Getting around the Kobo store's obnoxious address policy

[Cactus Chef]

Quick Note: This is specifically regarding buying from Kobo's online store, not really related to the Kobo device itself, but it seemed worth posting here anyway.

I don't like giving retailers my personal info if I can avoid it, particularly when their privacy policy makes it pretty damn clear that they intend to collect everything they can about you and share it with marketers. In an attempt to avoid having my credit card and billing information stored with Kobo, I instead went to a nearby Wal-Mart and purchased a Rakuten/Kobo gift card, so that the balance could be electronically redeemed to my account and I could skip past that stage of the checkout.

Unfortunately, when I tried to checkout, the Kobo site dutifully informed me that it didn't need payment information at this time, and yet it still would not let me proceed to the next page until I provided Address and C/S/Z info. This is despite the fact that I wasn't storing a credit card with them, and it was a digital purchase (i.e. nothing to ship me)!

The Fix: After a long back-and-forth Help Ticket with a sympathetic Kobo rep, he let me know the following:

• The "Country" and "ZIP" fields are the only fields that they validate, in order to determine if the book can be legally sold in that area
• The other fields (Address, City, State) are not validated, and can have three dots put into them to satisfy the form

So, there you go. For anyone else trying to preserve your privacy, as long as you put a country and a valid ZIP code, you can put in a fictitious Address, City, and State to complete the order.