I feel discriminated against by Amazon

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Rikkitic

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#170875 29-Mar-2015 14:44

I have been having a very frustrating experience trying to buy a laptop overseas. I have only been able to find a few sellers of the one I want, which is an Acer V3-112P, and these are only on Amazon and Microsoft Store. There is also another version of this model, which is identical except for a much slower Celeron processor. This is much more widely available, and I have found numerous sellers in both America and Britain who have it.

The problem I have run into is that both Amazon and Microsoft Store will not ship laptops overseas. They don’t make the reason clear, but I assume this has to do with new regulations regarding transport of Lithium-Ion batteries. Yet other sellers do not seem to have a problem with this and many say they are happy to ship laptops to New Zealand using either FedEx or DHL. Unfortunately, all those who say they will do this only have the Celeron model available, which I do not want. The only places I can find the better model are Amazon and Microsoft Store.

This is very frustrating and it makes me wonder why Amazon and Microsoft Store insist on this policy. If others can do it then obviously it can be done, so why such a rigidly customer-unfriendly stance?

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#1272883 29-Mar-2015 14:56

Business decision due to risk of fraud I would say,

Lenovo

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Rikkitic

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#1272889 29-Mar-2015 15:12

That might make sense but I am already a member and they didn't have any problem shipping a 3d printer I bought. So why that and not this?

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gehenna

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#1272890 29-Mar-2015 15:13

There's tons of stuff Amazon doesn't ship internationally.

Can't you just use YouShop for that stuff?

Mark

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#1272896 29-Mar-2015 15:20

There's the "discrimination" word being abused again ...

They are the seller they are free to choose where they ship products too, if for some reason that model has been classed as "US" only or unshippable due to the battery then unfortunately it's tough luck buying from them .. you could try emailing them and asking though you might get lucky (never know till you try), how about looking at Australia stores ?

Rikkitic

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#1272906 29-Mar-2015 15:30

Thanks I did try Oz and other places, every place I could think of. I have been trying for days. I can only find the model I want at Amazon and Microsoft Store. Everyone else is either sold out or flogging the Celeron unit. I also did write Amazon asking about this but only received a lame generic reply about warranty conditions and other unspecified problems and how desperately sorry they are for the inconvenience. I really, really hate it when companies come back at me with blatantly insincere apologies for the inconvenience. I would respect them a lot more if they just told me to go stuff myself.

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sbiddle

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#1272910 29-Mar-2015 15:32

I'm not sure where "discrimination" comes into this. By far the vast majority of Amazon US products can't be shipped outside the US. Products that can are in the minority.

There are various reasons for this, but one of the biggest being that manufacturers won't allow their products to be sold and shipped to other countries because of their existing distribution networks.

timmmay

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#1272932 29-Mar-2015 15:50

Supplier restrictions. Youshop.

Rikkitic

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#1272934 29-Mar-2015 15:53

Aha, that at least makes sense. If that really is the reason, I don't know why they couldn't have just said so. I don't like it any better, but knowing there is an actual reason for it makes it easier to deal with. I will lower my expectations in the future and go back to shopping in China.

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Jase2985

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#1272952 29-Mar-2015 16:18

have you missed the comments on using the likes of YouShop or shiptoit?

that way you can buy what you like, have it shipped to the forwarder in the US and they in-turn ship it to you.

Stu

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#1272953 29-Mar-2015 16:19

As above. You don't have to go back to shopping in China.

Set up a YouShop account with NZ Post. Use the YouShop address with Amazon and they'll usually ship to the YouShop address for free. YouShop forward the package to you. YouShop will charge to freight it to you.

People often mistake me for an adult because of my age.

Keep calm, and carry on posting.

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Rikkitic

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#1272955 29-Mar-2015 16:23

Jase2985: have you missed the comments on using the likes of YouShop or shiptoit?

that way you can buy what you like, have it shipped to the forwarder in the US and they in-turn ship it to you.

No I didn't miss them. I actually have someone in the US who can forward stuff to me. I just didn't understand why Amazon wouldn't ship because I hadn't encountered this before. I thought it must have something to do with new regulations around the batteries. I still feel they could have done a better job of explaining it but, like I said, I will adjust my expectations in the future.

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loceff13

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#1272973 29-Mar-2015 16:57

Have you checked the 'other sellers' bit on amazon to see what other vendors will ship internationally?

Handle9

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#1272976 29-Mar-2015 16:58

Rikkitic:
Jase2985: have you missed the comments on using the likes of YouShop or shiptoit?

that way you can buy what you like, have it shipped to the forwarder in the US and they in-turn ship it to you.

No I didn't miss them. I actually have someone in the US who can forward stuff to me. I just didn't understand why Amazon wouldn't ship because I hadn't encountered this before. I thought it must have something to do with new regulations around the batteries. I still feel they could have done a better job of explaining it but, like I said, I will adjust my expectations in the future.

It'll be nothing to do with Amazon. It'll be the suppliers distribution agreements as Johnr said.

sbiddle

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#1272982 29-Mar-2015 17:11

Rikkitic: Aha, that at least makes sense. If that really is the reason, I don't know why they couldn't have just said so.

Because NZ is one of only a handful of countries in the world that allow parallel importing, people forget the fact the rest of the world operates with fairly standard regional distribution models that prevent distributors or resellers from selling product into markets where they're not the distributor.

freitasm

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#1272985 29-Mar-2015 17:16

Also some models are not available in other countries, making support VERY difficult. I had a Lenovo desktop sent here by one of their PR folks. When the CPU died I asked Lenovo for warranty repair. Lenovo A/NZ was happy to do it except the US model had an AMD processor and the A/NZ model used Intel. No way of fixing it, so they ended up replacing it with an Intel model from a local distributor.

Shipping a US model to A/NZ would create a support problem as well as their technicians may not be trained on that specific machine.

Plus distribution channels rights...

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