Canadian Looking for Amazon Turk Requester Account

April 5, 2012 11:44 PM

I'm interested in having a requester account with amazon turk. I live in Canada...But I am physically close to the US border. Can anyone tell me of an acceptable workaround to accomplish this? I've considered driving to the US to open an account but I don't want to do that unless I know for sure it will allow me to run a requester account. Any ideas? Thanks!
posted by anewnormal to Work & Money (3 answers total)

Mechanical Turk requires that Requesters provide a U.S. billing address and a credit card, debit card, Amazon Payments account or U.S. bank account in order to publish HITs.

I am unclear how physically throwing yourself over the border will help you. Changing the mailing address on your credit card to a US address seems much more likely to be successful. I am unclear if you will need a US tax ID or SS number to create an account, however.
posted by DarlingBri at 1:10 AM on April 6, 2012

I created a requester account a few years ago, and I live in Australia. All I had to do was make up a US address. The requirements may have changed in the intervening years, but perhaps give it a shot?
posted by postagepaid at 2:05 AM on April 6, 2012

I've heard that there are a lot of Canadian companies called Freight Forwarder Services set up in border towns that will give you a valid US address (in a border town) for a fee. They forward you your mail and packages or you can cross the border to pick them up. That may help you.

I'm not sure if the US Post Office will allow you to get a PO box unless you also have a physical address in the US. If so, all you need for that is a driver's license (or other photo ID) with your physical address, and also a non-photo ID, and the PO box fees. Many Post Offices allow you to access PO boxes 24/7, the only time you'd need to go during business hours is if you get a package that doesn't fit in the box. Since it sounds like you only need to get bills at a US address, a PO box would probably be ideal. I have a PO box because we do a lot of eBay stuff and I don't want random strangers knowing my actual address. The fee varies by post office; we have the smallest size box and I pay something like US$32 every six months. You can renew online when the fee becomes due, or in ANY post office regardless of which in post office you have your PO box.

UPS, FedEx, and so on will NOT deliver to PO Boxes, but it sounds like you don't need to worry about that.

https://www.usps.com/manage/get-a-po-box.htm

If you can't get a US PO box as a Canadian resident, The UPS Store locations also provide PO Box-like services, but I have no experience with this. You can also get UPS, FedEx, and the likes to deliver there.

http://www.theupsstore.com/products-services/mailbox/Pages/index.aspx
posted by tckma at 12:13 PM on April 6, 2012