Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!rutgers!ucla-cs!flowers
From: flowers@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Margot Flowers)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Shareware fees for overseas
Message-ID: <17326@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 28 Oct 88 22:38:03 GMT
References: <530@tank.uchicago.edu>
Sender: news@CS.UCLA.EDU
Reply-To: flowers@cs.ucla.edu (Margot Flowers)
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 40


>... I'd like to send the author the SW fee he's asking ($10).  But he
>lives in Australia.  How can I send him the fee...	

If he himself requested $10US, then sending him in some form of US$ is
probably acceptible to him.

One way to send small amounts of money between foreign countries is to
use International Reply Coupons (IRCs), which you can purchase at any
post office.  Each coupon may be redeemed for the cost of sending a
letter first class from any country to any country, according to some
international postal convention.  It is sort of the international
equivalent of the SASE in that they are intended as a method by which
the sender can provide reply postage to the recipient.  (IRCs are nice
to know about and use if you are corresponding with someone for whom
the cost of return postage would be a hardship.)  In some situations,
people will accept them as a way of paying other small costs, e.g. the
cost of duplicating materials which are being mailed.

The situation is not so simple as that however.  First of all, first
class mail in many parts of the world is by slow boat, so often people
who are expecting letters to reply to will specify 2-3 IRCs to be sent
to them just for air postage.  Secondly, the official purchase price
of IRCs is not always equal to their value.  About 5 years ago, in the
US, IRCs were about $0.70 when purchased from the US post office, yet
their value was about $0.35 (the value of postage they could be
redeemed for in the US) -- I don't know their cost and value now.
Hence, a lot of people will trade them as currency instead of cashing
them in.  Thus, you will find that outside of the post office (e.g. in
DX radio groups) you may be able to buy them for a fraction of the
price for which they are sold in the US post office.  Finally, your
recipient may not have any use for IRCs at all (they may not send any
international mail, or may not want the hassle of redeeming or selling
them) or they may not have any use for a large quantity of them that
would be required to be equivalent for shareware fees.

It boils down to: if the author is willing to accept IRCs and will
specify the quantity of IRCs they want as a shareware fee, and if the
sender can buy them at close to their true value, they are another
alternative way of sending shareware fees.