Apple’s Catch-22 of moving countries

I moved from USA to Canada with my iPad (among other things). I have a bunch of iPad apps and I keep buying new ones. Not any more. Since I updated my banking details, my iTunes account stopped working.

  1. I cannot pay for apps with my USA iTunes account, since the address for the Credit Card is in Canada
  2. I cannot change the account’s country, because I have left over funds
  3. I cannot spend left-over funds because they are too small and too uneven to buy anything or to create gift certificates
  4. I cannot pad left-over funds  as I would need a Credit Card for that (see point 1)

I could somehow buy USA iTunes gift card and add that money to my account, but it is not a sustainable practice and feels like being a hostage. I could buy a pre-paid Visa card that allows to put in any (including USA) address, but that has expensive overhead.

Or I could email Apple support and ask them what they can do about it. Which is what I’ve done. But it does not feel nice.

(Update) ‘Nice’ of Apple to break the Catch-22 by relieving me of my funds:

Alexandre, as the store credit was less than the minimum possible purchase I have removed the store credit from your account. … Please note that the funds will not be returned to you once you have switched countries.

I guess you could call it a service fee.

(Update 2) And it still does not work. Pressing the “Change country” button throws an error of “iTunes store is busy”. You can press other buttons and things work, but once you press “Change country”, all the buttons stop working. Well, I guess Apple does not want any more of my money. And perhaps, just perhaps, I will not bother with iPad 3, if this does not get solved at all. It is funny how the little things may have big influences.