Amazon still fails for Australians

Amazon has spent a good number of years building their brand. They apparently pride themselves on providing great service, and apart from some idiotic policy decisions, they probably haven’t lost too many customers.

While I haven’t bought anything from Amazon for well over three years, I do occasionally use them for book reviews, user opinions and price comparisons. Last week I noticed for the first time that Amazon are also in the credit card business:

“Get the Amazon.com Visa® Instantly! You’ll automatically get $30 back after your first purchase and earn up to 3% rewards. No annual fee.”

Amazon lost me as a customer three years ago primarily due to their inadequate website software which publicised false rebates to Australian and other international customers.

Well, it looks like things haven’t changed much since then.

If I login, pretend to add some stuff to my shopping cart and then attempt to checkout, I get this:

At this stage of the checkout process, Amazon knows I live in Australia but still offers their “rewards” credit card and a $30 discount, even though their application form insists that I must be a resident of USA to apply.

Which makes their “offer” highly irrelevant and comprehensively useless for us Australians.

C’mon Amazon, this can’t be all that hard to fix. With all the money you spend on website development, surely you can spare a few thousand bucks on fixing the user experience for your international customers?