Buying a e-card for my friend in Italy

[guiwald]

Hello,

I live in Ireland, have an Irish bank account, and I would like to buy a subscription for my friend in Italy.

How can I do that? 

In the conditions to buy a e-card, I can read that the card has to be bought by a CC issued in the country where I live (Ireland), and that a code cannot be used in another country.

Does that mean that it's impossible for me to buy a subscription for any of my friends out of Ireland? That's hard to believe, but please tell me if there is a solution 🙂

Thank you.

[brandon_d]

idk @Peter but I can buy phyiscal or electronic XBox Live gift cards that are printed in and for Greece with my UK debit card and the code will work on a USA based XBox machine and MS Live account.  

I can be in the UK and log in to the USA site of Amazon and purchase goods only sold in the USA and have them shipped to the USA, or to the UK, or to anywhere in the world I want and pay for it all using my UK debit card.  

It's definitely possible that Spotify could find a way to make this work and it's clear I'm not the only person that would want to purchase subscriptions for people in other countries for totally legitmate reasons.  Appreciate there might be factors specific to digital music that I'm not aware of but I'd sure like Spotify to talk us through them if that's the case.  Otherwise, there's really no excuse.

[guiwald]

Hi Peter,

The subject of this tread was for purchases done in EU, for other people living in EU.

If the price of the card is the same in all this country, which use the same currency (except for a few of them), why not allow the purchase?

What American people would say if you were not allowing someone in California buying a card for someone living in New York? That's the situation we have here in Europe.

I finally convinced my friend to move to Ireland, so I could buy her a card this way. But I would be very happy if you could find a solution for this absurd situation, I may want to buy some gift to other friends linving in Europe in the future 🙂

[Peter__]

The issue is, Spotify doesn't even cost the same everywhere in Europe meaning you could still buy Premium "cheaper" abroad which is why I can't see them changing it anytime soon.

For example, Premium is 6.99 EUR in Greece but 9.99 EUR in France.

[guiwald]

So why not, while buying a gift card, selecting the country where to use it, and pay the price for this country? The card would be then only allowed to be used in this country.

Just an idea 🙂

[Peter__]

@guiwald - Although better that doesn't work either.

Spotify use your payment method to verify your location (so you can only pay a UK subscription price with a UK card), if you remove that restriction, so I can buy a Greece Premium Code for example - there is nothing to stop me using a VPN to change the country on my Spotify account (on Free which uses IP geo-location to check country) to Greece then using the Premium code which would give me Premium at a massively reduced rate.

The only way I could do it at the minute is actually get someone in Greece to pay for my subscription and set up my account, which is a lot more effort.

[shellbot]

Hi, 

Was this issue ever solved? I live in the US but want to buy my Mom Spotify for her birthday, she lives in Ireland...

[MattSuda]

Hey @shellbot

Unfortunately this restriction still exists:

"Spotify gift cards can only be redeemed on Spotify accounts registered in the same country where they were purchased."

https://support.spotify.com/us/article/spotify-gift-cards/