You made some good points there llegrand, and possibility of lost sales due to too stringent rules is something I have had to think about in the past, but due to the card processing companies here in the UK taking a stand that if you ship to an address other than the card holders registered address, you will be fully liable for any charge backs, in my case 1 of $3750 and another that luckily I caught at the last minute and managed to recall the courier saving me a further $1800.

I am currently using a hosted solution, I won't name them on such a worthwhile forum, but they have a simple check box in the checkout options it says...

 ' The first part of this section allows you to choose whether you customers’ can supply a delivery address that is different to their billing address or not. The main advantage of disabling this section is to prevent credit card fraud, as it ensures that the goods can only be delivered to the card holder’s address. This is, of course, no good if you are offering a gift wrapping and delivery service as your customer may want the goods to be delivered to the person who is receiving the gift. You may also want to take into account that may people want their items delivered to their work place rather than their home during the working week.'

I think giving this simple option is a must, at least this way the merchant has the option to choose if he is prepared to take the risk or not.

Generally I find that a customer may contact me to explain they need it delivered to another address, in which case if they can pay by bank transfer, or PayPal if it is a confirmed address as you are then covered by the seller protection as llegrand pointed out, this way there is no problem and I will ship to any address they choose, including international.