Region blocked on amazon.co.jp after buying several ebooks?

Learning Resources
#1

Hi, I am a first-time poster here but I lurked Koohii for years… not sure if this is okay to post but there seem to be a lot of prolific readers who regularly downloaded books from Amazon so I’d thought I’d try asking.

I have been using amazon.co.jp to download and read made several (six?) ebook Kindle purchases this month. It has been fine with a made-up Japanese address and whatnot… But I began getting this message when trying to make a new purchase:

出版者または権利者により地域制限が設定されている場合があるため、一部のKindle本は日本国内のお客様にのみ提供しております。この場合、日本国外のお客様はご利用頂けません。

一時的に日本国外を旅行中ですか？

その場合、注文手続きを進めるには、[カスタマーサービスにお問い合わせください]

日本国内に在住の場合は、コンテンツと端末の管理 で居住国が「日本」に設定されていることをご確認ください。

[居住国の設定] は、こちらからご確認いただけます。

–

Please contact us or change your country to complete your purchase. You attempted to purchase an item while in a different country than listed on your Amazon account. Are you traveling outside your country? Please contact customer service in order to continue purchasing Kindle items. Did you recently move to a new country? You can easily update your country for your Amazon account.

My location is already set as Japan.

Has anyone faced this problem before? From what I searched most people don’t be a problem with buying eBooks from outside of Japan if the location is Japan. If not I would be wondering if there were other alternative websites for buying Japanese ebooks or is it recommended to start using a VPN.

Thank you!

#2

I’ve heard this can happen if you buy ebooks without using a VPN. I haven’t tried it though, as I haven’t made an Amazon JP account, but I’d try using a VPN and seeing if it works.

2 Likes
#3

I wonder if it’s something new, I haven’t had any problems. Though I do have a VPN if I need to use it. The worry is if they stop accepting foreign credit cards, that would be a very sad day.

2 Likes
#4

I haven’t hit this specific issue, however I’ve only purchased Kindle titles from Amazon JP on two occasions.

Once I was unable to complete an Amazon JP order for books from third-party sellers using my foreign credit card. I worked around it by purchasing an Amazon JP gift card (using the same credit card) and redeeming it in my Amazon JP account. I am not recommending you do that, but it’s an option to consider if their system makes the domestic/foreign customer assessment based on where the payment card was issued.

1 Like
#5

I had this happen when I started off with ebooks. Now I use a VPN just at the time of purchase and have no problems.

1 Like
#6

This happened to me a while back. I bought one book with VPN and then I could buy books without VPN after that.

2 Likes
#7

Wow, thank you for all the replies.

It seems like the commonly suggested solution is to just use a VPN. Thank you everyone for taking the time to help.

#8

Check out VPN Gate, this is a free public VPN supported by volunteers. They have a few Japanese gateways. It even works for Japanese Netflix which is rare for even paid ones.

2 Likes
#9

My experience is the same as Taishi’s. After connecting through SoftEther VPN on Windows and buying one thing, my 国外購入権 were restored. That was well over a year ago and I buy something for my Kindle at least once a month.

1 Like
#10

Awesome, thank you for the VPN recommendations. To be honest I was kind of wary about choosing a VPN because this is new ground for me, but I’ll definitely check those out. I guess I should finish the books I already downloaded and give it a try again at the end of the month.

You guys are amazing, thank you again for all the help.

1 Like
#11

Thanks so much for the advice! I just ran into the exact same problem and connecting to vpn once solved the problem. I was really worried for a second. glad Google brought me here. I created a new account just to say thanks :smiley: I guess it never hit me because I was actually travelling to Japan once in a while before covid… hope I can travel there again irl instead of virtually soon XD

2 Likes