Amazon China payment error. Help?

I am trying to order from the Chinese Amazon (www.amazon.cn) but when I go to make my payment (w/ credit card) I always get a message like this:

尊敬的客户:

招商银行将于2008年1月27日0：00至10：00进行系统维护，届时将暂停其网上银行业务。

北京银行自2008年1月8日起，将个人网银普通版电子支付限额由1000元调低为300元。专业版客户电子支付限额不作调整。

电子支付业务包括：在线缴费、在线充值、B2C业务。

邮政储蓄从2007年12月26日起邮政支付网关四期升级后,邮政储蓄卡用户使用邮政网关进行网上支付时，每张储蓄卡在网上注册后累计支付金额仅为300 元整(支付金额从2007年12月26日零点起累计，2007年12月26日零点前的支付金额不列入累计金额内)，额满后须到各邮政储蓄网点办理 “增加交易限额”。

网点办理“增加交易金额功能”将于两三个月内及时开通,具体开通时间及开通网点另行通知。

教育类及机票类支付金额不受此次调整影响。

由此给您带来的不便，敬请谅解！

首信易支付

2008年1月25日

I have been trying to order from this site since late November of last year, and every time I get this message with different dates on it. I have ordered succesfully from this site before, so I know its possible! If anyone can tell me what the problem is, I would greatly appreciate it!

The computer system is being upgrade. Service will be suspended until 10:00 CST January 27.

Can you please give me an idea of what the rest of the message is saying? Last time I tried to order was December 15, and I got the same message that the system would be down until December 18. I tried again after that and it said the system would be down until December 23!!! I really dont understand why my payment never works. Is anyone else having this problem?

No, but that's because I live in China and can use the 'pay on delivery option'

The messages are basically notices of downtime for certain payment methods due to maintenance, changes to maximum payments by Internet banking, etc. There's nothing specific to international credit cards so I don't know why you are getting that message.

You might try things like

- making sure you have cookies enabled for them

- clearing out you cache & closing your browser (or rebooting)

- asking for customer or technical support from Amazon in the US

Bump for this one as it seems to be the most appropriate place. Just came across Panli.com, which is a service aimed at overseas Chinese who want to buy products from Chinese websites. Basically you seem to be able to add money to your account by international credit card or Paypal, and use that to purchase products from major online retailers such as dangdang and amazon.cn.

This isn't really a recommendation as I haven't used it, just happened to see an ad. It's also all in Chinese, so it won't help you any with the language barrier. But if you want to buy stuff from Chinese sites and are having problems with payment, it might be worth a look.