheap and very effective postal system.
They reduce taxes from foreign orders.
With mainstream titles their slow releasing schedules have resulted the best level of quality in DVD transfers, and some of that know-how has to be available for adult distributors also.
Currently Aussie dollar drools, so that makes it even more appealing to us non-residents.

4. An European sex toy shop would be cool addition. Most of the ones I know, are video shops with a tiny collection, similar to every truck stop. Lust.dk is a nice attempt to make a better selection available, their selection includes for exampe Candida Royalle´s vibrator line and the Love Swing.
Anyone know any better, perhaps one that would actually like to participate in an affiliate program?

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Their site is currently down however.

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To summarize, we need to add more stores. The additional bells an whistles of currency conversion, shiping rate calculations, etc. isn't necessary. It is importantant that we investigate a store's policies, technical capabilities, security measures, privacy policy and commitment to customer satisfaction prior to bringing them on board here.

I think we can include most of the country-specific notes about a store on their profile page. We will include the obvious things like payment methods and contact info. Would it also be good to include notes for which languages are spoken, which time zone their in, shipping methods, .... Im sure there's plenty more.

erovideo.nl and adultshop.com have expressed interest in participating in the price search. I think we will contact a few of the stores suggested above over the course of the next month to see what their interest level is.

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We should be able to add some international shipping rate information to our database. Judging by our stats the majority of our visitors come from a small handful of countries. Even if someone's specific country isn't listed, they can choose a nearby country to get a approximate idea of what the total order cost would be.

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What surprises me is, that their German store accepts foreign orders only from Benelux and Austria. This is not related costs or keeping shipping tables compact, German Post Office has even rates to all European destinations.

I can currently make duty-free orders with maximum size of 1-3 DVD´s, depending on packaging. This is, I suppose, one of the tougher policies in Europe. For larger orders everyone has to pay import duties, and I don´t think any toy shopping will result a smaller package than few discs. With footwear, clothes and stuff alike, people might end up paying import fees as much as fourty procents of the shipped price.

All in all, I don´t think adding Adult Shop currently resolves as much as they could. Is it appropriate to ask how easy have your dealings been with them, and could you persuade them to enlarge their variety of shipping points?

Fellow Euro customers: Please say something, you do want to shop in stores with good pricing and service, don´t you?

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Adding one store is only a start (a quick and easy start.) We have a long way to go to support our growing group of international members. Your feedback is a great help - thank you.

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What I do suggest is that you include an international shopping forum. As I have learned, we int'l customers have been very helpful to each other in the regular forum, but we should have our own forum due to our exclusive needs.

Also, the contributors that post here representing the stores should pay good attention to us because I believe that there is a lot of room for improvement regarding int'l shipping.

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As an Australian I can hopefully add some info on Aust shops. Most are quite useless price-wise, even with the excuse of the poor dollar it's far cheaper to order most titles from the US.

The only exception to this is one supplier called www.dvdpacific.com.au who have all adult titles for Au$39.95, making the Evil Angel and Private titles they stock cheaper than ordering from the US, however (and also because of the flat price rate that makes Private/EA titles cheaper) , other titles they carry are much more expensive then from the US stores.

If they have a wanted Private title available they are my first choice of vendor though they have a very limited range and their webpage's adult section is fairly average.

As for "home grown" adult dvd titles, there are none produced in Australia that I know of. All the adult dvds I have come across in this country have been imported. Most are NTSC stuff, the usual stuff we see here while the only PAL titles are either German or Private.

As to the R4 mainstream titles versus the Region 1 titles, it's a real mixed bag. Most titles are still better in R1 as far as features with a significant number of titles becoming equal, with a few that are better in R4.

Getting slightly off-topic here, for a good database of the differences between R1 and R4 titles, check this web page out: http://www.michaeldvd.com.au

On the positive side, Australia Post -is- generally pretty good.

cheers,

scipio

Edited by - scipio on Apr 12 2001

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1) Whenever possible, list the price in US currency and it's local currency (Euro, CAN$, AUS$, etc.). Many int'l stores will list price in two or three currency format, a price that doesn't necessarly reflect the current exchange rates. Instead of converting US stores prices in int'l currency, I think you should post a link at the bottom of the price search to the Universal Currency converter (or some other site) so we can manually convert into our currency if we want to. Much less headaches for you.

2) Regional coding indicated. If it's not RC free, it should be indicated, or be part of an "advanced search option" so we don't end up with DVD's that don't work on our player (I've read somewhere that even DVD's with no regional coding can't be read everywhere because of the PAL/NTSC thing, is that true?)

3) Int'l shipping added. Mandatory. I have compiled a list of ADT affiliate stores (and some others) with their shipping prices to Canada, if you want it Drew, I can post it here.

4) If the store doesn't ship to the user's country, it should be removed from this user's search (this is a +, it's not mandatory in my view)

Once I have a minute free, I will post you the site's list I have that are not currently in your price search (they all ship to Canada and US), there might be some you don't know of yet.

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