Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Amazon Could Be More International

Dave Winer:

I bought a gift card for a friend who lives in the UK, but I bought it on amazon.com, thinking that would be great because they’re so international. But it turns out you can’t use an amazon.com card on amazon.co.uk.

[…]

I got on the phone with Amazon, probably talking with someone in China (even more international) and we figured out the only thing to do was to cancel the gift card, and I’ll now have to become a member of amazon.co.uk so I can give my friend a gift card she can actually use in the country she lives in.

[…]

So I went ahead and logged on to amazon.co.uk with my American account and it worked. So the rep was wrong, I didn’t need to create a new account.

Update (2016-12-29): Damien Petrilli:

Apple is far worst with their appleID. Switching country makes you lose purchase history / cloud capabilities.

1 Comment RSS · Twitter

Apple and many other gift cards have the same problem. I'd assume there is some larger accounting/legal problem around this. One small bright spot is you can typically use gifts cards between US and Canada.

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