A Heads up re B&H Photo Video for non U.S. buyers

[genegenie]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I would agree that B&H should perhaps consider revising this policy. As the original poster stated, there is complete freedom of movement and residence within the EU, and it is extremely common for, say, a British person to live in Spain, or a Polish person in the UK. It's really not fair at all to impose this restriction.

Quite correct.

Having followed the thread here is my 2 cents worth.

As a retired expatriate resident in Spain I have Visa & M.C. credit cards from my home country bank accounts with the billing address set to my Spanish residence.

I make purchases not only from the USA but world wide and have never heard anything so ridiculous as *Billing and delivery address for credit card purchases must be in the same country as the card providers address*.
I wonder what Visa and MasterCard have to say about this.

I have a Spanish bank account but don’t have a Spanish credit card because they are too expensive. (And not necessary as the € bank debit card is sufficient for €uro zone purchases).
Apart from a punitive annual fee, they are horrendously expensive for purchases outside the €uro zone.

E.g. (in this case)
1/ To purchase goods to the value of say $500 from the USA they (CC provider) convert the dollars to €uro’s at a rate they set, then charge you up to 5% in fees just for doing it.

2/ Then a refund of $500 would be converted back to €uro’s at a rate they set, possibly 5 to 6% worse than when buying – apart from any currency fluctuations.
3/ And again they levy the 5% service charge for doing so.

So put simply, (assuming my math is correct), the charges would be (Dollars for clarity),

1/ 5% on $500 = $25 service charge. For the purchase.

For the refund.
2/ worst case 6% of $500 = $30 difference between buy / sell Dollars
3/ 5% on $500 = $25 service charge on refund.

A total of $80 for basically doing nothing.
(In practice a little higher as the charge is on the final converted sum)

As is said elsewhere in this thread, had B&H made a pending charge to the CC to confirm funds and address detail before they decided if they wanted the business or not, then, if they did not confirm the charge to the CC it would have expired as unconfirmed with no fees etc. & no need for a refund.

It seems pretty clear whose responsibility this error was.

I think anybody in this position has every right to be upset, as it clearly was not of their making but purely B&H inventing an un published term/condition to try to cover their a***s.

I’ve only had one occasion with a similar situation & that was with a Pay Pal payment and in that case a refund meant just that - full refund of the capital and all fees.


Gene

[aceflor]

Originally Posted by bandhphoto

Entirely understandable

Thank you.

As of this moment, no. The credit card must originate in the same country as your residence. That said, we've recently begun a new initiative to ease transactions for our non-USA customers. The person heading that initiative and I have an excellent rapport and he's been brought up to speed on your situation and the ramifications for all our customers, particularly those of the EU.

I cannot dispute that but I do know this is the first time I've been confronted with this situation. While I am not privy to every customer's transactions it's likely I'd have heard about this from others in your situation before now if this was a frequently occurring difficulty.

That said, we appreciate the world is changing in many ways and we have to be able to accomplish dual, often seemingly contrary, tasks. Among those are easing the path for you to shop here while simultaneously continuing to deter credit card fraud and identity theft to the best of our abilities.

Henry Posner
B&H Photo-Video

I am french, lived in Germany for 20 years, and moved now to the Costa del Sol in the south of Spain. In the town where I now live I am surrounded by Brits, Germans, Dutch, Swedes, Danes and so on. We all have our accounts in our country of origin, and only transfer amounts from time to time to our spanish accounts, without spanish credit cards. Why ?

As foreigners very often not earning our money in Spain but in another european country, the spanish banks expect us to "park" a specific blocked amount (around 3.000 €) on their accounts to act as a "security" in order to grant us a credit card, independently from the transfers being done from time to time (monthly for me) from our other european accounts.

Even a monthly transfer from my German account of a consequent sum does not give them the "security" they need, they would rather have me earning money in Spain and having my salary transferred monthly on my spanish account, even if that would be much less than the amount I transfer every month. How crazy is that ???

I won't even go there, because it annoys me to millions, but that's the fact. So here I am, living in Spain, with a german credit card, and a french passport. My money has been earned very legally, and amazon, pixmania, and many others are more than willing to accept it and send me the goods to Spain. Why won't you ?

[roger the rabbit]

I'm more northern Spain than you, but it is the same here. Mostly Brits' & German. But a lot of Americans also, I will have to ask how they get on with billing of US credit cards here.

[Stitchawl]

I began dealing with B&H, and as it happens, with Henry also, about 20 years ago trying to get some Nikon software written in English to me here in Japan. Henry solved that problem quickly and smoothly. B&H has shipped to me in Japan, shipped to me in Thailand, and Henry even helped my dear old mother in Florida when she was in her 80's place a complicated order for equipment I needed. The customer service provided by B&H is second to none. When there is a problem, Henry is right there (or as you can see, right here) to handle it with diplomacy, delicacy, and honesty.

B&H is a company that I can and will continue to rate as first class in pricing, equipment and customer service. Thank you, Henry!

Stitchawl

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Stitchawl

I began dealing with B&H, and as it happens, with Henry also, about 20 years ago trying to get some Nikon software written in English to me here in Japan. Henry solved that problem quickly and smoothly. B&H has shipped to me in Japan, shipped to me in Thailand, and Henry even helped my dear old mother in Florida when she was in her 80's place a complicated order for equipment I needed. The customer service provided by B&H is second to none. When there is a problem, Henry is right there (or as you can see, right here) to handle it with diplomacy, delicacy, and honesty.

B&H is a company that I can and will continue to rate as first class in pricing, equipment and customer service. Thank you, Henry!

Stitchawl

I suspect it's just a case of B&H not being familiar with modern lifestyles within Europe, and the fact that living in one country while having your bank account in another is now extremely common.

[astra]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I suspect it's just a case of B&H not being familiar with modern lifestyles within Europe

Yeah for the guys across the pond it is very difficult to comprehend that in modern times people would willing turn themselves over into Skaa

[aceflor]

Originally Posted by astra

Yeah for the guys across the pond it is very difficult to comprehend that in modern times people would willing turn themselves over into Skaa

What is "Skaa" ?

[roger the rabbit]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I would agree that B&H should perhaps consider revising this policy. As the original poster stated, there is complete freedom of movement and residence within the EU, and it is extremely common for, say, a British person to live in Spain, or a Polish person in the UK. It's really not fair at all to impose this restriction.

Originally Posted by aceflor

I am french, lived in Germany for 20 years, and moved now to the Costa del Sol in the south of Spain. In the town where I now live I am surrounded by Brits, Germans, Dutch, Swedes, Danes and so on. We all have our accounts in our country of origin, and only transfer amounts from time to time to our spanish accounts, without spanish credit cards.
SNIP!
So here I am, living in Spain, with a german credit card, and a french passport. My money has been earned very legally, and amazon, pixmania, and many others are more than willing to accept it and send me the goods to Spain. Why won't you ?

Originally Posted by HarryT

I suspect it's just a case of B&H not being familiar with modern lifestyles within Europe, and the fact that living in one country while having your bank account in another is now extremely common.

Saw this today in Local paper

Nineteen Alicante province towns have more foreign residents than Spanish ones
By Tom Cain

A TOTAL of 19 towns in Alicante Province have more foreign residents registered with them than Spanish ones.

Figures released this week by the National Statistics Institute (INE) show that out of the 1,921,988 inhabitants registered in the province on January 1, 2010, 24.2 per cent (463,704) of them were foreign.
(& that's just one province)


Full Story here

[astra]

Originally Posted by aceflor

What is "Skaa" ?

The Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson.

SKAA: The peasantry of the Final Empire. They were once of different races and nationalities, but over the thousand-year span of the empire the Lord Ruler worked hard to stamp out any sense of identity in the people, eventually succeeding in creating a single, homogeneous race of slave workers.

you might add nobility to peasantry in EU situation.

[aceflor]

Originally Posted by astra

The Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson.


you might add nobility to peasantry in EU situation.

certainly worth a lengthy discussion somewhere else, but you see I am french and still married a german. And a firm believer in open countries, mixed races, ethnics, religions and so on. Everything else smells badly after the 1930's, and I am quite happy I was not born before WWII, if you understand what I mean, be it in Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, France or... the UK even. closed.

[astra]

Originally Posted by aceflor

certainly worth a lengthy discussion somewhere else, but you see I am french and still married a german. And a firm believer in open countries, mixed races, ethnics, religions and so on. Everything else smells badly after the 1930's, and I am quite happy I was not born before WWII, if you understand what I mean, be it in Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, France or... the UK even. closed.

Then we are on opposite poles

[columbus]

I said I would come back and post when the B&H $25.00 gift card arrived, it did this morning to my CC billing address.
(I’ve obviously obscured personal & security info)

(As the thread has gone off track a bit, would anybody unsure of the facts read from the first post.)

I’ve said before a gift card is completely useless to me as recompense for the fees charged to my CC as a result of B&H’s actions. As B&H continue to refuse to accept my valid CC for an obscure and invalid reason not mentioned in their T&C’s, or supported by Visa, I am unable to buy anything from them.
(Their cheapest shipping charges to Spain are $49.00, international mail).

Now the more cynical among you may question why they bothered to send this gift card at all when I have no way to collect on it, (first class letter rate cost to them $0.98c), but it does not take a rocket scientist to work out the answer!.


So I’m still currently some $25.00 out of pocket through no fault of my own or my CC provider. The only thing I did wrong was to choose B&H Photo Video to buy from.


Make up your own mind about B&H customer service.


click image to enlarge, (Date on the envelope is a bit curious)

[A Nonny Mouse]

I have to say, reading this thread I am absolutely amazed that the merchant concerned even allowed this error to occur in the first place. Let alone become an issue here, with getting on for 1,500 views so far. If this was a member of my staff they would not be for much longer.

It is clear from posts that the error was completely of the merchant’s own making. The original poster appears to have made reasonable, and by the merchants own responses factual statements.

The customer placed an order for goods, payment for which complied with the merchant’s terms and conditions in force at that time.

The merchant charged the full sum to the customers credit card and the order was accepted and confirmed by them. However it seems they subsequently applied a further and new condition to card payment, withdrawing their acceptance and canceling the order.

The issue seems to be that by fully charging the card then making a refund they have incurred costs and fees to their potential customer. Who has quite rightly asked to be refunded. Instead of just doing so at source they responded by saying they would give the customer a gift card against next purchase, but repeated they would still not accept the customers credit card, as *The billing address* was not in the same country as the card provider. How ridiculous!

It seems to me all they appear to have done is try to cover their mistake and limit damage by obfuscation, not to make recompense. The offer of the gift card is quite obviously as outrageous as it is useless.


There are a few post saying that the merchant’s customer service is exemplary, that is blatantly no so in this case.

[Fbone]

columbus, I suppose your credit card company was unable to remove the transaction fees?

[columbus]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I suspect it's just a case of B&H not being familiar with modern lifestyles - snip!

Anyone caring to check the scan attached to my last post will see from the postal franking date that B&H are indeed living in the past.

I'm surprised it got to me, anybody know if the sum paid is current?