Despite the talk about “better protection of consumer rights”, I believe that the central problem this directive is meant to fix is the following:

The cross-border potential of distance selling, which should be one of the main tangible
results of the internal market, is not fully exploited.

Not fully exploited? You could blame the fact that the common market does not have a common language or that cross-border shipping costs are frequently ridiculously high, but a lot of the blame most certainly goes to the EU and the member states for having introduced diverging national versions of previous directives relating to “distance selling”.

Just to mention two obvious issues, a trader who wanted to sell to all EU member states had to deal with a period for the right of withdrawal which could be anywhere from 7 days to 15 days and with different regulations concerning the reimbursement of return shipping costs. Some countries went completely over the top: Germany introduced not just a right of withdrawal, but also an alternate “right of return” (which of course was almost the same thing, but not quite) and a unique exemption for the reimbursement of return shipping costs of orders under 40€ (only valid under certain circumstances) – and that’s just scratching the surface of this mess.

Therefore, as someone who works for small company which sells across borders every day and also as a consumer who often has to deal with merchants who – understandably – say “no thanks” and refuse to sell to countries other than their own, I do welcome this new harmonised directive. However, I’m a bit appalled that the member states are being given two further years to “incorporate the new rules into their domestic legislation”.

This lack of urgency to actually make the internal market work is – in my humble opinion – at the root of many of the EU’s current severe problems.

Notre situation ne semble pas être unique: il y a plusieurs posts de marchands inquiets sur les divers forums d’aide de Google. Sans forum spécifique pour Google Merchant Center, les réponses des collaborateurs de Google ne sont pas très utiles, mais un des marchands a publié le 04.01.2011 une réponse reçue par e-mail:

Le lancement de Google Shopping a rencontré un grand succès. Les ouvertures de compte ont été nombreuses, ce qui a rallongé les délais d’évaluation de chaque flux. […] Votre flux sera évalué dans les prochaines semaines.

C’est donc l’évaluation manuelle et le success de Google Merchant Center qui ont causé les délais. Il serait une bonne idée pour Google de publier cette information de forme plus visible pour éviter d’être inondé avec des messages de marchands préoccupés par le délai.

I wanted to add our logo to a brochure so that visitors of our scales and balances shop would have a way of telling from where they had downloaded the brochure. This particular brochure had backgrounds in several colors, which is why the logo itself needed to have a transparent background.

Unfortunately, Nitro PDF Professional does not recognize the transparent background in image files (tested with version 5.5.1.3). The watermark has to be a PDF file to have a transparent background.To make matters worse, the simple graphics editor I had used years ago to create the logo had no PDF export option.

Here’s the workaround I used:

1. Export the logo in an image format that supports transparency (I used PNG):

2. Open the image with OpenOffice Draw (open source, free download here):

3. Export as PDF:

4. In Nitro PDF, choose Insert and Edit > Watermark > Manage Watermarks & Backgrounds:

5. Create a new profile and add a PDF watermark:

6. Choose the PDF file created in step 3 and adjust the settings to place the watermark where you want it. Don’t forget to choose Open a web link under Action if you want the watermark to be clickable:

7. Apply the watermark to the document:

As you can see, it looks pretty good on a blue background, too.

Note: You can move individual watermarks around using the Edit tool, but the clickable area does not seem to move with them.

External links:

• Nitro PDF Professional
• OpenOffice Draw
• balances.lu (in French)

Some checkboxes you might consider turning off in your campaign settings:

• Automatic matching (not available in all countries)
• iPhone ads
• Search Partners

Search Partners? Why wouldn’t I want Google to show my ads on sites like Google product search, ask.com and aol? Well, because they’re showing on ebay, too, even though Google doesn’t mention this in Adwords help.

I asked Google last year and got this reply:

“Our global search network includes Google Product Search, Google Groups, and search sites such as AOL, Ask.com, ebay.com/ebay.de and shopping.com.”

An no, you can’t chose certain sites, it’s all or nothing.

In our case, “nothing” was the right choice. Ebay customers are not our target market and we actually stopped selling on Ebay years ago. Why would we want to display ads there?

Instead of throwing tons of money at Google Adwords, we restricted spending to a sensible level, redesigned our main online shop and invested some time into SEO. The result? December turnover increased by 50% in comparison to last year while costs for Adwords decreased by 57%.

No, Google did not steal our Christmas.

At least, that used to be the situation until…  well, I have no idea when they actually changed this, but anyhow: It’s finally possible to withdraw money to a bank account in Luxembourg!

As you can see, you can alternatively withdraw funds to a credit/debit card (this feature had been announced on the Paypal Blog in September).

I’m just glad I didn’t go through the trouble of establishing a bank account in the U.S. just to be able to withdraw funds.

***

In other “news that I apparently missed”, Paypal competitor Moneybookers [affiliate link] is allowing merchants to accept payments with the French Carte Bleue. As far as I know, this is the first and only option to accept the Carte Bleue without the need to establish a merchant account (compte commerçant) with a French bank.

While most Carte Bleues (>90%?) are nowadays co-branded with the Visa logo, giving potential customers in France the additional option of using the Carte Bleue Nationale sounds like a good idea to me, especially if the implementation is as simple as it is with Moneybookers.

I’m about to change my company’s online shops’ payment pages and might post again in a few weeks about the acceptance of Moneybooker’s Carte Bleue payment option.