Things that strike me

Dear Amazon,

I have spent some time drafting notes to your customer service over the last day and to be honest, the response I have gotten suggests they don’t actually read the messages they get properly.

I don’t own a Kindle, but I do have Kindle software running on an iPad, I access Kindle via webapp from time to time and I have Kindle software running on my laptop. I have spent more money on books via the Kindle store on amazon.com in the last 6 months than I have on music via iTunes. This is saying quite a lot.

I live in the Republic of Ireland. This means you compel me to use the US Kindle store to buy Kindle ebooks. As far as English language publications go, this is not a huge big deal to me although in certain respects, I might prefer having access to amazon.co.uk as they tend to have more culturally useful special offers than amazon.com does. Additionally, I have been a book buyer from amazon.co.uk for years. So it’s not great to be forced to use the American store for ebooks.

However, I have a greater problem than that. I read French and German and would like to be able to get Kindle ebooks in these languages onto my Kindle software. The range of said books on the amazon.com Kindle store is not great to be honest, but that’s fine, because you know have amazon.de Kindle stores and especially, amazon.fr Kindle stores. So yesterday I contacted your customer support to enquire whether I could also use my Kindle software via either or both of these stores.

The response they came back with was that it was only possible to connect a Kindle to one store at a time.

They then helpfully gave me instructions on how to switch from amazon.com to amazon.co.uk Kindle store if I lived in the United Kingdom.

I say helpfully but of course, I don’t mean that. I had made it very clear in the original message that I lived in the Republic of Ireland.

So I sent them another message and asked if it were possible, as a resident of the Republic of Ireland to sign up with the amazon.fr Kindle store (bearing in mind that I could only connect to one store at a time, and identifying my greater need).

They wrote back and said if I were a resident of France, Belgium, Luxembourg or Switzerland I could sign up to amazon.fr and the prices were in euro so I wouldn’t need to even have currency conversions.

I quote:

Existing Amazon.com customers with France, Belgium, Switzerland or Luxembourg as their country of residence have the option to switch to the Amazon.fr Kindle Store for future purchases. If you’re eligible, you’ll receive a letter sent directly to your Kindle with details on how to make the switch.

All Kindle content in the Amazon.fr Kindle Store is priced in Euros (EUR) so there are no conversion charges on your credit card.

This is useful information. It makes it clear that as I live in Ireland, I can’t sign up to amazon.fr.

Additionally, of the four countries I could live in and connect to amazon.fr, one of those countries is not in the European Union, and it does not use the Euro as a currency so the blanket statement about euro prices not causing conversion charges is inaccurate for your customers who live in Switzerland.

However, this problem would go away if the full range of Kindle ebooks available through amazon.fr and amazon.de was available via the amazon.com store. Given that some of the books I already was looking for on amazon.fr yesterday are not, I know the full range of French language Kindle ebooks is not available through amazon.com.

I live in the European Union. I cannot understand why a country not in the European Union has access to a book market in the European Union that I am not able to access.

I think however made the decision of tying Kindles to a specific Kindle store rather than a specific amazon account made a serious error.

I’d be greatful if you either made the full range of Kindle ebooks available via the different Kindle stores available to ALL kindle stores, or, made it possible to buy books from the different kindle stores based on your amazon account details rather than a specific store or made it possible for people outside France, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Belgium to get an amazon.fr account on their Kindles because as far as I can see, I’d get ALL the English language books via amazon.fr when I can’t get all the French language books I want via amazon.com.

Your in some frustration,

Treasa Lynch, Kindle customer.