Is there anywhere in Canada where the Kindle can be purchased retail? I’m told target in the states sells it but the guy at Amazon didn’t know about Canada.
My mother informed me yesterday she would like a Kindle for Christmas but of course there is a 7-9 week wait. There is availability here in the UK but the guy told me it would not work properly in Canada. Does anyone know if this is really true? If she registers it on her own Amazon account why should it matter where I bought it? Is it hardwired to accept only a UK 3G signal?
It’s so frustrating. I can see it as available if I’m not signed in but as soon as I try to order it, it sends me to the international part of Amazon.com and tells me I have to wait 7-9 weeks. What I’m trying to understand is…is the machine physically different? Can I have a US friend order it for me, pay for it, ship it to their own address and then mail it to me? Will it work or is my mom going to turn it on and have it say you can only order books with a US credit card or something?
I haven’t heard of Kindles being available here in Canada, but Chapters-Indigo (Canada’s big-box book retailer) has something similar it calls the Kobo (see it here). It seems to be functionally the same thing as the Kindle. Might this suit your needs?
I live in New Brunswick and last week I purchased a Kindle from Amazon.com (this is separate from my Amazon.ca account). I had to include a certain amount for possible duty at the border, but I ordered it on Friday and it arrived Tuesday afternoon. No problems whatsoever.
@Spoons - that looks like a pretty good idea. I may end up going with that but I want to exhaust all possibilities with the Kindle first. My mother’s computer is crap and she doesn’t have wireless so if I get her the 3g one, I’m hoping it will be issue free.
@stephen59 - if you log on to Amazon now does it show availability?
Hmm, that’s a great question. I know they say the Kindle can download books from all around the world, but I’m not sure if your account is tied to a certain country’s Amazon…
I have a US kindle. When I traveled to Mexico I received a message on the Kindle saying that there would be an extra charge for any wireless download of books. Amazon has agreements with cell phone companies in various countries. In the US they use Sprint I don’t know what agreement they have in Canada. It sounds like they may not have an agreement with anybody in Canada.
ack! I give up. After trying to guide my sister through the process I had the brilliant idea of signing in as my mother. As soon as I put in the shipping address it said they could not ship a “US only” Kindle to a Canadian address and redirected me to the International page with a 7-9 week wait.
Thought this was supposed to be a global economy grumble
I see the question has already been answered, but FWIW I took a trip to Asia this way by way of Vancouver. My Kindle is US-centric, and I decided I wanted to try to buy a book while I was overnighting there. No dice – I didn’t even get the “We’ll charge you more” dialog mentioned earlier.
I suspect this is a combination of carrier agreements and possibly the bandwidths in question.
I was curious whether you could order from amazone.ca. I signed on to it and searched for kindle and I got redirected, not to amazon.com, but to this site: http://www.infomash.org/100/7927/search.php?k=kindle&sid=ea6c37c4fc2730c011c92fdd3b26b1d3
which claimed to have links to places (in the US, I believe) that will sell you a kindle for as little as $24. I cannot vouch for any of them (although there is a link to amazon.com). But the fact that amazon.ca is not selling them makes me wonder whether they even operate in Canada.
They do. Amazon.ca was selling them. Or at least they used to have a link on amazon.ca(on the homepage even) that led to a specific part of amazon.com that sold kindles to Canada. I bought one at the time. Said link no longer appears to exist though.
With my Kindle I can’t buy books if connected to the US network, which happens fairly often even though I’ve never been to the US. So I assume the opposite is also true. But I don’t know if it’s got some sort of hardware country code or if it’s just based on the account it’s linked to.