Hello,
I'm Mervi Eskelinen!
An artist, nerd and sorcerer, dedicated to make world softer and better for everyone, and to get you to make more art. Make art, change the world!
This can't be changed later!
Yesterday I opened Pinterest and was greeted with a pop-up prompt asking if I was interested in advertising. Hey, I thought, they've finally rolled the advertising out to the rest of the world! Fat chance. I clicked on and in the next prompt I was asked to set my location. The location setting only offered United States (Dollars). For a moment I thought to choose that. I could, at least, see how the advertising platform works. But luckily I read the text again.
What the...? I could rant about the fact that Pinterest was offering me, someone they know is from Finland, this advertising option. I'm guessing it was an accident of some sort. There's a bigger issue, though. Why couldn't I changed my country afterwards? What if I hadn't read that thing through (many people online don't) and had clicked Next without thinking what I was doing (most people online don't)? Most of all, what happens if I move? I guess I would have to start from the scratch and get a new account. Losing all of my pins and followers. Not good.
Pinterest is not the only one with these country issues. Etsy doesn't let changing bank country for Direct Checkout. Let's say you happened to open an Etsy store while you were located to Finland, later immigrated to USA and closed your Finnish bank account and got a new one in your new home place. Now your only option would be to start over with a new account (new email address, new username) and new shop (the old one cannot be redirected to this new one). Etsy cites fraud as an excuse for this. Many have reported in Etsy forums that they refuse to take any ID's and other information to prove your move is legit. Etsy is assuming everyone is a fraud, no matter what.
It is a stupid thing to assume that one's address, country, name, sex, email, username, bank information and other such things never change. Just like Google+ assumes that I would never change my name and thus I'll always be okay with having my profile address set to +MerviEskelinen (which it kind of forced on me). I could get married and take my spouse's last name. I could decide to start using my middle name, Emilia, as my first. I could change my name for many, many other reasons. Reasons I cannot even imagine right now. And what would be my option? Start over. Get a new account, try to get everyone who previously had circled me to circle me again. Build my online identity from a scratch. Just because.
Plus there are all those mistakes. All those times people accidentally typo their names. Or after moving, accidentally put in the old address. Or choose the wrong setting, because your UX is so badly done it is hard to tell what is being chosen. Mistakes happen. Some are the fault of people making the mistakes. Some are the fault of your service. Either way, they are mistakes. Mistakes that should be able to fix afterwards.
Those who commit frauds are not stopped by settings that make things only difficult for the legit ones. Those who commit frauds will find their way. They create tons of fake email addresses and tons of accounts and stores. Punishing everyone else, that's not cool. Having built a huge following on Pinterest and starting over with a new account because they don't allow changing your ads country setting seems bad. Having had the same store and account on Etsy for 6 years and then starting from the scratch for moving to another country is not great service. Starting a whole new account because you got married and changed your name is a punishment. These services which don't allow changing your personal settings are punishing their legit users for things scammers, spammers and frauds are doing. They are lazy.
It is bad customer service not to let your customers change their names, addresses, emails, country settings, usernames, bank information, sex and other such settings. You are assuming everyone and everything remains the same forever. Having seen Europe and former Soviet Union going through all those changes in early '90s I can tell you nothing is forever. In this world of information technology the borders are getting more vague. Assuming every business and every person stays in the same country and never changes their name, sex or other information is futile.
Never change. Never.
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