and is not set up to accept credit card payments, and they want us to send payment by wire transfer, which is a problem for us.... to pay by credit card or write a check in US dollars are a problem for this vendor.I am so glad someone on the U.S.A. side of the Atlantic has said this out loud. These last billion years, I have moaned and groaned about access to, searches for and payment of books especially as someone on the Europe side.
It's not a problem with this or that vendor. It's a problem with all vendors/buyers over here when faced with the US$. It's all well and good if you are some international mega-monopoly paying out b'zillions in protection money to some mafioso from Marselles. However payment for goods and services on a grass roots level between the USA and Europe (and vice versa) is like sex between methane- and oxygen- breathing sentient beings: You really have to want it. Checkbook checks as a custom/concept just don't exist in Spain. It's cash on the cracker barrelhead. If you rummage about in a typical Spanish Mom's handbag there will be the usual tissue, gum wrappers, cell phone, hard herbal candy, bus pass, metro pass, tramway pass, grandma coin purse with the clicking not zipper fastening system, 89 keys 84 of which do not seem to have any purpose other than to serve as ballast, and a fan. But you'll never ever ever find a check book. Spainsh banks don't offer anything paper currency smaller than 20-$ bills which you have to pay for in advance. And it's against the law for a bank to accept the 100 or 50-$ bills (that my mother sends me every now and again) in trade for smaller denominations. There's no point my going into a long description of commissions on wires, transfers, bank money orders and foreign currency check cashing for anything less than a very large sum. When push comes to shove Europe is very comfortable with the good old-fahioned traditional pre-Berlin Airlift style Black Market which, for all I know, may even have a Black Market Stock Exchange building somewhere. I live in a country where nobody really trusts banks, savings and loans or cooperatives which can and do go under over night, breeds an interesting psycology. You'll have just as much success opening an anvil store as getting a spaniard to buy something on the internet with their VISA card; they just don't believe they'll get the goods. So, just as I have, everybody has worked out a whole repertoire of payment protocols that side-step as much as possible the banks. When jewish tourists come to Valencia, I feel like a panhandler in Golden Gate park: "Heeeeeey, gots any 1-$, 5-$, 10-$ bills on youse guys? I can give you a good rate!" I do a lot of favours for americans in and outside of the US, when they ask if they can give me a donation or some such truck, I usually ask that they pay $8.80 to someone I owe in the US with a US check with US dollars. Often I send $$ in a recycled greetings cards to pay up. Once I bought the Jewish Braille Institute a subscription to Raices the only Spain-spanish jewish magazine in existance. I was hoping they would send the price of the magazine to Sal Kluger for some books I really wanted. But the accounting dept at JBI is very strict and rightly so. So I asked them to send a check to my ex-husband (still my best friend) who tells me that he thinks he inadvertently tossed it into the paper recycle bin with the Save the Whales propaganda (each month he changes his improve-the-world cause list; that particular month neither large sea mammals nor the JBI figured on the list). Ufff! How I do waffle. By the bye! It's that time of year again for pilferred CALENDARS 5768 from Von's Fine Shopping Food Stores. I got 100 one-$ bills off a nice guy the other day and have plenty of recycled greetings cards to recycle, so I can offer postage. Besos de Valencia Alba Toscano Sinagoga conservador/masorti La Javura Valencia (Spain) http://www.uscj.org/world/valencia
