Not being in the first wave of countries for the Apple Watch

Cross Border Ordering the Apple Watch

I can’t help it, but every now and then I check the order on the Apple site for my new watch. Yesterday I saw that there had been some changes and I wasn’t too happy about it. They were checking the credit card, which had already been checked when I placed the order 12 days ago. They said that the bank had declined, but that was a load of rubbish. What they had done was to flag the order because it was what they called cross-border ordering. This is because I live in Spain so I have a Spanish bank account and I have put my order in on the UK site. I have ordered products from the UK Apple Store in this exact same way before and I wasn’t expecting any problems. Apple must be having problems with people from various countries making orders on the country sites that are in the first wave for the Apple Watch. We have no idea when countries like Spain will be getting the Apple watch so that people like me can make the purchase. Same with Italy and people like the Federico Viticci who has made his order through the German website. On account of the fact that I am British, I declare that I have a right to be able to order from the United Kingdom website.

Sorting the problem out

I was unable to change the details on the website or the page for the credit card. I clicked in a good few places and was unable to find anywhere I could do it. This was the case when I was first of all trying to get them to reauthorise using my own credit card and also later when I was trying to change to a different credit card. At first I thought it was due to the exchange rates and I put extra money into my bank account to make sure there was plenty of wiggle room. It didn’t make any difference anyway, because that wasn’t where the problem lay. Finally the account gave me a number to ring in the UK and that’s what I did. I got speaking to a nice young man who was pretty helpful even though he didn’t have all of the answers. He left me waiting for a couple of times while he asked to his supervisor for answers. He was polite and useful and was confident in what he was doing. Eventually it was decided that I needed to add a UK-based credit card to the order and so I needed to ring up my mother. My mom said she would be able to put it through on her credit card and I can give her the cash when I see her next week at the wedding of my nephew. I did explore the possibilities of me buying myself Apple gift cards to put on the account and paying for the watch that way. The Apple guy had to ask his supervisor about that one and the answer came back in the negative.

Talking to a different operative at Apple

It would have been great to get the same person again when ringing back, especially as this second person was a bit wishy-washy and useless. She spent more time making me wait and asking her supervisors and was generally not too confident when speaking to me. You wouldn’t want to be asking her any questions beyond the very easy ones. Eventually she was able to add my mother’s credit card to the account and I’m still not sure if she got that completely correct. She had the name, the credit card number and expiry date. I would have expected her to need the security number that is the 3 digit number off the back of the card, but she didn’t want it. I am expecting to have to do more working out at a later stage to make sure this Apple watch order works out properly. I went back to my order and it is still showing as being paid for on my own credit card. It is not showing me anyway where I can change it to the other credit card on the account now. I will have to keep an eye on this for the next few days and I’m hoping I don’t have to go into complaining mode if they cancel the order or something stupid like that. The next option would be to ask my mother to start a new order in her own name. With the backlog of orders for the Apple Watch that would mean an extra couple of months waiting for the watch. That would be very annoying and I’m not going to let it come to that.