This is nothing new. Rarely these days can you actually buy something without a US billing address on your credit card (unless you can use PayPal, and even then...) Even stupid places like Target won't let you use your foreign billing address even if you ship within the US. Maybe you want to send it as a legitimate gift? Nooooo!

That's why I kept my US credit card (luckily I have a US shipping address too but these days, now I have to deal with those dumb airline baggage fees- whole other topic of disgust).

I suspect this is also driven by the credit card companies who claim it's due to fraud... Though I wonder how much of this is also due to inadequate measures dealing with identity theft and credit profiling (ie. stalking your transactions because no one would ever use their credit card outside the US *insert sarcasm here*).

Actually the style of the email and the grammatical errors are very Dinglish. (Dutch + English). Especially the closing and the way he signed his full (first initial last name). Most dutch people rarely include their full first name in correspondence, usually using only their first few initials. This is proper business etiquette. On the flip side, in the news, the first name last initial is commonly used to "anonymously" name suspected criminals who want to stay anon, for example Ali G.

Seeing as he comes from .nl - at least that part is legit.