Zune Thoughts: Washington, DC Zune Owners Still Out of Luck

"Zune owners in Washington, D.C., might be out of luck if they want to use the related Zune Marketplace online music service. An apparent glitch is keeping people from signing up for the service with credit cards that have billing addresses in any one of four Washington, D.C., ZIP codes. The problem itself isn't news. It was noted by the Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro in this November review and acknowledged by Microsoft in December on this support page. Granted, it's not a huge swath of the country, and it's only one area of the city. But the weird thing is that the issue appears to have persisted to this day, unexplained, several months after the Zune launch."

While I don't use the Zune Marketplace, I would still be very annoyed to discover I couldn't if I wanted to. Then I would be downright angry when, five months later, the issue remained unresolved. So, if you live in D.C. and you were thinking about a Zune, you might want to consider whether or not you're likely to use the Zune Marketplace. If you do want to, you might want to wait for this bug to be resolved. Maybe they'll have it fixed in time for Zune v2...