A couple of years ago, I ordered an Overlord Saurfang poster from the gear store, as a gift for my friend who had just moved home, as a homewarming gift.
The postage charges were more than the posters value, and then the import taxes that their delivery company wanted to impose which I HAD to pay because they had already paid them on my behalf…
All for a bit of A3 sized thick paper.
I vowed never to buy from the gear store ever again.
I wanted to buy a Blizzard t-shirt and string bag and the postage was more than the t-shirt cost.
Same with CDPR who make Cyberpunk 2077, I wanted a t-shirt from them in Poland and the postage was 75% the price of the t-shirt. I have bought stuff from private sellers from Poland on ebay and the postage was a lot cheaper.
Issuing V Vpay sounds weird as it is being phased out, too, much like Maestro. V Pay was Visa’s “Europe only” competition to Maestro. Visa Debit would have been more “futureproof” card which would also be accepted internationally and online.
I personally find credit cards convenient, especially for online payments as you get some level of protection in case of a dispute with the seller unlike with “traditional” direct transfers like the mentioned Ideal or other domestic payment systems. Many credit cards don’t have extra fees either if you pay the debt fully each month.
Yea it appears my bank offers a CC with a relatively low annual fee and small letters if you pay the debt on time no additional fees either but I don’t really think I’d want one for 1-5 purchases on internet a year~?
Sighs loudly
I didn’t realise that some places still charged a fee for credit cards. I think that was abolished in the UK a long time ago. To be fair, they probably added it on to their interest rates, but I always pay them off monthly.
Kind of surprised you only do 1-5 purchases per year over Internet. I think I am over 10 this month alone though many are fairly small purchases like ebooks. 
Most credit cards here tend to be without yearly fees unless it is some sort of a “special” card which potentially has extra bonuses or other features like accumulate airline points, lounge access and so on. If you want to get a credit card I’d check other banks for cheaper cards. I have two credit cards and both are free (no annual or monthly fees if I pay the debt fully each month).
Remember that the protection offered by credit cards also applies to physical purchases, too. Eg. when some travel agencies went bankrupt it left people without money or holiday if they had paid directly (including debit card, I think) while payments using credits card were refunded by the credit card issuer.
Now I just sound like credit card salesman.
Oh I meant, 1-5 purchases that only accepts “CC or paypal” - usually like Robberry above most stores in here accepts your Bank Debit card or iDeal so I don’t have problems with the other internet purchases.
I’d have thought that too. I work in the card payment industry and Maestro has been being phased out for a while. In the UK it was replaced 2 years ago with most banks issuing Mastercard Debit cards in it’s place. Vpay is another that has a short shelf life… a very odd decision.
Maestro is an issue as it does not perform transactions via tokenisation which is a PCI compliance issue in the EU now, hence it’s demise and replacement.
Sounds like the decisions are being made by Beancounters based in America, without any real understanding of Europe or European systems. A case of “What works well here, must work well in Europe too, right!”
Considering America is only just adopting to Chip and Pin I cannot disagree 
They have had Chips on their cards for 3 years but still with signature… in the last 18 months they have started rolling out Chip and Pin… what next… contactless payments of $25?? 
Tried paying with my debit card, but it simply cannot be processed. I did get a message only once that my card was declined, even though I completed the payment in my bankapp. I read once again that your first purchase can’t be a big one, due to fraudulent behaviour.
What a slouch that gearstore is.
I think more likely reasoning is that it would be too expensive to support multiple different national systems when there is already widely used and accepted (with some exceptions) system in the form of credit and debit cards.
Was it Mastercard or Visa branded Debit card? And had you allowed online/internet payments for them? Many banks have them disabled by default.
I personally experienced problems with PayPal and Nordea credit card where the payment was being declined even though Internet payments were allowed. For some reason Paypal’s system showed up as a physical point of sale terminal located outside my country instead of a remote online payment system which caused the bank to decline it because I had limited physical card purchases to country where I live in.
I was able to complete the payment by allowing payments internationally in the banking app before trying again and switching back after the finishing the payment. That might be worth checking out too, if needed you could also contact your bank and see why the payment was declined.
It’s just a plain Maestro card I use for just about any online purchase. Every time I try it now, it simply tells me it cannot be processed and to wait a few minutes.
I added my card to Google Pay, but even that won’t help.
Maestro is not accepted there like the above discussion covers, just Visa and MasterCard debit/credit cards and some other options which might not be available for pre-orders.
Checkout says it does though. It also identifies the 15 digit card number and greys out the other options once entered.
At this point, I’m too tired to even keep trying. Guess it doesn’t work on preorders.
I only ever got to use the previous gear store, but living in the Middle East, ordering from the US store was genuinely cheaper, both prices and shipping cost. I understand that it might be problematic with a game CE which is probably region specific
Also it’s somewhat a selling tactic, somewhat common sense that if you buy multiple items the shipping cost won’t generally increase. I bought my D.Va earphones, mouse and xbox d-pad covers all together. The covers cost like 5 dollars so they’re definitely not worth it as a standalone purchase.
Managed to put in a preorder using a virtual creditcard. (Don’t worry, it’s legit.) So those work if people don’t have a creditcard themselves.
So i contaced the store directly to ask what was up, this was their responce, i send my question 21 june i only just now got a responce -_-.
The payment options are Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, Apple Pay and Google Pay.
However, there are some options that are available only to customers in a certain country, like Bancontact (Belgium) and iDEAL (The Netherlands).
Those only appear for customers with an address in one of those countries, so we don’t advertise them.
Finally, Apple Pay is only available in Safari. Google Pay is only available in Chrome. That’s typical behavior for those accelerated payment providers.
But guess what my adress is in the NL and no ideal does not show up, pretty much pointless to respond back again if it takes them a month to a email…