Buying Gift cards for another country

Question

Buying Gift cards for another country

Has anyone else had problems with this?

After over an hour on line, 5 differnet people at the Irish Helpdesk & being told I need to speak to GB helpdesk - but I can't cos it's an 0800 number, which you can only dial inside GB - frustration has hit it's peak!!!

Has anyone been able to use Gift Cards in another country using another currency?

I cannot purchase GB£ cards with an Irish credit Card - strange cos Visa is global!

So logical thought process is to buy on the Ireland site, in Euros - then surely I must be able to log on to the Irish site in GB & buy tunes from it? After all aren't web sites global also?

Personally I cannot understand why we cannot purchase in any currency if we have an iTunes account set up with a credit card logged in.

Think I may have to stick to Allofmp3.com if this carries on....

Dell desktop, Windows XP

Posted on Dec 13, 2006 9:42 AM

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Answer 1

Chris CA

Level 10

82,513 points

Dec 13, 2006 10:12 AM in response to Steve&amp;amp;Lot

You can only use the gift cards in the country they are purchased in.

Thisis because of restrictions by the copyright holders (not Apple).

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Answer 2

CarWFO

Level 1

0 points

Dec 16, 2006 6:50 AM in response to Chris CA

Chris,

Not to reinterate but I live in NY and my company headquarters is in Montreal. Am I not allowed to send an email gift certificate to my IT staff from the US or Canadian store? Thank you-

Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

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Answer 3

varjak paw

Level 10

182,668 points

Dec 16, 2006 9:17 AM in response to CarWFO

Am I not allowed to send an email gift certificate to my IT staff from the US or Canadian store?

Sorry but again, you can only purchase a gift certificate for the country in which you have your iTunes Store account, and gift certificates are, as Chris said, not valid in other countries. So unless you have a residence and credit card in Canada and so could open an account in the Canadian iTunes Store, you will not be able to purchase iTunes gift certificates for your Canadian staff. Perhaps you could get someone in the Montreal office to purchase and send them for you, and then reimburse them?

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Answer 4

CarWFO

Level 1

0 points

Dec 17, 2006 9:31 AM in response to varjak paw

Thanks for the reply Dave. That is exactly what I had in mind. Happy Holidays!

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Answer 5

The1_eu

Level 1

4 points

Dec 30, 2006 1:30 AM in response to Steve&amp;amp;Lot

I am not concerned about the gift cards but the ability to buy music from other itunes sites. I have a Belgian card and am forced to buy music from the BE Itunes site (which has a lot of music I am not interested in) but would like to buy from the UK site. With my knowledge of the EU competition rules and the principle of free cross border trade I believe Apple cannot restrict cross border purchases - unless their store is technically set upto deal in cross border transaction, something which I will consider a blow to Apple. Other companies, like Amazon, have no problem in accommodating cross border transactions. Is Apple's business methodds legal? I would like to see a answer to that (and not with reference to copyrights which are exhausted anyway the moment a product is first put on the market).

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Answer 6

Chris CA

Level 10

82,513 points

Dec 30, 2006 1:45 AM in response to The1_eu

Is Apple's business methodds legal? I would like to see a answer to that
We are not Apple employees and it would be up to a judge to decide if they are doing anything illegal.
I'd be willing to be they are not.

You can ask Apple here -> http://www.apple.com/contact/

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Answer 7

varjak paw

Level 10

182,668 points

Dec 30, 2006 10:27 AM in response to The1_eu

This has been covered here literally dozens of times, but once again, it's all controlled by the record companies and other content owners. None of them like cross-border sales of CDs and DVDs, but there's nothing they can do to stop it. The content owners can, however, do something to prevent cross-border sales of download music and videos; if the download store refuses to restrict sales, the content owners just refuse to license their content to the store. And yes, it's completely legal. ALL legal download stores carrying major-label content have the same sorts of restrictions.

So there's absolutely nothing Apple can do unless and until the content owners (record companies, movie studios, et. al.) get together and work out a system for cross-border sales. And that's not likely to happen anytime soon.

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