A lot of residents are buying stuff from online stores but not all stores deliver here. Some stores who do will charge you more than what the item costs. One office employees said he tried ordering a USB worth $7.50 from one of the online stores and discovered at checkout that the shipping will cost him over $27, more than thrice the cost of the item.
Circuitcity.com used to deliver any item to the CNMI, but after it closed down and a new management took over last year, it will no longer deliver here.
Amazon.com will only deliver books, clothes and other small items but try to order electronic items like cameras, cellular phones, computers and go to the checkout section and you will find they do not deliver these items here.
At e-Bay, there are some sellers who won’t accept bids or Buy-It-Now transactions when you put Saipan or Northern Marianas Islands and most of them will send an e-mail to say that “we don’t ship internationally.”
Some sellers accept when you tell them that the CNMI has a United States postal code but you can’t spend all your time online giving geography lessons to the stores and sellers, can you?
This can be frustrating especially if you find really good bargains and huge discounts.
One of the initiatives of the Attorney General’s Office is to work with the federal government to make it easy for the people in the CNMI to buy goods from online stores.
Attorney General Edward T. Buckingham last week told reporters that the CNMI is not being treated the same as the other jurisdictions.
“We will work with the federal government so that the consumers here will not feel as though they are non-existent,” Buckingham said.
But some companies and online stores may not deliver to the CNMI as they have their own regulations about shipping to U.S. territories.
“We cannot promise to resolve all issues to make online purchasing easy but we will try to work it out,” Buckingham said.
He is urging members of the community to send in their comments and suggestions to be heard.
“We have the Consumer Protection Act and we would like to provide an avenue for the public to air their comments and we will listen,” he said.
For concerns or more information on the Consumer Protection Act, call 664-2341.
