Tuesday, November 2, 2010

How can I trick Google into accepting my money?

I have been the proud owner of an Android phone for the last year or so. I have installed and used many free applications and because of the large range of excellent free applications I never felt the need to purchase any paid applications. However, when I saw that Bike Doctor application got a very good review on the London Cyclist blog I decided it was time to open my wallet and purchase this application (after all the price of £2.99 could be considered good value if it eliminated  a single trip to the bike repair shop)

According to this announcement it should be possible to purchase Android applications in Ireland since the start of October and indeed I was able to see it in my Android Market, but when I went to pay for it Google refused to accept my credit card. A colleague told me that this is because Google Checkout refuses to accept credit cards that are registered to Irish addresses Does anyone know if there is any way to trick Google into accepting my money?

Is there anyone out there who can explain why it might make sense for Google to refuse to accept money from a significant market where it has several thousand employees and which is home to its European headquarters?

1 comment:

  1. Thanks to some assistance from Thanai Kumar I figured out that the problem was not caused by the fact that my credit card was registered to an Irish address, but simply due to the fact that I needed to update my account configuration with its new expiry date - Doh!

    Now it works fine.

    ReplyDelete