Importing a Kindle from the US

neilwoods

Once they sort out the data protection problem, they will launch amazon cloud here. Too big a market for them not too.

Battery life on the fire though is not great though, 8 hour reading. But for video pretty good.

Any

Yes, my thoughts too...
No I know, OH said that doesn't bother him much.. His answer was - how long am I going to be far away from a mains plug for at a time? (office rat:-)

I think he got swayed by the idea of having full colour tablet for price of just the e-reader...

A.Penny.Saved

This site can calculate the total cost including any duty, VAT etc. The hard part is finding the category the item falls into. It can mean looking through a number of options to find the correct one.

A US VPN should overcome any IP address issues.

neilwoods

true at that price, its very good. Plus the build quality should be pretty decent as well for amazon.

Oldernotwiser

I have friends on the Continent who've had to buy Kindles though Amazon.com. They have no problems using them either abroad or in the UK, although they have to buy books through the American site which is dearer.

Any

A.Penny.Saved wrote: »

This site can calculate the total cost including any duty, VAT etc. The hard part is finding the category the item falls into. It can mean looking through a number of options to find the correct one.

A US VPN should overcome any IP address issues.

Thank you, can you enlighten me on this a bit more please?

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

I have friends on the Continent who've had to buy Kindles though Amazon.com. They have no problems using them either abroad or in the UK, although they have to buy books through the American site which is dearer.

Yes, but this is the first Kindle relying fully on the Cloud, which they are having problems to get legit under EU laws... They say that is the reason why Fire has not been introduced to UK market.
So the previous Kindles are not affected by this issue.

I suppose they had to buy the US site because they have no local Amazon site? Not just because the device came from there?

S0litaire

The main reason that hte "Fire" is US only is that the content provided is US only due to copyright limitations put in place by the Film studios. The main selling point for the fire is the Amazon prime link which in the US provides free and rent-able movies as well as buying them outright... (That's where Amazon will make it's profit!)

Amazon don't have the rights in UK or Europe for their Movie service (Or the ad based subsidy for some of the kindles) so are limited to the US market.

Badger_Lady

OK, this is what I understood the situation to be based on my research:

- When you get a Kindle you have to register it to an Amazon account. It could be an Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr account.

- You can only buy eBooks from the website your account is registered with. So if you've registered it to an Amazon.com account, you can only buy eBooks from Amazon.com. If you register it to your Amazon.co.uk account, you can only buy eBooks from Amazon.co.uk.

- You should have a delivery address and credit card billing address for the country you've registered with. So if you're using an Amazon.com account you have to have a US credit card. If you're using an Amazon.co.uk account you have to have a UK credit card.

- Aside from buying books, the devices will work worldwide. If you have a 3G version, it will work worldwide without ever incurring data charges. It doesn't matter which country you're in while you're accessing Amazon, as long as you access the right version of Amazon.

I'm heading to the states next week to pick up Kindles for myself and for Christmas presents. If I do get stopped by customs, the duty makes it worthwhile (they're a LOT cheaper there). I'll let you know if I have any problems with them!



P.S. The Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire are not being released until 21st November and I'm not interested in either one of them:
- Kindle Touch 3G is restricted to Wikipedia and book download (unlike Kindle Keyboard 3G which allows web access)
- Kindle Fire has no battery life and isn't a full Android tablet - it's just a pointless device.

onlyroz

Well I've already got an iPad so I'm not bothered so much about the Kindle Fire (although I'll have a nosy at one when/if it ever gets released here). The one I'd really be interested in is the Kindle Touch - and I can't fathom why it hasn't got a UK release date.

neilwoods

Look at how they released the Kindle, was no release date for UK when they went on sale in USA. They waited to see how well it would do in the USA first. So maybe they are doing the same for the Kindle Fire, if it flops in the USA, then no point to release in other countries.