So… doing some Black Friday cyber shopping from here in APAC – today from Indonesia. I was on Amazon [amazon.com] and…
Quick aside: I’m a complete Amazon fan-boy, maybe more than I am an Apple fan-boy. I sold my soul to Apple but Amazon has my heart. I’ve been using Amazon since 1997. When I need to check an old address — in Virginia, in DC, in England, in Singapore! I check my Amazon shipping addresses. Hardly a week goes buy that I don’t buy something from Amazon. Thank you Jeff!
… Picking up where we left off. I was Black Friday shopping on Amazon. Since I live in Singapore I have to buy things that say “ships to Singapore.” Since it’s Black Friday there are lots of sales, and the headline that caught my eye today was the Kindle device sales. I have a Kindle, generation 2 or 3 of the small one I think, but at Black Friday prices maybe it’s time to upgrade. Amiright? So, I checked out all the models and low and behold the basic model ships to Singapore!
So I immediately added it to my cart. Sweet antici………..pation [youtube.com]! I spent a few minutes more browsing around — can’t find a replacement 2.5mm male to 3.5mm male audio cable for my B&W P5s that “ships to Singapore”, damn it! — and checkout time. Sign in, select shipping address — Singapore! — and what the bloody hell, “problem with items in my shopping cart?”!?!
Ahhhhh! Sold by Amazon Export LLC, but not exported to Singapore? Ahhhh! Blue balls! Blue. Balls.
After struggling for a while to find some sort of combinations of magical clicks to get it to work I resorted to chatting with a service rep. They were nice and after a few seconds were able to confirm that, indeed, Kindle devices cannot be exported to Singapore. I informed them that the site clearly stated the item was “eligible for shipping to Singapore” and needs to be checked. They said thanks for the feedback and they would escalate the issue to the relevant team. Nothing further to be done. No new Kindle for me. But to Amazon’s credit a a hours later I got an email from Amazon apologizing for the issue and confirming that it was indeed forwarded to the Kindle team to review and fix. You hear that Jeff? Fix it. Blue balls suck.