Changing countries iTunes

Hello everyone,

Macbook Pro late 2013

iTunes 12.3.2.35

OSX El Capitan 10.11.3

I spent a very long time today with four separate Apple advisers, none of whom could solve my problem. Could any of you perhaps help?

I recently moved from one country (Belgium) to another (Malta), managing (eventually with a lot of difficulty) to change my Apple account details and link myself to the Malta iTunes Store (but with the same Apple ID and the same email address).

I knew that this would have an effect on my Apps - but I was not expecting what did happen!

All my iOS apps update perfectly well on my two iPhones and on my mini iPad. However they no longer update in the apps part of my iTunes account - when I press UPDATE (in the box on the bottom right of the screen) I am met with "There are no updates for any of the apps in your library". This however is not true - and this morning I managed (briefly!) to log back in to my Belgian store account - to see there were, in fact, 40 apps waiting to be updated. I tried to update, and they began to do so, but then a banner flashed up "Your account is only valid in the Malta store". I had the option of 'Cancel' or 'Change Store' - but iTunes froze every time at this point and I had to get out using CMD+ALT+ESC.

At Apple Support (chat) I had the help of four separate and very charming people who did their best. I was told that apps were country-specific (but nearly all my apps are free ones, such as airbnb); that I would not be able to update if I changed countries etc etc.... remember: my two iPhones (a 5 and a 6) and my mini iPad all update their apps exactly as before I changed country, so there is no problem there. It is ONLY in iTunes on my Macbook Pro that the difficulties occur.

About two hours in to my help session, an adviser told me to delete ALL my iOS apps in iTunes on my Mac. This I did, made sure I was properly logged in to the Malta store, checked I had the latest version of iTunes (12.3.2.35), downloaded it again from the Apple site just in case, checked the time feature (GMT +1), rebooted my computer (to start from a clean slate) and then re-downloaded ALL my apps (60 of them) from the Malta store.

This all went well and I was able to download all the apps with no problems, including the paying ones such as Pages and Numbers and Keynote, free of charge, because the system 'knew' I had already bought them.

However not even ONE of the apps shows up in my Malta Purchase History and so I will presumably still not be able to take advantage of the UPDATE apps feature. Eventually, in desperation, my fourth Apple adviser told me I would have to update each one manually. (I will know when, after my iPhone or iPad receives an automatic update).

I do not understand how this could be possible. Why does it all work on the iPhones and the iPad but not in iTunes on my Mac? The adviser told me, when he looked, that all the today updated apps were going into my Belgian store account (where I originally bought them) despite the fact that I downloaded them from the Malta store, and my account is linked by default to my Maltese credit card and my Malta address!

Can anyone help me? I have sent a complaint to Apple - but I would be so pleased if anyone out there has managed to find a way to solve this very annoying problem.

Thanks 🙂