amazon

This should only interest international buyers, like me from Singapore (Asia), who buys from Amazon Europe.

Update 9 Aug 2012: I found out the common problem is caused by associating a payment method with the shipping address.

This guide will help you bypass Amazon.com geographic restrictions to buy the digital content you want. By digital content, I mean mp3, ebooks, digital movies, video games and other downloads.

This guide is written for anyone who uses Amazon.com outside of USA.

I spent $333.82 for shipping and handling, as printed on the Amazon shipping invoice. I had the shock of my life when I saw it.

There are 7 items on that invoice. Each item should cost only US$6 for shipping, and then there's the box charge. So total shipping should be under $50 to my country.

What happened was, I bought a lot of stuff. Many are still on pre-order. Amazon would sometimes ship part of the order for those items in stock.

While part of the orders are being prepared to be shipped, I decided to cancel the other part as I found new stuff I wanted to add to the order. You can't add new items to the order that was already placed since there's no Update button. The only way was to cancel and place another order. I did just that and somehow all the shipping charges from those canceled items got moved to the preparing-to-ship items.

I didn't notice the discrepancy until I stared at the physical invoice inside the box.

I've pushed the Bargain Books page back and removed all the links to books that went back to their normal prices. It was a glitch after all.

Looks like Amazon's sending out cancellation letters to some already.

I read that some books actually got shipped out, especially those that were in stock.

What did you buy during The Great $14.99 Amazon Sale? Did you manage to get your art books to the "Shipping Soon" or "Shipped" stage?

Here's what I ordered, some of which are for my friend.

Update 8 March 2010, 7.53pm Pacific Time:

Many have reported that the prices are back to normal when they are on the product page. I've removed all the Amazon links for books that went back to the normal prices. But the list is still up if you want to reminisce.

The Death of Captain America Omnibus for only $8.24?

Amazon's also pricing some comics at very attractive price. So attractive I'm beginning to think that this is a major pricing error. But hey, I might be wrong. Check out the deals below.

Amazon's Kindle with international wireless is coming out on 19 Oct 2009! Unfortunately for me, it doesn't ship to Singapore. It ships to 100 countries including Hong Kong and Taiwan but not Singapore! Seriously? I guess their telcos must be doing something right.

I've been wanting to get this for a while, not that I will be getting digital art books soon — Kindle's black & white — but I sure can save some space for not having novels and paperbacks around.

To waiting...

(end)