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Comment by tempestn | Hacker News Reader

Amazon is annoying in the opposite way. Even if you're logged in, they give no indication at all that they won't ship something to you until you actually try to buy it. Very irritating when comparing several options to have to add every one to the cart to check that you can actually buy it before wasting the time of considering it too carefully.

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When I'm logged in on Amazon I get a warning next to the product price that I can't ship it to my default location.

Hmm, I just double-checked and I don't get that. I'm in Canada. Have two addresses registered, both Canadian. For example, [1] is appears to be available, and also claims to have free shipping (as do many items listed on amazon.com eve though the free shipping is US only). When I add it to my cart, proceed to checkout, and choose an address though, it lets me know about the "slight problem" with my order... the fact that I can't get it.

Maybe it's only Amazon Fulfillment items that do this?

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009ENG6TI/ref=ox_sc_sfl_ti...

It doesn't work if you aren't logged in and haven't set a default shipping address.

e.g. I see "We are not able to ship this item to your default shipping address."

But I am logged in and have set a default shipping address. So either it's different depending on country, or it's because this item is a fulfillment item, or if you're also in Canada and looking at the same item... I don't know, I guess Amazon just doesn't like me?

It's not just you. I get the same behavior. Logged in with default shipping address (Hong Kong), but only find out on proceeding to checkout as you described.

try activating 1 click checkout..

Tried that already. No change.

There is that, but it only applies if you're an existing, and logged in customer.

Well how could they possibly fix that?

List shipping restrictions up front?

geoip?

GeoIP isn't really a good solution. I work on a large ecommerce site and this comes up from time to time. GeoIP databases are unreliable at best, especially for areas where IPs tend to jump borders (e.g., Toronto and Detroit)

But they wouldn't need to use it for anything critical. Just for a message like, "It appears that we can't ship this to your current location: Calgary, AB, Canada. Please _log in_ to check availability to your shipping address," or something along those lines.

And if it thinks I'm in Montana? I don't get that message, and assume since in the past it knew I was in Calgary so I must be safe to add it to my cart.

At least I know right now that I have to log in all the time to be sure I can safely add items to my cart

But the worst case then is that you add something to your cart and then find out later that you can't buy it, just like now. It's not going to make the cart self-destruct. ;)

If it thinks you're in Montana once, it's probably going to every time. So you'll see exactly what you see now. Heck, maybe this is exactly what they DO do, and it thinks I'm in Washington so I never get a message. :) But for the majority of cases where it can geolocate the country properly, at least to the resolution of US vs not-US, it would be helpful.

one could also be traveling abroad for business/pleasure yet living in the US. I sometimes order things while traveling....

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