I’m probably one of the best kinds of customers. For starters I worked in retail for over 6 years so I know what I can do to make the process easier for everyone involved. More importantly though I usually spend an inordinate amount of time researching what product I want before heading out to the store or placing an order, meaning the sales/support people spend a whole lot less time with me, nabbing a sale without any kind of work whatsoever. Bearing all this in mind I don’t have a high tolerance for getting the bum steer when it comes to shopping online or in person but I’ll usually just take my business elsewhere instead of making a big deal about it.
Today however, I feel like making a fuss.
So there I was this morning, browsing my feed reader looking for inspiration as I usually do when I come across this post saying that Peggle, one of PopCap’s crack-like casual games, was free on the Amazon Android store for today only. Considering I shelled out for Plants vs Zombies on the iPhone and thoroughly enjoyed it I figured that whatever hoops Amazon made me jump through to get it would be worth it and would be a good candidate to test out my new Samsung Galaxy S II (review coming shortly!). So I hit up the web store and signed in using my Amazon account, downloaded the application, opened it up and hit the install button on Peggle. That’s when I received this lovely error:”The Amazon Appstore for Android is not yet available in your region”.
What.The.Fuck.
So after dicking around with Amazon’s unoptimized web interface (yeah they have an app but their website doesn’t seem to recognize Android devices), side loading their market app and inevitably handing over some personal information I’m not allowed to get the free application I sought after? Whilst I’m not an Android developer I’m pretty sure its easy to tell if a user is in a region where the app store is available before you make them download your application. In fact I’m so sure of this that I reckon it’s been done deliberately, forcing me to install their app store before telling me just so I don’t drop them completely once I found out that their free app du jour isn’t available to me. That’s what we call a bait and switch and that’s a real quick way for me to get the fuck out of there and never return.
I’ve bought stuff from Amazon in the past and had a good experience with them but this Android app store shenanigans has turned me off the idea of getting any application from them completely. If before I downloaded the application (which I did on my phone) they warned me that “You appear to be in Australia which we can’t currently service, press OK to continue to install the Amazon App Store” I would’ve been fine with that, since then it would just be me trying to skirt around their restrictions. Instead they let you sign up and only at the very last second, after you’ve given them your email and access to some personal data on your phone, do they tell you that it’s not currently available. For this the app has been uninstalled and it will take a metric shit ton of good will from them for me to install it again.
Sure this is a relatively minor quibble but like I said I’ve got little tolerance for this kind of crap, especially when there’s no technical limitation behind it. Not once yet have I had any problems with the regular Android market and it looks like it will be in my best interests to stick around on there, especially when Amazon has shown that they’re not interested in having my business. Maybe one day we’ll get over this whole idea of “regions” and we won’t have to put up with these kind of ludicrous restrictions, but until then I’ll just be taking my business elsewhere and Amazon can just fucking deal with it.
