Buy Anything From Anywhere!

Here's an idea for a new web site. Whoever creates it will soon be rolling in dough. I was inspired to grasp the simple, essential concept by listening to a Richard Vobes Podcast. Vobes was buying a PC computer game, and he was unsure whether it would run on a kid's computer. The game had many requirements – CPU, RAM, disk, graphics ... . What really bothered him was the “not returnable” statement on the box. He explained to the salesman that in Britain, everything is warranted to be usable if purchased for the intended reason. Eventually he got a grumpy admission that if the game did not work he could return it. He said that he later checked this issue with his lawyer, who agreed with him.

Wouldn't it be lovely, I asked myself, if I could always buy something in a place whose laws gave me the best protection against a defective product?

So that's the idea: a web site that lets you buy anything from anywhere. The site might even advise you which country to use for each type of purchase, and you could decide whether the extra shipping costs – plus the carrying charge that will make the web site owners rich – is worth it. Simply put, this would be a website that lets you pay a premium when you buy, to lower your risk.

By the way: after this website becomes a success, I expect some small country, Monaco perhaps, to modify its warrantee laws so that you would of course want to by everything from there. There's got to be an angle to make this work...