Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Amazon: Global selling done wrong

I have an account at Amazon. Actually I have two. One at Amazon.com and one at Amazon.co.uk. In the beginning I just had one at Amazon.com, but to avoid import tax I had to create one in the EU as well. I don't really understand why I needs these two accounts.
Apparantly Amazon only sells E-books through the american version, not the UK version. It's not that they won't sell them to me, they just require me to log into the american version to do the purchase.

I once searched for the a kindle paperwhite, and now amazon is flodding my inbox with add campaigns for the kindle paperwhite. I can go through the order until i get to the shipping details. Why am I getting adds for stuff they won't sell me?
Couldn't they just figure this out beforehand. I also find it strange that sales tax is not included in the listed prices. I know thats the way things work in the US but couldn't they change it for the rest of us.

For the affiliate program it is just ridiculus. I have to link to a localized version of amazon. If my audience is global, there is no way to target everybody. I have to select what version of amazon I want to link to and miss out on all my users that can't use that version.

Wouldn't it just be cool if they could use the information on my account to display the information that is relevant to me, or maybe just redirect me to the version of their site that is of use to me. Maybe I'm too demanding, but it would for sure make me a more happy customer.