We are living in a global village. When it comes to travel, we book a flight and within a day we are able to get to almost every corner of our planet. The internet gives us every information we need with just a couple of mouse clicks. We have “friends” on facebook and a blog post goes around the digital world in seconds.
We sell, buy, exchange goods and ship them to other countries; no big deal is this.
eBooks eliminate the need to wait for the printed copy; it gives you also the good feeling to be part of the “Green Planet” initiative. How easy it is to order an ebook.
Ehm, wait … What about Amazon??
For about 1 year, I have 100$ on my amazon.com account. The money came from a gift card. And for about 1 year, I am not able to order anything from amazon.com and use the money for payment.
Today I started a new attempt. I thought that ordering an ebook would be ok. There is no shipping cost, no tax etc. So I tried to order
Oh, did I mention, that I am located in Germany? Amazon does know and instead of letting me order an eBook it just gives me a hint that I should order from amazon.de.
That would not be a problem, if I only could use my amazon.com giftcard on amazon.de.But the giftcard is not accessible from my amazon.de account. According to amazon, shifting the money from one account to another ( for the same user ) is not possible. I cannot even give away the money for charity or just move the money from my account to another account.
And if I see this correct, I am not even able to place an order for a friend in USA and use his address for delivery.
AMAZON, this is anoying!! In Germany I would take you to court for taking the money and not providing a benefit. …
The explanation is IMHO fairly simple:
amazon.com and amazon.de are run by different companies. amazon.de belongs to Amazon S.a.r.l (Luxemburg, to save taxes!). So you try to use your gift card on a different company. That’s “all”.
Using an Amazon account in different shops/countries just with regular payment is possible. I just used my german Amazon account in the US (while travelling there).
Hi,
Its not only with amazon. you will feel the same pain in ebay too.. I already had the same experience with Ebay.. 🙂
Odd. Well in my case nobody is even near to invest in a gift card. In my case it would allways be the other way round: I buy the gift card and another person selects the gift.
Anyway, I’ve ordered @ amazon.com and even amazon.es and it allways worked. Maybe you have to create another account on amazon.com with your german adress, if I remember right?
I’ve experienced the service amazon offers as technically fantastic, which doesn’t mean that this is true for any corner. For example, they sent you chilean books, you won’t even find in the best bookshop in Buenos Aires or Lima, for example.
Now I boicot them a bit, though, for using Luxemburg as a tax haven, the well known work-related issues in Germany during winter and NSA.
It is a shame for such huge company as amazon not to be able to do a simple inter-company transaction and shift the balance to my amazon.de account.
Ping me, we sort this out for you
Il y a longtemps que je n’avait pas trouv? une lecture de cette qualit?