This is a really common fraud scheme. As an independent seller with little fraud protection, it's foolish to ship to an address that doesn't match the billing address.

It's also a really common thing that people do.

Like, I buy stuff on Amazon for my parents, friends, and family all the time.

Not to mention the common cases of shipping to work address, having multiple residence addresses (e.g. students who have a home and a dorm address), shopping while visiting family out-of-state.

It's a really common fraud scheme because it's not uncommon for regular people to do that. Otherwise, we would not have a need for a "shipping address" at all: all the purchases could go to the belling address, right?

So, basically, you are exactly the kind of bad seller that ruins it for everyone else. Your inability to deal with fraud adds so much more headache to the experience.

I hope that, as an independent seller, you have it in bold letters on the front page that you only ship to the billing address. This way, people who you won't ship to anyway won't waste their time (and people who you won't ship to will not be inconvenienced anyway).

That's also why merchant sites have separate shipping and billing addresses. I bill at home and ship at work as I'm not at home during work hours when the courier arrives. And no, I won't install an Amazon lock to my door. If I can't ship to a different address then maybe the merchant doesn't want my money.

Also there are stores that do not ship to my country despite both being in the EU. They ship to New Caledonia (remote colony) or a poorer neighbouring country though. Maybe it has to do with lack of a VAT number and not giving a damn about getting one.

> It's a really common fraud scheme because it's not uncommon for regular people to do that.

Lol, no. It’s a common fraud scheme because users of stolen credit cards can’t update the billing address. They would love to be able to use a stolen credit card with an address matching their drop location.

I think you misunderstood what I was saying.

My point was that if only fraudsters were shipping to non-billing addresses, we wouldn't need to specify two addresses when making a purchase.

In itself, shipping to a non-billing address is not a scheme. It's what people do. That's why that is an option to begin with, and that's why all shopping sites support it.

If it was uncommon for people to ship to non-billing address, then it would cease being a fraud scheme, because we would be able to use this as a reliable indicator of fraud -- or we'd not have this option to begin with. Therefore, fraudsters do that because it's not uncommon in general.

I ship 90% of my purchases to the office where I spend most of the day. There's no one at home from 9 to 5 so shipping it there would be foolish, as you put it.

Most of the people I work with does the same thing so I think you're very much wrong in your thinking. If it works for you, then fine, but it's not foolish at all and it's the best option for a lot of people.

Even in Europe we suffer from this. I never buy from Amazon anymore due to their website being as bad as the average small webbshop if you are not in one of the countries Amazon is in (e.g. US, UK or Germany).

Small shops had superior experiences to Amazon even back in the 90ies. Never understood the appeal of Amazon. There's so much better options locally (NL), in matters of search, payment, website ease of use, shipping, etc. I hope for the rest of Europe and perhaps America bol.com expands ;)

Amazon here literally delivers the same day, or the next.

On the downside, many items are now Chinese fakes. So for brand products, I tend to not use amazon anymore, as it is basically a fake marketplace. If available, I always use the webshop of the company directly. Much less headache.

But in my experience it is usually cheapest, and no one can even touch the shipping time.

I wouldn’t necessarily hold bol.com up as the NL example (so many incorrect shipments, thing that take 2 weeks to deliver while labeled as “in stock”, etc). I’d go with Coolblue as the go to example.

In the US, Amazon trumps pretty much everything else with free 2-day delivery (and often, 1-day and even same-day) with Amazon Prime, and a relatively painless and easy return process and handling cases of mis-shipment.

Also, as one of the most popular stores, it has the most reviews on items like electronics. These reviews provide a lot of value (not the star-ratings, but actual reviews, where you can see what people complain about).

For things like photography equipment and musical instruments, I'd go to other stores (BHphoto/Adorama/GuitarCenter/Sweetwater/Reverb/Ebay).

This has gotten better for me.

Starting a few months ago, I now clearly see a indication if the item would ship to my country.

(also in Europe)