Amazon Hobbles Features For International Kindle

Barence writes "Amazon has stripped several key features out of the international edition of the Kindle, PC Pro has discovered. Newspapers and magazines are delivered without any photos, and the web browser has been disabled, presumably because Amazon doesn't want to foot the data bill. There's also a 40% premium on books bought via the Amazon store. 'International customers do pay a higher price for their books than US customers due to higher operating costs outside of the US,' an Amazon spokesperson confessed."

Comments

Amazon Offers Refund!

[starrsoft]

Amazon sent out an email this morning to people who bought an International Kindle (mine arrived yesterday) informing them that they had dropped the price by $20 and would be applying a $20 refund to my credit card. With this kind of customer service, I buy even my groceries from Amazon these days; no need to venture outside. I suspect that this is also fighting back against the Nook.

Re:Another troll summary?

[eldavojohn]

OK what costs? Scanning/turning into an e-book?

I think distributions rights get really complicated across regions and countries. If someone owns the rights to digital distributions or all distributions of a work, Amazon's probably got to pay them a premium for their market. Just look at DVDs, I can't even by "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" in the states. I would imagine selection would be vastly hobbled for several reasons across different countries. And let's not forget Germany's regulation of book prices "in an effort to protect authors, publishers, and small booksellers." There could be a lot of factors at work here--most of which are specific to a single country.