Amazon Heartache

Good morning,

So, a friend of mine here at WA wanted to order an item from one of my posts - yay...! Would have been my FIRST real affiliate sale. She lives in Canada and I live in the USA.

She clicked on the link on my post which took her to the Amazon.com site, but was unable to order the item because she was told that it was not available in Canada, and couldn't be shipped to her location. She then clicked around to other similar items and was told the same thing.

We thought that maybe it was because she was on the dot-com site and not the dot-ca site, even though I had already signed up with the international Amazon sites. I contacted support and was on the phone with them for about an hour, going through the VERY convoluted process of applying for affiliate status with Amazon in Canada, Italy, Spain, Germany, the UK, and France.

Not only did I have to apply to each one, and set a dedicated affiliate code for each one, but I also THEN had to click on the little tiny link at the top of the page that said ONE-LINK. Had I not been on the phone with them, I never would have clicked on that link, which is barely noticeable if you are on the page looking at everything else.

The ONE-LINK allows you to get a code which combines ALL the international Amazon sites into, well, ONE link, which is then uploaded to the footer area of your website. It is ultimately an invisible code which then converts your link from the USA to whatever country your buyer is in.

So in my case, my friend in Canada would have clicked on the link in my post, and it would have converted the site to the dot-ca website, so that she could order the item or a similar one, and not be charged import fees or shipping.

Except for one thing --- it didn't work. I am pulling my hair out in frustration. As my friend says, no wonder people aren't making money from Amazon -- they make it extremely difficult to set this up, and even after a considerable amount of time in doing so, it still doesn't work efficiently. For a world-wide corporation, this is just unacceptable.

Please weigh in and let me know if you have had similar experiences with Amazon, and also if you have any workable suggestions. I feel terrible that my friend was not able to order her item, and I feel terrible that I lost a sale, and God knows how many other sales as well.

Thanks so much,

Amy