Can one take advantage of lower subscription fees when residing abroad?
Can one take advantage of lower subscription fees when residing abroad?
For instance, YouTube Premium charges 12€ in my home country. However, where I’m staying now they would charge less than 3€.
So, if I would like to take advantage of this, I assume I’d need to create a new Google/YT account, which would mean I’d lose all subs, playlists etc that I’ve created?
Or am I missing something here?
You'd probably need a billing address and credit card from the country you are trying to register in. You can probably just pick whatever (valid) address you want, but getting a credit card would be hard, and billing addresses not matching the address registered with the bank tends to trip fraud detection systems
18I do have a local debit card actually, which I already use for YT prem.
9Potentially could use visa gift cards?
2Don't know about Google specifically, but lots of places don't accept them, especially for subscriptions
6
Yes you can via a VPN and an “address” in that country. I wouldn’t recommend doing this with your primary google accounts though since you are working their system some they might retort in some way.
13We're doing the right now!
5There's a reddit thread on how to do that with Pokémon go, basically make a new Google account with a Turkish address and add your credit card to that then use the web playstore to download an app with that account to your phone, then sign in with your normal account but now purchases are at the Turkish value
4I don't know if that loophole works anymore, though. Google now requires a Turkish card to be added to your account in order to process payments from "Turkey".
Source: tried to make a Google Play account for Turkey about a year ago to YouTube Premium. I registered at a Turkish address and VPN'd to a Turkish server, but was unable to proceed since Google did not accept my payment information.
2
You can cancel your subscription and start a new one locally at the cheaper rate.
4You do not have to create a new account and lose subscriptions. When I moved countries for half a year, I had to change my Google Pay address. I seem to r3member needing to cancel every single one of my subscriptions on that service, then re-sign up with them after changing my address. I may have forgot to change my address back, so I am still paying for a Youtube Premium family plan in Filipino pesos.
2You can change your Google account country, but I think you are limited to once a year or something like that and proof is needed.
1What does 'residing abroad' mean? In sounds like a bit of an oxymoron, how can you reside in a country you're not in, right? Perhaps you legally reside in a country you're not physically in? Or you moved such that you established residency in a new country? Or do you have no legal residency?
In the first case, I would guess you're not permitted to move accounts, because your country of residence hasn't changed. It depends on the terms of service though.
In the second case, surely -- you reside in a country that has lower fees, like any other resident there.
In the last case, I really don't know! I've been there for a few months while waiting for paperwork. I left my accounts as-is to avoid problems.
e.g. I immigrated to Vietnam and moved my Steam account. I kept all purchases and all history. I provided my new address, and get the regional lower fees. Same with Netflix.
-1What does 'residing abroad' mean? In sounds like a bit of an oxymoron, how can you reside in a country you're not in, right?
This sounds very facetious. It's obvious they mean they moved from their home country and are residing abroad, relative to their home country.
5Thanks for pointing that out -- I was worried it would sound that way. I'll frame the question better next time.
Where I live, there are a lot of people that describe themselves as "residing abroad", which represent quite a weird mix of very different situations at all imaginable levels of legality. Sometimes I forget this is more straightforward elsewhere.
4
You can have citizenship in one country and residency in another. Quite common
0Haha, that describes me exactly.
1
Some people use VPN to do so, which is IMO borderline fraud.
If your main adress is in a country (even for 6-12 month) it's normal that you pay the service at that country price (just like you pay taxes or food theire not where your from) the opposite would be a discrimination against immigrant, which at least in modern democracy is (mostly) illegal
-11What’s fraud is fucking regional pricing. Obviously they can sell it for 3 bucks and still make a profit, but instead I would get gouged for 12 in this example.
23It's also quite silly. You already have a VPN, just pirate the thing instead of paying anything.
3I wouldn't feel guilty denying a few bucks from a billion dollar company but that's me. :)
3