Preparedness for when

nuatha

ivyleaf wrote: »

nuatha I wanted to ask you about something which is off topic (sorry) but which is puzzling me.

My brother lives in Germany, and can (and does) buy books through Amazon UK, but of course the postage is an added cost and in any case he and his wife are trying to get rid of stuff so they can put the house on the market, so he'd prefer not to bring more books into the house.

So he thought of getting a Kindle. He had assumed that if he were to buy one in this country while he's over for a long weekend in the near future, and registered it here too, he should then be able to buy Kindle books from Amazon UK when he goes back to Germany. But Amazon UK say that's not possible, even if the Kindle is registered with Amazon UK.

Would you have any idea why that would be? I'm asking you because you are the most IT-savvy person I know I'm wondering if the person at Amazon UK who answered his email is simply mistaken.

Happy to answer questions if I can.
Its not quite as straightforward as it could be.
My programming partner lives in the Netherlands, bought and registered a Kindle from his parents (UK) address with a card on his UK bank account. All was well for three or four months, then he suddenly found his account blocked. A call to Amazon customer services convinced them (because of his UK bank account) that he lived in the UK but as an IT contractor travelled to where the work was. He hasn't had further problems but is now regularly back in the UK and buys books, from Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and the UK.
Partly it depends on what your brother reads. I rarely buy ebooks from Amazon as my primary ereaders are Nook and Sony. In some cases I buy from authors or their own organisations, I also buy from Smashwords and from Sainsbury's. There are a lot of other sources for ebooks than Amazon, and I where possible I avoid buying into eco-systems that try to dictate how and where I live my life, which Amazon has a habit of doing.

Long answer which doesn't quite answer your question, I'm afraid. There are other work arounds such as using a VPN but they are more technical to implement.
Since going the ebook route I've re-homed several thousand volumes and actually have visible walls instead of bookcases in several rooms, it does make a difference.

ivyleaf

Thank you nuatha . Strange old business, isn't it? I can't understand why it should matter where one lives if the book's just going to be downloaded. He (brother) would of course need to use his UK bank account to pay for them, as he does with the physical books he buys online, since his German bank cards don't have the right number of digits. Perhaps it's because his ISP wouldn't be a British one.

Thanks again.

ETA Been browsing the 'net and it seems the problem arises because the publishers may not have a licence to sell the ebooks outside the UK, therefore amazon.co.uk would be breaking the law if they sold them to people living abroad.

jk0

ivyleaf wrote: »

nuatha I wanted to ask you about something which is off topic (sorry) but which is puzzling me.

My brother lives in Germany, and can (and does) buy books through Amazon UK, but of course the postage is an added cost and in any case he and his wife are trying to get rid of stuff so they can put the house on the market, so he'd prefer not to bring more books into the house.

So he thought of getting a Kindle. He had assumed that if he were to buy one in this country while he's over for a long weekend in the near future, and registered it here too, he should then be able to buy Kindle books from Amazon UK when he goes back to Germany. But Amazon UK say that's not possible, even if the Kindle is registered with Amazon UK.

Would you have any idea why that would be? I'm asking you because you are the most IT-savvy person I know I'm wondering if the person at Amazon UK who answered his email is simply mistaken.

Hmm. But he hasn't actually tried it yet, has he? It sounds like some jobsworth in Amazon customer service who doesn't like expats. I thought the whole point was that you could download books (via gsm) anywhere in the world?

nuatha

ivyleaf wrote: »

Thank you nuatha . Strange old business, isn't it? I can't understand why it should matter where one lives if the book's just going to be downloaded. He (brother) would of course need to use his UK bank account to pay for them, as he does with the physical books he buys online, since his German bank cards don't have the right number of digits. Perhaps it's because his ISP wouldn't be a British one.

Thanks again.

Even stupider is the fact that you can't buy British ebooks from Amazon in Australia/New Zealand. When you license copyright on the English version of a book, there's basically US/Canada and UK and the rest of the world, but specifically Australasia. Other language rights are sold separately. So for years I've had to import books from the US if there wasn't a rest of the world version being released. But UK bookshops have legally been able to export books to OZ/NZ and a friend whose a publisher has printed books in both locations, but hasn't been able to buy US rights for several books because he's UK based (and tends to get stuff printed in China because the quality and shipping times are better).

I know a few people who have turned to pirated books because of the Amazon situation.
Before my previous answer I'd emailed Holland to check details - I've just had a follow up email, he borrows library books from his (parents) local library using Overdrive (which is supported by everything except Kindle IIRC) with no issues. (Though if asked he's only in the Netherlands temporarily because of work - 17 years so far)

To turn it slightly on topic. My main reader is a Nook with glowlight. I charge it from a solar panel, have a fair chunk of my library on it on a microSDCard, can source books from just about anywhere other than Amazon as it supports Epub (and can convert Amazon books to Epub). Its part of my EDC and helps keep me sane. I have a spare alongside library and a netbook sealed in a Faraday cage. I've long been waiting for a printer that can take a file and produce a bound book, they are now available, but would fill the legth of my workshop and cost several times what my house is worth - still they are a lot smaller and cheaper than they were 5 years ago. I'll continue waiting

nuatha

jk0 wrote: »

Hmm. But he hasn't actually tried it yet, has he? It sounds like some jobsworth in Amazon customer service who doesn't like expats. I thought the whole point was that you could download books (via gsm) anywhere in the world?

GSM will only work in the country in which you've bought the Kindle after 28 days. (28 days supposedly covers holidays, providing Amazon has an agreement with the relevant provider and the provider decides to recognise the SIM in the device).
Sideloading by USB will work anywhere, providing you can get the book onto your computer (see previous comments) Wifi will work, (subject to my previous comments).
Amazon do not have roaming agreements in the way that typical TelCos do. (And those don't always work as you'd expect). There is no ongoing billing model to provide any incentive to a TelCo to facilitate an out of territory deal, which Amazon will expressly not pay for - see its Terms and Conditions.

The Amazon service rep who you describe as a jobsworth is at least familiar with Amazon's T&Cs and policy - what I've described are workarounds which have worked (and have no guarantee that they will continue to work, hence suggesting other suppliers models and alternate suppliers).

[Deleted User]

Some of today will be going through my food stocks as I've not been as thorough as I thought I had and on investigating my tinned meat and fish found a couple of tins still saying 2015 which will need to be used before anything else. I don't take very much notice of best before dates but have on occasion noticed that there is some loss of flavour particularly in things like pasta based dishes and soups. I'll use them up over the next few weeks and replace them with longer dated items. Got some corned beef yesterday with a 12/20 date on so that will go to the back of the shelf!

ivyleaf

That's a lovely long date Lyn Just remembered we must replace our bottles of water - they were due to go out of date at the end of April, so as they were plastic bottles it seemed prudent to use them up. We'll get new ones next time we go shopping.
We did have beans on toast recently and then notice the BB date was in 2012 They were fine though.

[Deleted User]

Use the bottles you empty and give them a good rinse then fill the with tap water, it will keep good for 6 months at the very least. I keep my 5 litre containers full of tap water and every 6 months if we haven't needed to use them they go into the water butt for the garden and I refill from the tap for storage. If you want an extra layer of protection using stored tap water you can get MILTON LIQUID (the same stuff used for sterilizing baby gear) and if you add 2.5mls to 5 litres of water and leave it for 15 minutes it's then completely safe to drink. I know bottled water isn't expensive but tap water is cheaper and does the same job!

Well done on the beans, nowt wrong with out dated beans!!!

[Deleted User]

ivyleaf wrote: »

We did have beans on toast recently and then notice the BB date was in 2012 They were fine though.

This is why I never throw out food, simply because it's passed its stamped date.

ivyleaf

Thank you for that tip :)Lyn