I got a Kindle as a birthday gift from my better half. In advance, I had told family members that I was getting a Kindle one way or the other, so I asked them to please don't buy me physical books. "Please give me giftcards for Amazon instead".

Fair enough. So said. So they did. And that was when I was in for a surprise.

You cannot get a UK-model Kindle outside the UK, so my better half had ordered a US-model.

Normally, when buying from Amazon, I have always in the past ordered books from amazon.co.uk, because they are geographically closer to me here in Europe and it just feels more natural. And seemingly so had a few of the giftcard-buyers thought as well.

Imagine my surprise when I find out I cannot redeem my UK giftcard-code in the US-store and that I cannot order Kindle-books for my US-kindle in the UK-store where I was forced to redeem my code.

In the end I had to buy physical books after all.

Granted: Amazon is by far one of the better players in the field. But because of that, this leaking out of internal business processes onto me, their customer, took me by great surprise.

I had honestly expected better from them.