No Amazon Digital Downloads Overseas

Target 13 received an e-mail from a frustrated Amazon customer on Friday.

Staff Sergeant Maurey Smith is currently deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Smith says a friend purchased a movie and music album for him as a gift on Amazon.com. The gifts were digital downloads; but when Smith went to retrieve his gift, he discovered he could not.

Amazon.com MP3 items cannot be downloaded outside of the United States.

“My friend’s money has gone to waste because of Amazon’s policy,” Smith said in his e-mail.

His problem made him wonder how many other troops are having the same issue of receiving a gift they cannot use.

A public forum on Amazon’s website shows there are other service members with similar complaints.

Andrea, who is stationed in Korea, wrote on the forum, “I’m so upset, life in Korea is hard enough, but not being able to watch some TV shows seems discriminating for us. We are still Americans and do have American billing addresses.”

An Amazon official responded to Andrea, saying, “It must be hard to be away from home; there are restrictions placed on us by our content providers making the Service only available to customers located in the United States.”

Still, some of the confusion for those sending gifts overseas may stem from Amazon’s website. The help section about sending items to military addresses lists all the restricted items. But digital downloads are not included in that list.

In addition, when a buyer goes to send an MP3 gift, it only asks for the recipient’s e-mail address and not their physical location.

There is a box on the left of the screen that says, “MP3 gifts purchased at Amazon.com can only be downloaded by U.S. Customers.” There is a link included that says, “Learn More,” but the corresponding page doesn’t elaborate on the matter. In fact, it doesn’t even mention it.

Staff Sergeant Smith says his biggest issue is that his friend won’t get his money back. Smith’s only option is to exchange his gift for a gift card to Amazon.com.

Despite his frustrations, Smith says he likes Amazon. He says he wants “to get the word out to military families to not waste money on digital downloads for their service members.”

He says, “I use Amazon all the time and I think they are a great company, I just think they should have some form of notification prior to completing the purchase that the downloads cannot be accessed outside of the US.”

Smith contacted Amazon’s customer service and received a response on Friday.

Below is the e-mail that Smith received from an Amazon.com representative.

—— Hello,

I am very sorry to know about the disappointment you had with regards to Amazon’s policy in sales of Digital Content.

I understand MP3 music should internationally available for purchase so that US customers residing abroad could also be able to take advantage of the same, and also I appreciate your valuable feedback on the revenue Amazon is losing due to this.

However, Amazon acquires the digital content rights from various digital service providers and as required by our MP3 music providers, MP3 downloads on Amazon.com are currently only available to customers located in the United States. To purchase MP3 downloads from Amazon.com you must have a credit or debit card issued by a U.S. bank with a U.S. billing address, and you must be physically located in the U.S. at the time of purchase.

It is always important for us to hear how customers react to all aspects of shopping at Amazon.com. Strong customer feedback like yours helps us continue to improve the selection and service we provide, and we appreciate the time you took to write to us. I’ve passed your feedback along to the Amazon MP3 team.

If you have any questions about our MP3 service, our Frequently Asked Questions Help page includes information about system requirements, file sizes, and download speeds.

Best regards,

Sri R Amazon.com Your feedback is helping us build Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company.