The inability of purchasing international gift certificates on iTunes sucks dirty ass. Just FYI.

Seriously. You cannot do it. You get this warning about how certificates can only be used in the store they are bought in if the recipient’ s email is say, for instance, Canadian and registered in the Canadian store. I think I knew I was buying a gift for, as an example, a Canadian person. I am using Canada as an example here. I don’t care about the logistics. Just make it work! But no. Even if I logged into the Canadian iTunes store I was flagged as American and sent back to my own store! Bastards! So now what? I have an international gift I need to buy within the next few days!! Where do I turn if, for example, I need to buy a gift for a Canadian?

As I was getting desperate I got creative. I Googled Canadian (for example) Gift Certificates. The resulting websites offered email certificates for Canadian (as an example) stores, but ew. Really. How do I know if my supposedly Canadian friend shops at those places? I mean, I wouldn’t from the looks of things online. So I went over to the Amazon. Now that is a global market! Right? Erm. No. Well actually, yes and no. An Amazon.com certificate is not valid at Amazon.ca (for example). However, I was able to go to Amazon.ca (for example) and buy in the proper monetary exchange without being flagged as American and sent away. I found this to be a hypothetical shopping experience plus.

I will let you know if this hypothetical international purchasing scenario resulted in a happy gift recipient, hypothetically speaking, of course.

tagged: apple itunes shel birthday gift amazon canadian international hypothetical scenarios