Am I screwed?

[HansTWN]

As for actual working solutions, please communicate by PM, we do not want Amazon and others to read everything and learn how to shut us out.

[thianliongpatpoh]

Originally Posted by FligMupple

Another update:

The "issue" is now over. You can buy books again without the use of a VPN thing. I just bought one normally, and it worked.

I learned this from a recent comment on http://www.melvinneo.com/do-life/self-help-book:

"Read in the Kindle forums that Amazon CS said it was a “technical glitch” that has been fixed. I just disconnected the VPN service and tried to purchase a Kindle book. It works now, just like pre-Friday. No more “restricted geography” message. Cheers."

The issue is not over, it even get bigger. Now that amazon's going international, restrictions where ebooks can be sold became an issue. All of the freebies are now not available in my region. I was in the bus earlier today, and was checking MR freebies section. There's a new freebie and I went directly using my iPhone (with my local 3G connection) to amazon via the link in MR Freebie forum. I got to the page with Safari on iPhone, but when do the 1-click purchase thingy, it displayed the error about wrong regional, ebook not available in my region.
So the issue wasn't fixed at all.
Then I went home, fired up my laptop, and go thru the same vpn trick I used earlier.
It works. The same title I failed to purchase using my local 3G connection, I can purchase like normal wih the vpn trick running.
I re-test with downloading the ebook into my kindle app, using the local 3G conn, and it downloaded fine.

For those internationalists who still can't purchase, I believe it's not amazon's blocking IPs from VPN rerouting services. It must be an issue with the account. Check if your US address is set correctly down to the postal code.
And while this might be irrelevant, keep some balance in your GC amount.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

I wonder, is buying those books this way different from downloading them from Darknet? In both cases the money doesn't go to the owner of the rights to sell the book in your country, so the argument that it's, as piracy antagonists say, stealing in relation to owner of those rights seems solid.

It seems similar to me. A publisher or future publisher have lost a potential sale. And that seems to be exactly the same type of arguments against downloading from the darknet that a lot of people have put forward here at MR. Also it might be illegal in your country to misrepresent were you live in a transaction.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by tompe

Also it might be illegal in your country to misrepresent were you live in a transaction.

It certainly will be illegal in many countries in Europe, where evading those sky high taxes is a crime considered to be more despicable than mass murder! And by downloading from the US you are not paying the 19% VAT.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

It certainly will be illegal in many countries in Europe, where evading those sky high taxes is a crime considered to be more despicable than mass murder! And by downloading from the US you are not paying the 19% VAT.

Can you buy gift vouchers without paying taxes? When you buy books from the US they at least can add tax and custom but maybe that is optional.

[HansTWN]

Exactly, when you buy on US websites you generally don't pay taxes (US citizens only pay state taxes when they live in the same state as the company they buy from). So of course you don't pay taxes when you buy gift certificates. In case you buy physical goods your government can tax you when you import the goods, but when you download how will ever know? So, in a way, you are guilty of tax evasion by "secretly" downloading ebooks from foreign websites. Perhaps this even counts as smuggling?

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Exactly, when you buy on US websites you generally don't pay taxes (US citizens only pay state taxes when they live in the same state as the company they buy from). So of course you don't pay taxes when you buy gift certificates.

I generally pay taxes in advance since I save money that way when I buy books from Amazon US. So since that options exists the natural thing would be that you pay it mandatory for gift vouchers. I just wondered if somebody that had bought gift vouchers could tell what was the case.