Re:Windows 8.1 forces the user to interact in a way that doe...
by MichaelGG on Saturday February 15, 2014 @02:44PM
(#7245023)
Taking a plane or get a new card? Why not just use a proxy? It's pretty common to limit fraud by going off people's IP address until you've got an established relationship with them. Using a credit card from another country is a huge fraud flag.
My Office365 account is listed as being in "Colombia" (CO) and insists on a Colombian address if I want to update my billing info -- despite my current billing address being Colorado (CO) and me never having been to Colombia. Tech support says there no way to change this, that my account will permanently be set as Colombia, despite it being obvious that the current billing address is Colorado (and Wells Fargo doesn't even have banks in Colombia, AFAIK).
Seems like companies just really suck when it comes to multi-country handling. Xbox lets me buy games, proceeds to download them completely, then does a geo-IP check and says "Corrupted". Xbox support insisted my hardware was bad (despite many other games downloading just fine), until I mentioned I wasn't in the US. Only at that point did they figure out there was a geo-IP check going on after the download that leads to the "Corrupted" error. They were actually going to completely replace my Xbox unit, determining the motherboard or something was selectively corrupting data for specific games. The remedy: "Oh move back to the US". No refunds or anything. (Real remedy: PPTP.)
Google takes it a step further, and disables updates for apps if they aren't available in whatever it determines to be your current region. I installed the Wells Fargo app, then went travelling. During that time, WF app releases a critical security update and ceases functioning until updated. Android points out "update available". But if I tap it to update, it says that app is not found.
Google Play also takes your physical location to customize part of the UI[1] language, inconsistently.
Netflix does the same[2]. They do even worse though, disallowing the audio language for subtitles, depending on region. In the US and watching with someone that's not fluent English? Too bad, only English subtitles. In Central America and want English subtitles? Nope, just Spanish or Portuguese (?! Portuguese isn't even in the top 5 languages spoken around here).
My Office365 account is listed as being in "Colombia" (CO) and insists on a Colombian address if I want to update my billing info -- despite my current billing address being Colorado (CO) and me never having been to Colombia. Tech support says there no way to change this, that my account will permanently be set as Colombia, despite it being obvious that the current billing address is Colorado (and Wells Fargo doesn't even have banks in Colombia, AFAIK).
Seems like companies just really suck when it comes to multi-country handling. Xbox lets me buy games, proceeds to download them completely, then does a geo-IP check and says "Corrupted". Xbox support insisted my hardware was bad (despite many other games downloading just fine), until I mentioned I wasn't in the US. Only at that point did they figure out there was a geo-IP check going on after the download that leads to the "Corrupted" error. They were actually going to completely replace my Xbox unit, determining the motherboard or something was selectively corrupting data for specific games. The remedy: "Oh move back to the US". No refunds or anything. (Real remedy: PPTP.)
Google takes it a step further, and disables updates for apps if they aren't available in whatever it determines to be your current region. I installed the Wells Fargo app, then went travelling. During that time, WF app releases a critical security update and ceases functioning until updated. Android points out "update available". But if I tap it to update, it says that app is not found.
Google Play also takes your physical location to customize part of the UI[1] language, inconsistently.
Netflix does the same[2]. They do even worse though, disallowing the audio language for subtitles, depending on region. In the US and watching with someone that's not fluent English? Too bad, only English subtitles. In Central America and want English subtitles? Nope, just Spanish or Portuguese (?! Portuguese isn't even in the top 5 languages spoken around here).
1: http://imgur.com/F1QlQ9U 2: http://imgur.com/yy7emGI