Hi,
I live in Australia and can no longer connect to the Fender USA site - I always get bumped to Fender Aust. This wouldn't be so bad if the Australian site had the same info, specs, forum etc but it's a slimmed down version that doesn't have the latest news, full specs of products, or in fact some of the newer products. It also doesn't link to the forums. It's a very lite and crap version of the USA site. I'm sure Fender USA have nothing to do with it, but it's bad web practice and very annoying, and ultimately damages the brand... especially when people in Australia can't get info about Fender products.

Anyone know a work around for this? I can get onto some pages of Fender USA site, but then others just redirect me to the Oz one. I cannot get the USA home page at all.

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"...Compared to the flowers and the birds and the trees, I am an Apeman."

Hi nickbeatnik: I think this is normal internet protocol for places Fender has a regional base. I live in the UK and if I type fender.com into a browser I get forwarded to fender.com/en-GB/ , the UK hosting of the website. However, unless my eyes deceive me it is the same website as in the US, just hosted through a local shell. When I click on Fender Lounge Forums on the Community tab I come here to fender.com/community/forums, which is the same for everyone the world over.

Or you can just enter that address in the browser to skip your local version of the site.

Interestingly, someone else from Australia made a thread recently on the same topic:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=71403

As you'll see, a theory was put forward that the website forwarding is due to censorship by the Australian government. That gave me a good laugh. I've a feeling someone is confusing Australia for Iran; a tiny little geopolitical misundertanding...

Cheers - C

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Can you get to the different versions of the site from here?

http://www.fender.com/intl.php

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Thanks strings,

yes that url does get me to a page where I can select Fender USA then go to the mothership.
It's a work around, but a couple of extra, annoying steps.

Thanks Ceri too, checked out that thread... yeah some imaginative theories being put forward there! The Oz federal government is toying with the idea of filtering the net in this country, but nothing is in place yet. Also there's no way it's Google redirecting Australians to Fender Oz when you simply type www.fender.com into a browser - that's not a Google search!

I understand the local content idea, but the local content is incomplete - there is no link to the forums on the Australian site for example. This is something that just started happening recently, I guess most people wont notice - unless they're looking for

- a product manual
- software download
- service diagram
- How-to video
- amp schematic
- online guitar lessons
- Tech talk
- color charts
- product dating
- Fender FUSE
- the community forums
- Fender Hall of Fame
- Fender factory tours
- Fender clothing and accessories
- Fender music education program
- Fender Artists

.... I could go on, but I'm boring me!

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"...Compared to the flowers and the birds and the trees, I am an Apeman."

I know the site you are referring to, however in NZ I go straight to the US site. There is a local site here however its hardly worth looking at as it is an even slimmer version of the Australian site

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