iTunes/App Store account and associated country

[shurcooL]

Hi,

A friend of mine who is originally from France, but currently living in Canada, just got an iPad. She has a French credit card only atm, so she'd like to buy from the French App Store instead of the Canadian (to avoid incurring currency conversion losses).

What happens to her purchased apps and iTunes content if she later tries to change her Apple ID/App Store country from France to Canada? Will she lose all her purchases?

I know a lot of people approach this problem by creating two Apple IDs, one associated with 1 country and another for a second country. But of course that's a hassle when a person only really needs 1 account.

 

[Nermal]

What happens to her purchased apps and iTunes content if she later tries to change her Apple ID/App Store country from France to Canada? Will she lose all her purchases?

Sort of. I started with an Australian account and changed it to NZ. I can still listen to music that I bought in the AU store, but some of it doesn't show up under Purchased so I can't redownload it (although Match goes some way towards working around this issue).

As for apps, I have no idea because apps didn't exist when I switched the account.

 

[shurcooL]

Thanks Nermal.

I've found this thread, and it doesn't seem very promising. In fact, I never thought about it, but if I move to a different country would I also be screwed out of all my purchased apps? That's not good.

 

[shurcooL]

I've found more confirmation of the bad news (dated April 2011).

http://bindermichi.posterous.com/apple-clearly-has-no-idea-0

So the situation is, if you invest a lot of money in a given iTunes/App Store/Mac App Store, you have better not change countries or else you'll either lose re-download/update ability to your content, or be forced to maintain an Apple ID associated with the previous country.

This is really troubling... It's like finding out, suddenly, your freedom (to change countries) is restricted. I wonder if anything can/will be done about it (anytime soon?).

 

[shurcooL]

Another confirmation from October 2011.

http://support.agilebits.com/discussions/1password-for-ios/91-app-store-country-restrictions

 

[shurcooL]

I'm just curious here, but does anyone know if the Ubuntu Software Center suffers from a similar problem? I've noticed they have some paid software there too, so I wonder if it's tied down to any country. I've tried to look into it but I couldn't really find this info...