Western expatriate Lynn Thomas, a wife and mother, used GulfAir.com and Hotels.com to book her family’s summer vacation this year to the UK.

“It’s really important to know your dates, be in a calm frame of mind and have a calendar at hand when booking airline tickets and hotel reservations online,” Thomas said. “Have all the passport information available. Know that if you arrive in London in the morning, you won’t be able to check into a hotel until after three in the afternoon. If you want to check in right away, the reservation has to start from the day before. Double check everything before clicking the acceptance button for the fees and if possible pay in the same currency as your credit card is billed in. That way there are no surprises when the credit card bill arrives.”

Thomas related a nasty e-commerce experience she had using a credit card issued from a local Saudi bank. She placed an order online with a Canadian company, but within a few hours the company rejected the order stating that they didn’t deliver to Saudi Arabia. Although she paid the Canadian company CAD250 and was refunded CAD250 by the company on the same day, there was a SR31 difference between what she paid and what was refunded on the credit card — in the bank’s favor. The Saudi credit card issuer claimed that the SR31 difference was due to the currency exchange rate!

Salesman Waleed Haddad has had some surprises when booking tickets on the Saudi Arabian Airlines website.

“The website is variable in its functionality. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t,” Haddad advised. “You have to fill out the information exactly. Don’t write P.O. Box. Only letters and numbers are allowed. For the telephone numbers you have to give one mobile number and one Hatif line — even though the option is there to give two of the same type of number. Sometimes you can choose a seat and sometimes you can’t. God forbid if you want to change your ticket! You can’t make changes online and no travel agent is able to help you.”

In Saudi Arabia, teens and twenty-somethings would seem to be natural users of e-commerce, but they are constrained because it’s difficult for them to get credit cards. Some college students have supplementary credit cards which are really credit cards issued against the accounts of family members. This means that all their purchases are on view and questioned.

“I bought some headphones and other stuff from Amazon.com. The shopping experience at Amazon.com was really good,” said Noor Ahmed. “I charged the purchase to my credit card, which is on my brother’s account. I had planned to use Borderlinx from DHL to get the stuff to Saudi Arabia but that was a big mistake. DHL insisted to charge me something called volumetric shipping charges. That worked out to a hundred riyals per item. There were four packages so it would be SR400 for the shipping. The stuff was electronics that weighed less than 200 grams all together. Eventually, I managed to use Saudi Post’s Wasel service, but it was still expensive — a lot more than the cost of the stuff from Amazon. I had to pay for all those charges and explain the mess to my brother, since he saw the bill. It made me look stupid.”

Several other people mentioned shipping issues and customs duties as reason why they never buy physical products online that will be shipped to Saudi Arabia. Silvia Vergisi said that when she is going to the US, she buys online, has the items shipped to her hotel and brings them back in her luggage. Mandy sends gifts for all her friends and relatives living in the UK and US using online purchasing.

There is also the problem of getting ripped off. One Saudi who asked to remain anonymous, purchased vitamins from a company called Lucky Vitamin. He was notified that they were shipped to Saudi Arabia through International Checkout, a shipping service that handles international shipments from hundreds of online storefronts. Two months later the vitamins still haven’t arrived and no one is able to tell him what happened to them. “That’s over 300 riyals lost,” he complained. “I don’t know if they actually shipped the vitamins and the package was stopped at Saudi customs or if they never left the warehouse.”

The consumers that Arab News spoke with seem to be the happiest buying those items online which instantly show a successful transaction and return, such as online gaming access, business or personal services access and airline tickets. Sites that offer Arabic interfaces are popular and Amazon.com is browsed regularly — even by those who don’t buy from it.

“One thing that online shopping sites show is how much items cost abroad and how much the same items cost here. It’s scandalous sometimes as the markups can be really high,” said Samir Barr, a project control administrator. “I advise people to check the prices online before they go out to the shops here. Then you know what’s reasonable to pay.”