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This is a bit off-topic, but here is another stupid thing. My experience with amazon.es: 1. I go there. Everything is in Spanish, despite my IP being IP-geoloc

This is a bit off-topic, but here is another stupid thing. My experience with amazon.es: 1. I go there. Everything is in Spanish, despite my IP being IP-geolocated to Sweden by every single IP-geolocation database I know of. My browser's Accept-Language HTTP header is "en-US,en;q=0.8,sv". 2. I manage to sign in with my global Amazon account - they can now see that my shipment and verified payment location is in Sweden. Everything is still in Spanish. It would be fine if it was just the product descriptions which lacked english translations that were not available in e.g. English, but this scheme just seems incompetently managed. They run each national site as a silo, language-wise? This kind of thing was a fun adventure ~17 years ago, ordering exotic stuff from Amazon Japan, but in this day and age it just feels stupid.

swimfar 11y ago
Just to provide a counter-point, I'm the exact opposite. I get annoyed when websites try to change the language for me based on my location. Just because I may currently be in Spain doesn't mean that Spanish is my preferred language. When I go to amazon.de, I expect everything to be in German. If I need a different language, I prefer to choose it myself. Even having the language connected to my account wouldn't be preferable to me. I would still prefer the site to be in the language of the "hosting" country (but I'm sure this is a much less common preference). I guess my point is that different people have different preferences which may be one reason why the site isn't designed like you would like it to be. I understand what you're saying about how you expect amazon to be one unified shopping location. But I imagine that amazon.es is designed primarily for the Spanish market and people in Sweden using the site is a much smaller, unintended market.
- johansch 11y ago
  First: I specified that I was providing them no less than three separate data points: location, language, shipping address. I wouldn't expect some tiny spanish company to do this. However, with a global giant like Amazon I do. Especially when they have already solved the hard part - the logistics around international shipment and payments. The sensible thing for amazon.es to do when they detect a customer who is probably not from Spain (based in e.g. IP-based geolocation) would be top show some dismissable banner at the top of the page saying "We see you are visiting from Sweden. Would you like to read the core part of the site in English? <YES> <NO>")
noinsight 11y ago
Amazon.de at least has an English mode in beta now. I've been wondering the same thing too and noticed that this week.

swimfar 11y ago

Just to provide a counter-point, I'm the exact opposite. I get annoyed when websites try to change the language for me based on my location. Just because I may currently be in Spain doesn't mean that Spanish is my preferred language. When I go to amazon.de, I expect everything to be in German. If I need a different language, I prefer to choose it myself. Even having the language connected to my account wouldn't be preferable to me. I would still prefer the site to be in the language of the "hosting" country (but I'm sure this is a much less common preference). I guess my point is that different people have different preferences which may be one reason why the site isn't designed like you would like it to be. I understand what you're saying about how you expect amazon to be one unified shopping location. But I imagine that amazon.es is designed primarily for the Spanish market and people in Sweden using the site is a much smaller, unintended market.

johansch 11y ago
First: I specified that I was providing them no less than three separate data points: location, language, shipping address. I wouldn't expect some tiny spanish company to do this. However, with a global giant like Amazon I do. Especially when they have already solved the hard part - the logistics around international shipment and payments. The sensible thing for amazon.es to do when they detect a customer who is probably not from Spain (based in e.g. IP-based geolocation) would be top show some dismissable banner at the top of the page saying "We see you are visiting from Sweden. Would you like to read the core part of the site in English? <YES> <NO>")

noinsight 11y ago

Amazon.de at least has an English mode in beta now. I've been wondering the same thing too and noticed that this week.