Ordinary Gweilo

Two strange tales from the hard shoulder of the digital superhighway.

Firstly, I sent an email to a Hong Kong company (via their website) saying that I wanted to order something from them.  A day later they called me back (on the phone) and promised to fax me a price list.  Nothing arrived, and there has been no reply to my email, nor any follow-up phone calls (incidentally, why are people so attached to fax when email is so much easier?).

Then I placed an order with a US company.  Unfortunately their stupid web page decided I lived in Canada, and apparently they have despatched the goods to a non-existent address there. 

Brilliant.

What is puzzling about this is that no-one seems to have checked the address or compared it to the address on my credit card (which is definitely in Hong Kong).  You may recall that Typepad mysteriously found themselves unable to take money from my credit card because of a trivial mismatch between the address on the card company’s database and where I actually live, but this company apparently doesn’t care that the address is on a whole different continent. 

Then there might be the clue that I had paid for international shipping, which would not be required if lived in the Northern United States.  Nope, they just despatched the goods to totally the wrong place.