I think I need a relay
by Volker Weber
Redeeming a gift certificate from Amazon.co.uk is harder than expected.
Comments
How big is it? The product dimensions don't tell me much.
I'm travelling from the UK to DE soon.
Happy to do it for you Volker - just ping me a mail. I can't guarantee delivery in time for Christmas though :-)
What is it that you are getting ?
And , can you not redeem that via Amazon Germany ? No method of cross referencing the Voucher ?
Eileen, don't worry. I will be sending the snake via Warren. ;-)
Actually there is a lot of fine print attached:
1) Gift certificates may only be redeemed at our Web site, http://www.amazon.co.uk, toward the purchase of products listed in Amazon.co.uk's online catalogue sold by Amazon.co.uk. They cannot be redeemed at Amazon.com, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.co.jp, Amazon.ca or at any of Amazon.co.uk's Auctions or zShops stores or Amazon.co.uk's Trusted Partner Sites.2) This gift certificate can not be used to pay for Amazon.co.uk gift certificates.3) This gift certificate has a cash redemption value of 0.001p and is not transferable or assignable.4) Any unused balance will be placed in the recipient's gift certificate account.5) If the order exceeds the amount of the gift certificate, the balance must be paid by credit or debit card.6) Please use our Shopping Basket rather than our 1-Click ordering method when paying for an order with a gift certificate.7) Gift certificates and unused portions of gift certificates expire one year from the date of issue, where permissible under applicable law.8) This gift certificate can be applied to an open order by visiting the relevant Order Summary page in the "Your Account" section of our Web site.9) Normal Amazon.co.uk terms and conditions of purchase and for using the Amazon.co.uk Web site apply.10) Please note that there are some products available for sale on the Amazon.co.uk website that may not be purchased by persons under a specified age. If you are planning to give this gift certificate to someone under 18 years of age, please ensure that they are made aware that some products are unavailable to them.
Does not make sense if trying to deal with a Global Entity really does it :-( Ohh well have fun ordering, trust you to order something that cannot be shipped to Germany.
Next time, just sell the voucher to somebody who is spending ¢¢¢s at Amazon on family xmas presents!
That would be kind of rude, wouldn't it?
Volker - It amazes me to hear this. I'm used to being in the massive U.S. economy where of course anything that can be sought can be purchased (and must be, e.g. healthcare -- but I digress).
Suddenly (at least for us) the E.U. is actually a larger economy and for the most part has transitioned enough to be sold to nearly as uniformly as the U.S. The result is that the more environmentally focused European market is starting to have an impact on our goods here. Banned substances in Europe are disappearing from ingredients lists and so on just so that products don't have to be made twice.
Given how rapidly this is (finally) happening, it just stuns me to see how stupidly Amazon is acting in this regard.
Andrew, it's not only Amazon. To my knowledge Apple is doing the pretty much the same with iTunes. They even charge different prices, where the UK (where you pay in GBP) is usually more expensive compared to the continent (where you pay in EUR in most countries). As if the download is costlier to Apple in the UK...
As far as I know you can't use a UK credit card on the German iTunes store and vice versa, so you can't just buy "abroad". You can't use UK gift vouchers in the German store either or only with great difficulty (can't remember the full details, but someone who recently moved from Germany to the UK had the problem when she received a UK voucher but her account is with the German iTunes store).
Commerce without borders? Yeah, right...
