While it is easy to get Kobo Sage in countries where Kobo sells its devices either via its own store or an official retailer, it is not so easy in the rest of EU, which includes my homeland. If you want Sage and suffer the same problem, here are notes on my solution...
WHERE TO BUY IT:
-The list of stores (UK web site for the sake of english, but note that UK is not in EU any more):
https://uk.kobobooks.com/pages/where...ign=WheretoBuy
-There are some stores that ship to more than one country, but the only store that seems to ships all over EU (most notably to my country) is LDLC.com. I have never heard of them before but they seem to be pretty big.
WARRANTY:
-In EU you get 2 years warranty unlike US where you get (generally?) 1 year warranty only.
-Obviously you need a proof of purchase.
-In a country with official Kobo retailers and support (and Germany, which is an exception - there is no official local retailer, but Kobo provides support there) Kobo provides a TNT Pickup appointment for the defective device. TNT picks up the device at your address, sends it to us and then we send you the new device. In Switzerland, Kobo may ship the replacement device to you before requesting the old device.
You have to contact Kobo (e.g. their support chat) and they will send you return labels or make a pick up appointment. In general shipping costs are covered by Kobo, but that only applies to the country where you bought the device from an official retailer. If you buy it in Switzerland, Kobo will (only) cover the shipping costs from/to a Switzerland address. There is no way that you can pay for shipping from/to another country. The only solution could be using a friend who lives in the country that Kobo provides support to and have the defective unit shipped to your friend and then from your friend to you.
LDLC:
-I have bought Sage in this French store and it arrived to me in my country via DPD 5 working days after dispatch from France. It might have been 4 days if it wasn't for a mix up at a local DPD. That's bloody fast if you ask me :-)
-LDLC.com has an international web site (see the bottom of the main page for a link), but it seems that their on-line chat help is only available in French. It can be started via a round bubble icon at the bottom right of the "aide" page. The icon did not display on the English "help" page for me nor it did on some French help pages I would expect it to be displayed at, but once I located it, I just bookmakred the page and it was always there. Obviously you can use a web translator to communicate with LDLC help and I did so twice and sorted everything out. They were quite patient, nice and helpful.
-The one thing I disliked about LDLC website is that you can pay only through PayPal or bank transfer. The PayPal payment used on the web site requires a PayPal account and I didn't want that so I payed via bank transfer. It took three working days for the bank transfer (EU payment) to be complete :-/
In case you do the same and your bank asks for the address of LDLC (some banks do this for security purposes and it is a good thing), here is the data:
name: LDLC.com
street: 2 rue des Erables
city: Limonest
country: France
LDLC also asks you to note the number of your order on your bank transfer so I just added it into the "note" field even with a French phrase to be nice to them :-)
note: Le numero de commande: 111111111111 1A
LDLC & WARRANTY:
In the event of a problem with the device, you may contact Kobo directly, but you will need an intermediate address they can pick up the old device and send the new one to (see above).
You may ship the device back to LDLC at your cost and they compensate it in the form of a voucher. They may require a low cost shipping service and will require a receipt to cover the compensate the costs via a voucher.
The cost of shipping the new/repaired device to you is included in the warranty and is covered by LDLC.
The return address (as of now) is: 38070 St Quentin Fallavier.
Hope it helps someone
PH