Re-downloading apps purchased in a different country? I lived in Canada for several years, but now I live in Norway (again).

In Canada, I have purchased many apps on both the iOS and Mac OS X app stores. Some of these apps I have uninstalled over the years for different reasons.

I have now switched my Apple ID account country setting back to Norway, in order to get better app suggestions, etc. I have also changed my address and credit card.

The problem is that, now I can no longer see the apps that I purchased in Canada in my "Purchases" tab in the App Store, so I cannot re-download/reinstall any of them. When I go to one of these apps in the Norwegian App Store, it's as if I never purchased the app; I have to pay for it again if I want to download it. This goes for both iOS and  OS X App Stores.

Does anyone know of a way to download the apps I purchased while my Apple ID account country setting was set to Canada, after having changed the country setting to Norway?

Note that I only have one Apple ID; I simply changed the country setting once to Canada when I moved there, and then back to Norway when I moved back.

Changing my settings back to Canada while living in Norway is not an option, since I no longer have a Canadian address or credit card and, even if I did, I would not want the hassle of switching the country setting back and forth all the time.
I was pretty much in the same situation as you and got the same answers from iTunes support. Like you, I did not want to manage two Apple IDs. So finally I just switched countries.

Here is what I did:


I went to my purchased history before changing the stores and made a screenshot of everything I own (10 pages for iOS and two for OS X).
After switching countries, all the apps that I purchased are gone from the purchased list and if I search for an app that I previously bought, instead of getting the cloud icon I just get the price tag.
However if you click Buy it will ask you for your password, think for a few seconds and you will get a message, something like "you previously bought this app so now it's free" and you won't be charged. 


As long as you know what you have purchased in the past, you can get in now for free.