Dude, where's my country? Seems like Google doesn't know
I was trying to make a credit-card purchase on the web. The site I was trying to give money to prefers not to directly handle such messy details, and outsource their credit card application to Google. So far, so good - I got redirected to Google Checkout. Ok, I start filling in my personal data, until…
WTF? and yes, I do mean it. WTF?
I live, as many of you know, in a little country called Mexico. No, it does not appear on many world atlases. It’s so very small, only slightly below two million square kilometers, that it’s easily overlookable. Also, only a hundred million people live there - Not much. No, the 25,000,000 people that live together with me in Mexico City won’t feel left out at all - We are used to it. But come on - In the listing I see our alphabetically neighouring countries (Malta, Mauritius, Moldova, Monaco)… Why did they get listed and we didn’t?
Of course, I tried editing the form data and substituting Moldova’s MD for our dear MX, to no avail - We are not only off the map in their lists, but also in the database - and there are some integrity checks.
Does somebody know which way should I whine in order to get the Google folks to fix this? :(
Comments
Androgynous Crowbar 2007-04-26 19:49:23
Re: Dude, where’s my country? Seems like Google doesn’t know
Google probably hasn’t figured out how to deal with people from Mexico yet. Either technically, legally or something else. They simply don’t accept customers from Mexico at this time.
Nor China, for that matter. They aren’t out to get you, specifically. International law and trade is just a difficult thing to deal with.
PS. It looks like your blog is broken. When I click the preview button, nothing happens. Do I need to enable Javascript? Apparently so. Also, nothing happens when I submit. Are any of the fields mandatory? I will now attempt to find out.
Brian 2007-04-26 11:05:31
Re: Dude, where’s my country? Seems like Google doesn’t know
Mexico’s just not one of their supported countries, there are a number of countries that aren’t on the list.
eobanb 2007-04-26 11:34:49
Re: Re: Dude, where’s my country? Seems like Google doesn’t know
If you had even half a brain, you would know that Guatemala and El Salvador are not cities in Mexico; they are countries.
Besides, even if they were cities in Mexico, how is having to possibly drive across the country to pick up an item a reasonable thing to do?
Gunnar 2007-04-26 07:34:39
Good idea…
Just did so. Hope that gets the bug in somebody’s eyes! ;-)
Gunnar 2007-04-26 17:13:02
Re: Re: Dude, where’s my country? Seems like Google doesn’t know
I’m trying to set up a hosting with Dreamhost - They are shipping nothing. But they need to charge my credit card. And they only do that via Google. Tough luck :-/ (BTW: Yes, I’m trying to set up the hosting so I can move this blog and other sites I run from my home DSL, on a server that throws the towel every now and then. Like now that this article hit Reddit :) It was down for a couple of hours)
Jonathan Lassoff 2007-04-25 22:46:04
Re: Dude, where’s my country? Seems like Google doesn’t know
I found this quite odd, so I poked around their Checkout support page, and found this: http://checkout.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=43348 entitled “Can I Use Google Checkout Outside the United States?” Only when I follow the link (at the time of writing) to the “list” of supported locations, it claims that the support article doesn’t exist.
Quite an odd little find you’ve got.
Kevin Mark 2007-04-26 10:42:40
Re: Dude, where’s my country? Seems like Google doesn’t know
I found this[0] and it says that as long the seller want to ship to mexico, they can.
maybe the shipper doesn’t. the web page lists mexico as an available choice.
-K
[0] http://checkout.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=43059
Kevin Mark 2007-04-26 10:49:38
Re: Dude, where’s my country? Seems like Google doesn’t know
I just check this[0] list of where people can use google checkout and it didn’t list ‘mexico’ but it did list guatamala and el salvidor, so ‘mexico’ was not listed but cities were. maybe you can ship it to a city near you? [0] http://checkout.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=48115
Lamby 2007-04-26 12:09:30
Re: Dude, where’s my country? Seems like Google doesn’t know
I think you have bigger problems - your email address is just a big grey splodge.
RuMiL 2007-08-15 20:00:04
Re: Dude, where’s my country? Seems like Google doesn’t know
Just try to get a friend’s address on USA or another country and fill the form with his/her data. Then you click “My shipping address is: A different Address” and you fill it with your real address in Mexico ;)
Scott Robinson 2007-04-26 00:06:45
Re: Dude, where’s my country? Seems like Google doesn’t know
This is something I would post to the Daily WTF.