Hi,

I'm looking into the Sony Reader to replace my Palm T3, and I've hit a slight issue, you can't buy ebooks from the Connect site without a US credit card.

Are they serious? I normally buy books from ereader.com, they don't care where you are in the world.

Any thoughts anybody?

thanks

Various helpful people here pointed out that you can register and claim the $50 free credit just by ticking the "I live in the US" box - you do not need to provide credit card details or address at that point (note the $50 offer expires at the end of April and the credit has to be used by June, so get your Reader soon).

Then there is a member here called LeapingGnome who kindly offers to buy credit vouchers for you if you send him the money by PayPal.

Or ...
You can get the books by other means than the Connect store.
Like Baen, Project Guttenberg, www.craphound.com** and others (a small example of a book I liked very much is at http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9460).

I personaly do not reside in the USA and all my "credit" cards are "electronic use only" - that means I can use my "credit" card to withdraw cash from an ATM but not to pay on line. And I like it very much that way.

Another strong reason for me for not buying books from the Connect store is that I prefer different formating (type of font and margin size) and it is impossible to reformat the Connect books to sans-serif type of font.

Not to mention that ugly and awkward connect application and very poor navigation among books in the store ...

--

** in case you haven't noticed Cory Doctorow has a new book online - The Overclocked. It features, among other short stories a story "When administrators ruled the Earth"

Then there is a member here called LeapingGnome who kindly offers to buy credit vouchers for you if you send him the money by PayPal.

There's a space in my nickname, that's important. :) Just send me a private message if you want do a Connect-Paypal exchange.

I've posted this in other thread. I'm from Argentina and I increased the credit to acquire books in Connect store.

When I registered the device, I entered a valid US address. Needless to say it is not the address where my credit card is registered. When the $50 were half way used (I had $23 left), I just went to the option to send a gift credit. I selected $100 and sent it to an email account different than the one I registered with. This immediately charged my credit card $ 77. Then, I checked for the email and copied the gift code. Back in the account menu of the connect software, I copied the code in the option to redeem gifts and... that's it.

I guess that there is not much to what I did. I think the key is the valid US address and, probably (though cannot be sure), the fact that I had some credit left so part of the gift was paid with 'good' credit.

Hope this helps.

There's a space in my nickname, that's important. :) Just send me a private message if you want do a Connect-Paypal exchange.
Would Sony have problem with just listing such an exchange on eBay? That would make it a more regular sort of eCommerce.

eBay is pretty restrictive on what electronic goods they allow to be sold, not sure if they'd let the gift certificates be sold.

The second peice of it is eBay fees, the seller of the certificate would need to charge more to break-even on the exchange.

Finally, the last thing is everyone assumes Sony will eventually offer Connect in the rest of the world so people are just doing what is needed to get by while waiting. :)

Yeah but there is that feeling that they won't allow US devices to be used in non-US stores or if they do, will it invalidate all your previously purchased books. It is after all, a Sony device.

I don't know, their customer service when you call has been decent so far, I would expect if you called and said you got it and a gift certificate as a gift from a US relative they would let you change it over if they did have a restriction like that.

After all what happens when one of their customers moves?