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alt title(s): Not Available In Nebraska
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"To stop those monsters, one-two-three,
Here's a fresh new way that's trouble-free.
It's got Paul Anka's guarantee...
Guarantee void in Tennessee."
"English only. Not available in Quebec"
—-Seen constantly in Canadian Sears catalouges.
Hey! We've got a marvelous, fantastic deal for you, one that will make your wallet heavier, your life better, your teeth whiter and your wife/girlfriend will want to have sex with you every night. And the price is so damn low, we're CRAZY!
Except for you doofs in Nebraska. You're stuck out, and we're certainly not going to tell you why. Na na na-na na!
Why did Nebraska end up with the short end of the stick for so long? The answer lies deep in some silly rules imposed by the Bell System, combined with an odd bit of Cold War surplus.
Before deregulation of telephone services and the later cellphone revolution, the phone company (and we mean "the" phone company—in most places telephone service was a Bell monopoly) had no incentive to expand the infrastructure of any state more than what was necessary for its residents. The sole exception was Nebraska, because the Strategic Air Command or SAC (the Air Force command tasked with managing the Air Force's nuclear weapons) was based in Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha and needed insane amounts of incoming phone lines as insurance in the case of an attack. Needless to say, most of those lines went unused 365 days a year.
Mail-order companies, and especially those taking advantage of the new 800 service, saw potential in the infrastructure and petitioned Northwestern Bell and the government to let them make use of it. They agreed with the proviso that the businesses would be cut off if the Soviets attacked (well duh). There was a bigger problem, though: At the time, using the same 800 number both for calls within a specific state and calls from one state to another was against telephone company rules, one of many self-serving, seemingly random provisos people had to live with back in the Bell days. Sellers therefore had the choice of confusing their customers with two 800 numbers, one for callers within Nebraska and one for callers living in the rest of the country, or just having the one 800 number and barring Nebraska residents from calling (and possibly advertising a local number on local Omaha TV stations?). Most chose the latter.
As more call centers set up shop in Omaha, Northwestern Bell built more and more infrastructure to the point that the number of lines going into call centers dwarfed those originally used by the SAC. The rules about 800 numbers didn't change until the mid 1990s, when the SAC disbanded into the current STRATCOM. And Now You Know.
Often summed up quite simply with "Void where prohibited.", a magical phrase which shifts the onus of learning about obscure laws away from the seller and onto the consumer.
The actual most likely U.S. state to be excluded from an offer broadcast on TV these days is Tennessee, with its strict advertising regulations (the absence of state income/interest taxes means shopping local is crucial). In Canada Eh, it's Quebec — due to both gambling laws and French language requirements.
Compare to No Export For You.
Examples
Advertising
- An example of this played for comedy is in this
 Microsoft video made as a joke advertisement for Windows 1.0. Apparently this "advanced operating environment" was available everywhere, "except in Nebraska!" for some indiscernible reason.
- Noticeable on the advertisements (as of 2010) for Blip TV Web Original shows, which is not only always American but often for products that only Americans can use (such as AT&T mobile phones). Never mind that many such shows have large fanbases outside the US, or (as in the case of Yugioh The Abridged Series for instance) the show itself isn't American.
- Back in the 1980's, Augsburger Beer used to have their Brewmeister, Hans Kessler, do their radio commercials. (He always pointed out that, inspite of its German-sounding name and German-accented Brewmeister, Augsburger was brewed "right hier in ze goot old U. S. ov A.") At one point, when they were holding a contest, he gave a brief summary of the rules, then added, "Just remember to drink Augsburger Beer, and void where prohibited." (beat) "Did I say zat right?"
Live Action TV
- Deal Or No Deal's play-at-home Lucky Case Game cannot be played by residents of, if I remember correctly, North Dakota, Tennessee, South Carolina, Nebraska, and Minnesota. Or something like that. I'll have to look again to see which ones they are, but I definitely remember that they were five random states with no real correlation to one another and that North Dakota and Tennessee were two of them.
- When John Henson was host of Talk Soup on E!, he used to run fake offers with a long rolling list of disclaimers that always ended with "Valid in 49 states — sorry Tennessee!"
- Mystery Science Theater 3000 has made jokes about this.
Magazines
Video Games
- Parodied in World Of Warcraft: One of the demons a warlock can summon, the voidwalker, a kind of shadow/nothingness elemental, sometimes says "I...am...void...where...prohibited." when summoned.
- See also the many real-world competitions on the World of Warcraft website, as well as the recently launched Arena Tournaments. In Europe, many countries within the EU are prohibited from entering any such competition due to national laws that are beyond Blizzard's control. Regardless, guess who gets the blame for this...
- People in Quebec also cannot enter the tournaments. This may be because Canadians can enter with an essay instead of the fee, and the language laws take over. According to Quebecois law, if any written material is submitted, the company running the event has to accept it in French (but not necessarily English). Few companies feel it's worth the extra effort and expense, which is why Quebecers so often get shafted.
Web Animation
- Parodied on Homestar Runner in a commercial for the "Strong Bad Sings!" music collection: "Refunds not available in Maine or Arkansas."
Western Animation
Other
- Played humorously by OK Go during their OK Go Dances With You youtube commercial, where people living in Antarctica were excluded from the contest, because they were too far away (sucks to be you)
- Parodied in the Capitol Steps' fake commercial to treat "Electile Dysfunction." Offer not good in Florida.
Variations
Australia
- Competitions run by companies based in Australia which also market their product in New Zealand may only be open to residents of Australia.
- In Australia, it's South Australia and the Northern Territory, because only the east coast matters after all...
- SA has a rule prohibiting per-customer limits (shops can claim to have one, but (roughly) they can't refuse to sell you the item if they have it in stock), and there are a few other areas where the Trade Practices Act are stricter than in other states. NT may have inherited some of them, since it used to be ruled from SA.
- Similarly there's the rural (or "regional") areas: Any time any novel development occurs in Australia, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth will always get it first, and everywhere else will get it never. When Channel Ten launched ONE HD, it apparently neglected to mention that only the capital cities would get it, much to the chagrin of rural viewers.
Canada
- The Canadian version is, "Offer not valid In Quebec". Quebec has its own gambling laws regarding sweepstakes, which differ widely from the rest of Canada. There are also separate advertising laws that make certain contest found in advertisements (especially those aimed at children) void. It is illegal to make publicity aimed at children in Quebec. Since some of those publicity campaigns for contests run throughout Canada, the contest they advertise is made unavailable in Quebec.
- There are several terms that must be met in order to run a sweepstakes in Quebec. Having the winner answer a question so it counts as skill-based instead of luck-based? That's fine. Giving the Quebec provincial government power to change the rules as they see fit before it runs? That's worrisome. Paying the provincial government 10% of the total value of the prizes!? Screw it, "void in Quebec"!
- The city of Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada was apparently bribed to do this; EB Games (since bought out by GameStop; those that are still EB Games simply didn't feel like changing the signs) are prohibited from buying used games in city limits, because the pawn shops "complained" that the chain stores took away their business.
- The Zune didn't come into Canada until 2008 (while it was released in 2006). I heard that the CRTC (which is the Canadian FCC) were pissed off at something, so it came to Canada two years late, and without Marketplace (buy stuff) support. The Zune HD is supposed to come out in a while, so a trip to Buffalo is required to get the Zune HD in this lifetime.
- Lampshaded by Tony Kornheiser on ESPN's Pardon The Interruption. After the standard half hour, he and Mike Wilbon "toss it up to SportsCenter," but briefly interrupt (no pun intended) the latter show with an extra segment, the "Big Finish," During which they truly close out their show. This extra segment isn't aired in Canada, so at the end of every show, Kornheiser waves a Canadian flag and says "Goodnight, Canada."
- Generally, american promotions for products aren't available in Canada, even if the product is. Particularly annoying are the deals for free DLC for Mass Effect 2: The products are available in Canada (although from a different company technically), but not with the DLC codes. Why is it particularly annoying? Mass Effect 2, and therefore the DLC itself, was developed in Canada.
- This trading-card collecting troper recalls a variation involving randomly pulled cards that could be exchanged by mail for small prizes: Canadians had to complete a brief math problem to get their prize.
- In Canada, if you want an Audi A6 3.2 as a front-wheel-drive, not a quattro (i.e. four-wheel-drive) version, well, it's only available in the United States. Why the U.S. gets a larger range than Canada for the A6 model (a vehicle roughly the size of a Chrysler 300) considering that the rest of the U.S./Canada Audi line-up being identical is executive meddling taken to extremes.
- Some of the above examples cite 'math questions' as a requirement to claim prizes (even on Mc Donalds' french-frie contests); Canada's lottery laws are very specific — anything described as a 'contest' must have a skill-testing element involved, or else it's legally a lottery (and under Canadian law, only non-profit organizations can run a lottery).
Latin America
- Since several channels are broadcast all over Latin America, it's not rare to see adverts saying "Only applies to Argentina" or "Exclusively for Mexico".
Europe
- In the United Kingdom, this is "Not available in Northern Ireland", or more exotically, "Not available in the Republic of Ireland, Isle of Man, Channel Islands or Gibraltar".
- Related: In the ITV Border TV region, which covers both sides of the England-Scotland border, "Only Available in Carlisle" appears on commercials with perplexing frequency (Carlisle being a city on the English side). It's not particularly clear why Carlisle is such a hub for novel products like Pop Tarts.
- The United Kingdom contains several nations with their own laws and regulations, so it makes sense that doing business across these borders sometimes runs into barriers. Northern Ireland is also separated from the other UK nations by sea (though not from the Republic of Ireland, but this is an entirely different country to the UK), so it's harder to deliver stuff - Orkney and Shetland sometimes get excluded for the same reason.
- That doesn't explain why N.I. can't get the same car/house insurance offers.
- There's another reason for that. It's called the PIRA.
- The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are crown possessions; their foreign affairs are run by Britain but they're pretty much their own countries. Gibraltar is a colony.
- This is played with in a TV advertisement for an insurance company who only operate in Northern Ireland which includes the slogan "Excludes England, Scotland and Wales" as a "disclaimer".
- One particularly notable thing is that, despite that Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are countries right next to each other, with a barely-existent border, and are so small that people prefer referring to them as one... there are still loads of offers open to Northern Ireland but not the Republic of Ireland, simply because the former is a UK nation while the latter isn't!
- Although Real Life Comics offers another explanation...
- Averted in the Republic of Ireland where most offers are made available to "viewers in the North", despite Northern Ireland legally being a different country. Often a second phone line will be set up to cater for Northern Ireland.
- This is largely for nationalistic reasons, as most residents of the Republic of Ireland feel that Northern Island is, or at least should be, part of their country. A little under half of the people in Northern Ireland think so too.
- When the book Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer was published, the British Government immediately acted to ban Spycatcher in the UK. Since the ruling was obtained in an English court, however, the book continued to be available legally in Scotland, as well as overseas. English newspapers attempting proper reportage of Spycatcher's principal allegations were served gag orders; on persisting, they were tried for contempt of court, although the charges were eventually dropped. Throughout all this, the book continued to be sold in Scotland; moreover, Scottish newspapers were not subject to any English gag order, and continued to report on the affair.
- At least one magazine, The Economist, decided to hang a lampshade on the situation by leaving a blank page where they put their review in the magazine elsewhere. They included the statement "The law is an ass" as well.
- Rhodesia was notorious for such situations back in the 60s. The government started censoring the newspapers, and the papers responded by accepting the censorship...and leaving the black-outs in place. The government soon gave up on this attempt.
- Inverted in Italy: It's "islands included", referring to Sicily and Sardinia. Sometimes the minor islands (Elba, Pantelleria, etc), however, will be excluded, or, more frequently, just have to pay a higher fee.
- Occurs quite frequently (likely due to legal differences) with contests in German media also issued in Austria. Usually accompanied by something in the vein of "unfortunately void for our Austrian viewers/readers."
- Just recently, selling printworks for a higher price in Austria has been outlawed. The same food items are still 1/3 more expensive in Austria. For blank CDs, tapes and DVDs we pay a tax, because we could put copyrighted material on them. Erm.
- I thought that applied to whole EU.
- Because we just hate the Austrians.
- In Denmark, all sorts of stuff is often "void in Greenland and the Faeroe Islands". Probably because the islands in question are so fricking far away from Denmark itself. (Danes are not used to long distances...)
- Greenland is a bit of an oddity, being part of Denmark and therefore Europe legally and economically, but much closer to North America geographically. Have they ever considered seceding from Denmark and joining Canada?
- Yes, or joing the US or become independent or whatnot and Denmark would love to be rid of Greenland. But they want the Danes to pay a fortune since Greenland is heavily subsidized by Denmark, and they want to keep their hospitals. The Danes are willing to keep paying that subsidy while Greenland is part of Denmark, but not for an independent county, or to get rid of Greenland. Pretty much the same for the Faeroe Islands.
- Eastpak backpacks have a lifetime warranty pretty much all over the world, but the warranty is limited to "only" 30 years in Germany.
- Due to Ich tu dir weh being declared offensive, copies of Rammstein's latest album Liebe ist für alle da had to be sold without that song. However, that's only effective in Germany (and possibly Switzerland); all other countries still sell the unedited album.
- The board in charge of declaring it offensive translates to "Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons." Wait a second... "Ich tu dir weh" isn't okay for the kiddies, but most of Rammstein's other songs are?
- Just to clarify the above troper's point, one of the other songs on the album is called Pussy. Moving on.
- Update: Germany, Switzerland, and Austria refused to sell the Ich tu dir weh single.
- In France it seems to be the départements/térritoires d'outre-mer (overseas departments and territories), abbreviated as DOM/TOM. If they're not excluded from offers, they'll often get higher prices. But considering that, while legally part of France, some of these are actually on the other side of the world, this makes a small amount of sense.
- Frequent in Spain, the phrase "valid in the Peninsula and the Balearic Islands" is stated in most ads, thus excluding the far from the mainland Canary Islands.
United States and related
- Puerto Rico, Alaska and Hawaii get excluded quite a bit as well, especially from travel offers.
- And long-distance calling or cell phone plans, though with how cutthroat competitive the industry is getting, this is steadily fading away.
- "Price Slightly Higher West of the Rockies" used to be fairly common in U.S. advertisements, but improved transportation infrastructure and more facilities on the Pacific coast have rendered this a quaint reminder of the late 20th century.
- Which might explain why it's now "Prices higher in Alaska and Hawaii."
- Red Lobster takes this to the hilt, reminding the viewer that not only are their prices higher in Alaska and Hawaii, they are also higher at the chain's Times Square location.
- Now Wendy's and KFC are promising their meats will be fresh (refrigerated) and not frozen in the continental US.
- Washington DC and the Commonwealth of Virginia both prohibit sale or possession of radar detectors, so these are two places where sellers will not ship them. Ignoring the fact that if you're in Washington, D.C., you could always order them to be shipped 8 miles away to Maryland...
- Massachusetts until recently heavily regulated auto insurance and thus auto companies could not set their own rates. Despite this, advertisements claiming "safe driver discounts" and such are constantly being played on Boston TV with fine print at the bottom noting that you can't buy it in this state.
- These ads, were, of course, aimed at viewers in New Hampshire. (Much of southern New Hampshire television is broadcast from Boston).
- Until recently, people in most of the northern tier of states couldn't get iPhones because AT&T (the only iPhone service provider) has no coverage there.
- This led to a bill introduced in Congress to prohibit such exclusive contracts. It would make much more sense, if initially more hassle, if you obtained your phone number from a central issuing authority (think ICANN or the DMV), and then purchased an untied phone and a service plan separately.
- Unfortunately, in the iPhone's case there are technical issues in the way as well; around here, when people say they want an iPhone that works on "other networks", the other network in question is Verizon. Verizon uses CDMA 2000/EVDO while the current iPhone is GSM/HSPA only. T-Mobile would work, but their coverage is even worse than AT&T's.
- Infuriatingly inverted with the NFL. In the USA, the only way to watch an out-of-state game that the local channel won't show is to purchase Direc TV. But many Americans cannot get Satellite service for technical reasons, and so they literally can't get it anywhere. Meanwhile the Sunday Ticket package is given away in many foreign countries. To add further insult to injury, foreign markets are not beholden to any one team, so they are free to show whichever game is most interesting. Thus meaning that better games are available in Tehran than most American markets.
- Combine this with the blackout rules, and it seems the NFL is a bitch to follow from within the US.
- Unless there's, you know, some sort of bar or restaurant near you. Just saying.
- Those are most likely to be running games of teams that have a decent fandom locally, unless they don't care who's playing as long as it's football.
- If you wanted a Dodge Spirit with a 4-cylinder engine, or a Plymouth Acclaim, it wasn't available down Mexico way, they were all rebadged as Chrysler Spirit over there. Infuriatingly, you had to wait until 1994 for Dodge to arrive in Mexico, and even now the range is less extensive than its U.S. counterparts.
- Continuing with the automobile theme, not all states got the PZEV version of the Mitsubishi Galant or Honda Accord. They got a different engine which was related to the JDM (Japanese domestic market) engine. Bad luck if you live in Vermont or California...
- Taking this one step further, Canadians could get the Pontiac Tempest, which was based off the Chevrolet Corsica, but those over the state-line could not. However, some have been seen, mainly New York, Michigan or Montana-side.
- Another one we should add to the list is the Chrysler Dynasty, which was sold in Canada between 1988 and 1993. Never offered to Americans, though...
The Internet
- Even the Internet falls victim to this. Disney provides videos of every episode of every show on the Jetix block on the website. However, they block access if you're outside of the US.
- That's obviously outdated, since Jetix disappeared a year ago when Disney XD launched.
- Comedy Central does this too. If you're in Canada and you want to view a video that's embedded somewhere, you get a screen that tells you that the video is available at The Comedy Network. Too bad it's never actually available. The worst are Colbert and The Daily Show, where the US website offers excerpts that the Canadian site does not.
- This has been the case, for a while, for South Park's Studios site. Of course, because Trey and Matt really mean it when they say that they want South Park to be viewable by everyone, it just redirects to a localised website, which looks suspiciously similar.
- The BBC iPlayer is available only to UK residents because they pay for the programming through their TV licenses. Never mind that some UK residents might actually not own a TV and therefore not be paying the license fee. And that those same people are the ones most likely to be watching TV over the Internet...
- In theory, you're supposed to pay the fee anyway. How well this works is an (extremely light) exercise for the reader.
- No, the licence fee is only for viewing or recording television at the same time as it is broadcast. So, as iPlayer programs are available after they are shown on TV, no fee needs to be payed.
- As an aside, BBC radio can be streamed anywhere; it's just television that seems to be restricted.
- Hulu is another. Anybody who is outside of the US of A can't view content, rather irritatingly.
- Actually, Hulu is viewable now in Germany since around August. (Not sure about the rest of the world)
- Similarly, Funimation's new video site offers up entire series for previewing... if you live in the United States. Since anime is licensed on a per-country basis due to international trade laws, Funimation can only allow US residents to view content on the video portal.
- YouTube is another cruel example. Promoted videos available only in US appear on the main page for everyone so others get that generic error message.
- The majority of video streaming sites haven't been programmed to recognize the IP addresses of smaller US territories, such as American Samoa or Guam, as part of the United States. It's common for viewers there to be told "This video is not available outside the United States," even though they're in the country and get most US TV channels. Hulu is the biggest exception to this.
- Rather than pulling down You Tube videos altogether for copyright infringement, some companies have taken to simply blocking them in certain countries (such as the USA). These videos will still appear in your search results and related video links, however, without any warning until you actually attempt to view the video, which can lead to some frustration.
- The crowning idiocy is when this UK editor tried to watch something, only to receive the message "...contains content from Channel 4, who has decided to block it in your area." What.
- Note that IP filtering is easy to circumvent by using a web proxy or other tunneling mechanism - these measures are at best a weak deterrent.
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