As regular readers of my blog probably know, I have been complaining against geographical restrictions on the sales of products for a very long time. You may remember one of my early rants on my inability to buy digital media from this post. However, Apple has recently decided to take us out of digital purgatory — we can now buy movies and songs, but not books, from their iTune stores.
The day this happened was a great day for consumerist equality, if I may coin such a term, and a bad day for my credit card account — I went on a buying binge that is only now subsiding. But still, it was good to know that I could finally buy what I wanted. I no longer felt as if I was being pushed towards pirating stuff, something that is against my moral code.
I had a very hard time preventing myself from pirating in the past, it took every ounce of self control to prevent myself from getting content that I really wanted, and was willing to pay for, but was prevented from getting due to geographical restrictions for free on pirating sites. But digital media was not the only thing with geographical restrictions. I discovered that I could not buy hardware products from my favourite online shopping site Amazon.com.
Want to get the lasted Kindle, or iPad or that shiny business card holder? Hard luck. Unlike books, Amazon did not deliver these products to Egypt. I searched in vain for ways to circumvent this. There were several ways I could overcome this, including setting up pickup arrangements with courier services like DHL and Aramex, but it was a hassle and very ad hoc way of doing things. And then I discovered Borderlinx.com.
It’s a site that allows you to setup permanent US and UK addresses to use for shopping on sites that do not ship to Egypt. You can them consolidate your packages in fewer parcels before having them shipped to Egypt to save on shipping costs. Borderlinx then ships to Egypt. They offer very reasonable shipping costs and deliver on time, my package arrived two days after it was received by Borderlinx.
For news and offers, you can follow their blog. Before actually buying, you can calculate the custom duty you’ll pay by checking out their online “Cost Calculator”. Go on, create an account now, it’s free. Once you’ve done that, you can shop to your heart’s delight — but keep an eye on your credit limit, don’t over shop like I do. Here are some shopping ideas to get you started.