I could not find this posted anywhere, so I thought I would
share my
experience. Google Checkout's support for international
customers (or,
at least, shipping to international addresses) is limited,
but it is
not zero.
In fact, the table of countries accepted for credit card
billing (and
shipping) addresses that appears on the initial Checkout
page (for
users who are creating a Google account because they do not
already
have one) is quite short. Canada is included and also a lot
minor
destinations (mostly obscure). But European countries are
missing.
However, if the customer *PREVIOUSLY* creates a Google
account (before
shopping), the "pull-down list" of countries for
both billing and
shipping includes Australia, Japan, and all of the western
European
countries!
In either case, when you submit a shopping cart XML form
that contains
any "shipping-methods" (or at least, any
"flat-rate-shipping" methods,
which is all that I use), the Google Checkout process
disallows any
non-U.S. shipping address (the address is highlighted in
yellow, with a
prominent warning sign and a message that the merchant
"does not ship
to this address").
The workaround is to ask your customer if they want
international
shipping *BEFORE* generating the shopping cart form,
possibly giving
them a choice of international shipping options at various
prices.
Then include the (chosen) shipping option in the cart as a
(non-taxable) "item" and, most importantly, *OMIT*
the entire
"shipping-methods" block from your generated XML.
That works!
Bill
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