[maccyber]

This seems like a reasonable explanation, although in the case I described, the .ca price including all possible taxes would still be a little less than the the .com "Canadian" price charged in USD. Nevertheless, the disparity would be greatly reduced.

Your explanation was logical, brief, and to the point. In contrast, amazon's response to my inquiry via email and a phone call was vague and inconclusive. Their final email ended by saying that Canadian customers who choose not to migrate their account from the .com site to the .ca site cannot avoid being "overcharged" at this time and presently, there is nothing they are prepared to do about it. According to your explanation, this response is not only false, but counterproductive on the part of the representative. Can they be that ill informed about their own pricing policies?

Note that if a Canadian migrates his "Kindle account" from .com to .ca he gains the advantage of prices listed and charged in Canadian currency, but must sacrifice access to all subscriptions to magazines, periodicals, etc, cannot access the music store, loses access to the music cloud, and will have limited or no access to games or active content. In addition, kindle devices are still not available at the .ca site and must be purchased through .com

I'm curious if you have any first hand knowledge of an ebook purchase at the new .ca kindle store and exactly how they describe taxes and total cost. I cannot purchase a kindle book there unless I migrate my account from the .com site to .ca. It seems that for kindle purchases, one's account can be used at either .com or .ca but not both. I am unable to "proceed to checkout" in the .ca Kindle store which means I cannot see any potential additional charges like tax. Only the lower list price is shown.

This is an extremely confusing situation and should have been handled with greater clarity by amazon. Finally, I would say that Canada is so economically, geographically, and to some extent even culturally integrated with the US verses other "non-north american" countries that the limited product/services access and "foreign" market treatment is a little annoying. I have friends who commute to work in the states and some weeks probably spend more time over there than they do at home. I think they take this market for granted and don't feel the need to try very hard.