Are any of my fellow Ticino expats annoyed when they try to find or buy something online and the only language choices are German and French?

I can understand not doing all of your content in Romanish wouldn't pay for itself, but there are several hundred thousand Italian speakers in Switzerland and quite a few million of them a few miles to the south. In a lot of cases, the company also does business in Italy, so it would be a simple matter of carrying over content from the Italian site.

Sometimes I try using the French site, but the French seem to make up all of their own technical words rather than stealing from English like the Italians do, which makes things a bit harder.

That's my rant for today.

I know what you mean; I have bought stuff several Swiss online retailers that only offer their services in German, not even French. Thank god for Dictionary.com translator.

what are you looking to buy? normally food and drinks are multi-lingual...

Of course, if you need electronic gadgetry or a 'pooter...
Use digitec

digitec?? too expensive!

actually, Digitec are competitive and if you're in Zurich you can save on postage fees which usually are too expensive and make the total price much higher.

And they have a very good and clear website where you can see the prices and availability for everything - and this is extremely important.

THINGS ONLY IN GERMAN, FRENCH, ITALIAN, AND JAPANESE!
this feb, i went to zermatt for ski 1 week alone, i am not a normal chinese, since chinese they are famous like to be move in group, surely i didnt expect to hear any chinese on the train or on any screen here, but what made me feel quite uncomfortable is everytime you can hear japanese on the train! and during my backpack trip around Europe, they always say ''konichiwa'' to me. i am wondering is east asian = japan?
but the ironic thing is that in zurich and lucerne, if you go to big luxy shop, they will always say ''ni hao'' especially Gueblin, those big watch dealers...amused me!

well since i speak french and now i am learning german, my life is not too difficult here, but guess my other chinese friends will have more difficulties here if they are single and live alone like me.

I know how you feel Angelina, i was always annoyed when people said "Ehh ecky thump" when i graced them with my presence in the South of england.

One can become extremely frustrated.

I recently bought a whole bunch of tech, HD camera, NAS HDD, monitor etc from digitech. They were the cheapest, lowered the price of the camera after I had ordered it as well. The site is great too. They also sell quality goods, I for one like their style.

Maintaining stock and description databases for thousands of items in several languages is too expensive for most online retailers - margins are very small. All people who grew up in Ticino learned French and/or German in school. It'd probably make more sense to offer English instead of French as the second language but that would be "Un-Swiss" I guess :-)

I know what you mean!!!! I am half italian, so can speak italian (I would like to say fluently, but it has gone a bit rusty), so one of the good things abotu living here is that it is in F/G/I, which is especially useful when making cakes (as recipes are also in italian). I wish Coop at home (the shopping delivery thing) was also in italian, but so far only French and German...

they just drastically increased the delivery costs, so I'm saying good-bye to that service