[thelist] Multicurrency

[john at johnallsopp.co.uk]

Hi

I want to implement multicurrency on <www.tinshop.co.uk>.

Firstly, does anyone have any favourite methods for getting regular,
reliable conversion rates.

Secondly, any thoughts on the design would be appreciated at this stage.
The site is built on dollars .. each item has a dollar price, and the
billing is in dollars. So if I take UK clients, convert to pounds, display
pounds throughout, then they're going to be pretty upset that we charge
dollars to their credit card and the credit card applies their (different)
conversion rate, so the price turns out different to what they agreed. It
might even be illegal to do that.

Explaining all that would be bad usability.

I could continue to display dollars, but also superscript a local currency
approximation. That doesn't feel so great as to display in local currency.

I could probably bill in $, pounds and Euros, so that solves the bulk of
the problem. Maybe I'd convert the $ price for each session, or give the
client a maintenance menu option to apply once a month or so to write
pound and euro prices to each item. But the issue still applies for those
clients outside Europe.

I could display all in local currency, then when it comes to paying,
explain that we'll charge in dollars .. but it's a stopper isn't it. It
introduces doubt. We'll lose sales.

Any thoughts, good practice examples?

Cheers
J