Tuesday 31 July 2012

the complications of modern life

I bought my mother a Kindle.  And she likes it, and reads on it.  But she has no Amazon account, and refuses to go on line (mysterious) so the Kindle is still mine.  Upside of that: she can read books I already own.  Downside: I live in France, my brother lives in the US, my mother lives in the UK.  Neither my brother nor I has a payment card with a UK billing address, I do not have a US one, and he does not have a French one.  You can see what's coming, can't you?  I am only allowed to shop on amazon.fr or amazon.com, and am not allowed to buy digital products from the latter.  My brother is not allowed to buy digital products from the former.  Neither of us can do so from amazon.co.uk.  So the only way we have found for him to get my mother a Kindle book is for him to send me a gift certificate, which I can use to buy myself a (physical) product from amazon.com, in compensation for ME buying mother the book.  Which is from him.  And in fact I have to buy it for myself and put it on her Kindle. There may be something I am not getting here.  Maybe.  Whatever happened to globalisation?  I was all in favour of that, and am still waiting for it to happen. 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Probably about people getting older and not wanting to get online or use these things. Phobia . I am the same myself. But not her age and I do have an Amazon account. But I like bookshops best. There is nothing like walking into a bookshop.