[ntsc]

i'm having an issue with iTunes. when i select the UK music store and then run a search for a song it runs the search query on the US music store and return results for those. it doesn't matter what i try it still returns US results. does anyone have any voodoo advice to sort this.

thanks in advance!

[Parky]

It a problem that seems to be affecting many users in Europe.

We are trapped in the US Store, even though we can see the UK front page.

There are a number of issues that seem to be affecting European users at the moment, non of which Apple seem interested in fixing. If you do contact Apple they will send an email telling you how to fix it on your machine, but clearly from the number of people who have problems, it is Apple who need to do the fixing.

On the Apple Discussion boards there are numerous threads and posts about this, and many people can't shop for tracks.

The symptoms can be :-

1. No access to the store at all - just the message to upgrade iTunes, even though we have the latest version and have bought tracks in the past.

2. Access to the US Store only, and even if we try to change stores we still end up in the US Store.

3. Access to the UK Store front page, but when you dig deeper you get US Store details only which you can't buy.

4. Trying to access your account or login gets the warning that you are in the US Store, but there is no way to get back to the UK Store.

In the last week I have only managed to get into the store once, every other time I have had one of the above issues.

I have now given up and removed the store from the iTunes sidebar, I will buy real CD's for £8.99 in future. That way at least you know it's going to be reliable rather than the pot luck of wondering if the iTunes store is going to work.

The quickest way to lose customers is to have an unreliable service, they will need some real motivation to keep trying. I for one have given up.

I hope you have more luck that many others.

Might I suggest you write to Steve Jobs at sjobs@apple. com or s.jobs@apple.com

They do get read and I have had results in the past from doing this.

Ian

[TETENAL]

The problem appears to be within the UK. See my other post about it here:

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...99#post2229499

Also if you look at the Apple Discussion board there are threads about "UK bug?", "iTunes UK complaints", "iTunes 4.6 (UK) refuses to access store ...". Maybe it's a certain ISP that is the problem here? The European iTMS is located in Luxembourg, so if an ISP in the UK would cause such problems it would explain (not excuse) why iTunes S.à.r.l. has problems reproducing this problem.

[Parky]

I have also seen the following comments in the Apple boards :-

Apple is aware of the problem and is working on it. The most likely scenario is that the problem is in the Akamai network that Apple uses to distribute the load between servers, but Akamai apparently isn't convinced. As suggested before, please submit copies of your preference files to the address I posted in this thread (second message in the thread). The Apple engineers need those files to establish and prove to the server engineers that it's not a problem with corrupted preference files.

Ian