I moved country, changed iTunes stores and now my Apps can't be updated!?

Or maybe it's illegal in your country, but I seriously don't think so.

I am having the exact same problem when I unknowingly switched my itunes account to another country BELIEVING that my purchases would still be intact by the switch. I feel the same way as you do and am now a very discouraged and disgruntled Apple user as well.

Having lots of concerns with this myself. Searching on here doesn't really help because there seems to be lots of different views & no standardised solution for people who have moved countries. So I emailed tech support & received what looks like a very helpful guide. Here's what it said;

before you change the country, please note:

1) If you have store credit, you must use the credit before you can change countries.

2) You will need to download all purchased content. In addition, rented items must be past their Please sign out and sign back in to your account after 30 minutes.-day expiration. For more information on rentals, please see:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1657

3) You must provide a payment method, such as a credit or debit card associated with a valid billing address in the new country. An iTunes Store Gift Card issued in the new country is also an acceptable payment method.

4) Content purchased from the iTunes Store is country-specific. If you wish to upgrade any of your iTunes Store content to iTunes Plus, you'll need to do this before you change countries. The content you purchased while your account was set to the previous country will not be eligible for upgrade once you've changed countries.

5) After you change countries, you will no longer receive application update notifications in iTunes for the apps you purchased in your original country. However, you'll still receive update notifications on your iOS device for any applications installed on it.

6) If you have an iTunes Match subscription, you can't change countries until the subscription has expired.

7) If you have purchased a Season Pass, you cannot change the country associated with your account until that season is done airing and the last episode of the season has been added to the iTunes Store.

8) If you have been using iTunes in the Cloud to download past purchases from your Purchased page, these purchases will no longer appear when you change the country.

To change the country for your account, follow these steps:

1) First, make sure you're using the latest version of iTunes. It's available free of charge:

http://www.itunes.com/download

2) Next, click the following link to open iTunes and access the Apple Account Information page:

https://phobos.apple.com/accountSummary

3) Enter your iTunes Store account name and password, then click Account Info.

4) On the Apple Account Information page, click Change Country or Region.

5) Enter the updated information and save your changes.

Not been through this myself yet but as soon as I've got my iPad backed-up I'm going to give it a shot. Hopefully it will all work out & hopefully it will be of some use to others on here 😉

Thanks Dogboy, but I have an entirely different problem. I am a german living in the UAE. I never switched my account to another country. When I try to update my apps I get this message: "Your account is not valid in the Emirati store. You must switch to the German store before purchasing." On my iPad I get the same message, but with the UK store. Why would I be logged into the UK store?

I tried your solution, but when I access my Apple account information page it says my country is Germany. I can either change the country or cancel. Now what? I am getting very angry at apple. For my work I have to use the iPad but my next phone is not from apple, that much I can tell you.

Regards,

Andreas

I've had the same problems as everyone here and the apple support techs just completely ignore the situation. From the posts I read today it appears it has been an ongoing problem. So I purchased I match which is useless now and I need to open a new apple account in order to access apps in the US. Fricken lame!

Try to change your store to previous store you are using and select payment info to none.

make another apple id or use itunes gift coupon for shopping for current apple id.

Is there any chance to at least get the free and worldwide available apps to show in the purchased list? It's really annoying to search for each app I ever downloaded and download it again. Really, now I can't even have Facebook, or even worse - iBooks and other apps made by apple in the purchased list because I (of course) downloaded them in the other country.

(without switching from country to country each time I want to do this)

Hello again,

I was able to solve my problem with the help of apple support. All it took was to sync iPhone and iPad with iTunes, then my original german store was recognized. Rather silly, should have thought of that myself.

Regards,

Andreas

The only reason why Apple has seperate stores is so they can gouge customers for what they can get. For example in a rich country like Australia apps and music is more expensive, in the US it is not quite so rich(!) and they are middling, Russia is cheap....

This is SO annoying and unacceptable. I want to purchase an ibook, I´m in Portugal and its only available on the US store?!? The whole point about e-commerce is that it transcends national boundaries. I don´t want or have to go through tricks and tips to cheat or work around the system to buy something digital... especially with Apple, which has been the greatest proponent of e-commerce.
Absurd.

Buying the book in paper format on Amazon.

Poor show, Apple.

Switched to amazon for music and ebooks over this a few months ago, haven't looked back. Amazon isn't perfect by any measure, but almost everything works across borders, including the cloud player (as of last week) for mp3s. There has been the odd book publisher that has restricted their content geographically, but these seem isolated whereas with apple it seems to be the norm...

Jeespe wrote:

5) After you change countries, you will no longer receive application update notifications in iTunes for the apps you purchased in your original country. However, you'll still receive update notifications on your iOS device for any applications installed on it. In addition, you'll be able to download previously purchased applications again for free if they are available on your new country's store. You will not be charged and the download will not appear on your Purchased page. If a previously purchased application is not available in your new country, you will not be able to download it again for free.

I can confirm that this works. I've changed countries as well, and was able to download all my previously purchased app from the other country, again (even without deleting the older versions).

After you click on 'Buy', it first asks if you agree to have your credit card charged for the app purchase, click "YES", and then it comes with a message that you get the app for FREE, because you've got a previous version of the app.

Now I can update apps again through the iTunes store in my new country.

Yes, it did work before several days ago. Unfortunately, those apps purchased before change country cannot update since 12/16 for me.

Please refer to the other discussion below:

Applications problem: "You cannot update this software since you have not owned the major version of this software."

No, it worked today 22nd Dec.

Sounds like you have a different problem though.

Will keep updated if anything pops up, but so far so good and NO charge to credit card for paid apps in the new country's Store.

YEP THAT IS THE TRUTH! BUT APPLE DON'T CARE CUZ THEY GOT US ALL RIGHT WHERE THEY WANT US.... KEEP PULLING THAT WALLET OUT $$$$$$..... And than apple might think about fix in it...