How to set up Amazon Fire Kids in NZ - "FreeTime is not available in your marketplace"

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timmmay

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#253184 30-Jul-2019 20:58

Original Question - Resolved - See new questions below the answer to the thread

We got a tablet from Amazon.com for our little one, but we're having trouble setting it up.

We first registered him an account and said we're in NZ. It says "FreeTime (known as Amazon Fire for Kids in the USA) is not currently available in your marketplace. You can change your country settings by visiting amazon.com/devicesupport".

We tried my wife's account, which was a UK account but has the primary address and credit card in NZ. Same message.

I could try setting up a new Amazon account with the address in the UK or the USA on a new email address, with my NZ or USA credit cards. Before I did that I thought I'd ask if anyone else has done this and see if you have any tips / best approach. I'm not sure if it's worried about shipping address, billing address, or geolocation.

Any ideas / suggestions?

Lias

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#2286258 31-Jul-2019 10:09

I had this with both the ones I got for my kids. I had to spend a bit of time on Amazon support live chat but they sorted it remotely.

I'm a geek, a gamer, a dad, a Quic user, and an IT Professional. I have a full rack home lab, size 15 feet, an epic beard and Asperger's. I'm a bit of a Cypherpunk, who believes information wants to be free and the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. If you use my Quic signup you can also use the code R570394EKGIZ8 for free setup.

gcorgnet

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#2286273 31-Jul-2019 10:47

I have had to create a separate Amazon account for ours, making sure the Country/Language was set to US English.

I'm talking about the Amazon account you use to log into the tablet (the parent account I guess)

edit: And no need to have a special Credit Card either.

mentor

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#2286321 31-Jul-2019 10:56

I had that set up as below.

Amazon account using Youshop USA address and NZ CC. However I had to make sure geo location was set to USA. I.e either through dns or vpn.

timmmay

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#2286336 31-Jul-2019 11:21

Thanks guys. @gcorgnet and @Lias did you have to use a VPN at all so your traffic came from the USA?

Lias

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#2286356 31-Jul-2019 11:43

timmmay:

Thanks guys. @gcorgnet and @Lias did you have to use a VPN at all so your traffic came from the USA?

Nope

timmmay

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#2286379 31-Jul-2019 12:31

Ok in summary, so we need create a new Amazon account making sure it's set up to be a US account, with a US credit card and billing address? Then if it doesn't work I contact Amazon support to ask them to fix it?

gcorgnet

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#2286459 31-Jul-2019 13:35

Not an AWS account, AFAIK. Just a regulat Amazon account.

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

timmmay

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#2286472 31-Jul-2019 13:46

Thanks. I work in AWS and type it a lot, I typed AWS instead of Amazon by mistake.

mentor

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#2286496 31-Jul-2019 14:48

Lias:

timmmay:

Thanks guys. @gcorgnet and @Lias did you have to use a VPN at all so your traffic came from the USA?

Nope

I was unable to view freetime videos without dns/vpn. It would just error out - Interesting it's working for you.

timmmay

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#2286699 31-Jul-2019 16:49

Ok, so first I set it up under my wife's UK account, and got it working. I created a child profile, switched to it, and we got a nice child friendly home screen. There was nothing on the home screen, but Amazon will kindly sell you apps, books, etc. We were only going to get a month free freetime (didn't try it) so I thought I'd try creating a USA account.

So I set up a USA account, and the tablet works like a regular Android tablet. I can't get into Freetime, so I asked Amazon customer service, they say freetime where you get access to content isn't available in New Zealand. Any tips there? Is there and Australian version we can access?

I note under the UK amazon account I could set up a child profile using the settings menu. That created a really simple home screen for my son. When I'm on the USA account I don't have that option in the menus. I can set up parental controls, but not the same child profile type thing. Any tips there?

Seems using the Kindle Fire in NZ isn't as simple as I'd hoped :(

timmmay

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#2286812 31-Jul-2019 19:55

I seem to have things working now. Here's what I did - note that I'm not sure this is correct, or if it will continue working, it's just what I did:

Register a new Amazon.com account online using my main computer
Add a USA delivery address to the account
Add a credit card to the account and give it a USA billing address. The billing address I gave doesn't actually match the credit card billing address, but anything sent there will reach me, so it's semi legitimate
Now try the "settings and payment" step below to change your country to the USA. Not sure it will work, but it's worth a shot.
Turn the Kindle on, select US English, enter WiFi details, and put in the account details I created.
Previously I got to a screen saying I couldn't access FreeTime from my location "not available in your marketplace". I found that if I rebooted here I could get into the Fire but not with the Fire Kids interface.
I went to settings and payment . The main way to get there is using your PC go to your account -> "your content and devices" (on the menu), preferences (it's a tab or link about 1/3 of the way down the screen, 1/3 from the left) -> Country / Region settings.
In country / region settings I hit "change" and then changed to the United States.
Restarting didn't help, so I reset the Kindle Kids. You turn it off, then hold volume down and power for 5 seconds. When the menu comes up use the volume to scroll down to "hard reset" or "factory reset" and hit the power button. Hit ok. Then when you see the menu again restart.
When you go through this time you should be able to sign up, set up a kids profile, and things should work better.

Hope that helps someone else :)

Thanks to everyone who offered help with this :)

timmmay

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#2316647 12-Sep-2019 16:45

Couple more kindle fire for kids questions. Context is we have Kindle Unlimited.

In the kids interface how do we specify the games / content we want available? We want to whitelist what our son can see, kindle unlimited provides a huge amount of content but we want to steer him towards good content
In the kids interface, how to you watch videos stored on the device? In the parent interface I was able to install VLC for Kindle from the amazon app store and play videos I copied to the device. I have added VLC to the kids profile, but I can't see the videos that I copied to the tablet. Is there some kind of file permission issue? This thread says I might just need to run the kids profile then copy the videos in, which I'll try this evening.