This comment made my morning. Thank goodness no one was around 'cause I snorted/laughed and nearly spewed coffee onto my keyboard...I guess you had to be there.
You mean the process where I'm logged in, add some items to my cart and when I click checkout get asked to login again, get to the 3rd screen and I'm told they don't ship to my country? Yeah, painless.
You're not logged in, initially - merely recognised. You wouldn't be too pleased if anyone could just walk up and buy stuff for themselves based on a cookie, would you?
That doesn't cover everything though. For example, last I tried Amazon did not ship any storage media to Austria, even if it says "international shipping". But they only give indication of this at the end of the ordering process.