Cheaper to buy from Amazon US than UK...
Author
I checked a couple of technical books on both Amazon.com and .co.uk. In general the $ and £ prices are about the same, meaning the actual cost in the UK is almost double.
If I buy a book from the US with international shipping, it still works out cheaper than buying it with free postage in the UK.
So I wondered if buying from the US is the best option? The cheapest postage option - will it take months to arrive? If I buy from my UK credit card, will I get a fair exchange rate?
Anyone in the UK got any experience here?
i think you'll be billed in dollar on your bank account (hence you'll have your bank exchange rate , call em 1st if ya wanna be sure) and i ordered from amazon us once from france & it definately didn't take month to arrive (i think it was in the 1 week ballpark but been a long time)
I regularily order stuff from Amazon US to France (who wouldn't, it's cheap as hell since the Dollar is so weak). Shipping delay varies and depends on the shipping options you selected. It's usually between three days and around a week. You'll be billed in USD on your credit card, so the exchange rate is the one of your bank, as ranakor mentioned.
Just be careful about VAT. If you order from the US to Europe, you won't be charged any taxes at the source. But as an individual (ie. not a company), you'd normally have to pay import VAT at your countries usual rate (some countries have exceptions for books though), since it is not an EU-internal transaction. This means that depending if you're lucky or not (ie. if a customs guy randomly decided to check your package or not) you might have to pay additional import taxes.
Just be careful about VAT. If you order from the US to Europe, you won't be charged any taxes at the source. But as an individual (ie. not a company), you'd normally have to pay import VAT at your countries usual rate (some countries have exceptions for books though), since it is not an EU-internal transaction. This means that depending if you're lucky or not (ie. if a customs guy randomly decided to check your package or not) you might have to pay additional import taxes.
Hehe, that's funny... I usually order from amazon.co.uk - because the price of buying on amazon.de (free shipping) is still more expensive than to pay the few pounds for shipping..
But if amazon.com is cheaper, I'm going to check that out too in the future :)
>But as an individual (ie. not a company), you'd normally have to pay import
>VAT at your countries usual rate (some countries have exceptions for books
There is a minimum amout before you have to pay import taxes...
And you could always decide to send yourself a present for your B-day...
At least In Holland you don't pay import-taxes for presents.
In general however it's still worthwhile, I ordered over 50 dvd's from canada
over the last few years, and I only payed import taxes once (and even then it
was still cheaper then buying it in Holland).
But if amazon.com is cheaper, I'm going to check that out too in the future :)
>But as an individual (ie. not a company), you'd normally have to pay import
>VAT at your countries usual rate (some countries have exceptions for books
There is a minimum amout before you have to pay import taxes...
And you could always decide to send yourself a present for your B-day...
At least In Holland you don't pay import-taxes for presents.
In general however it's still worthwhile, I ordered over 50 dvd's from canada
over the last few years, and I only payed import taxes once (and even then it
was still cheaper then buying it in Holland).
If you order in the USA (from The Netherlands), some books are still shipped through amazon.de. Currently I order with other sellers through amazon.com. The secondhand books are well in shape and cheap. Besides that, other sellers are cheaper. Only you sometimes have the maximum shipping date.
I rememebr looking at the price of Visual Studio 2005 Pro. On Amazon.com it's $669.99, on Amazon.co.uk it's £561.98, which is $1139.31. I'm sure it used to be more than double..
>If you order in the USA (from The Netherlands), some books are still
>shipped through amazon.de.
As long as I pay the cheaper price, I actually don't care from where
they ship it *grin* :)
>shipped through amazon.de.
As long as I pay the cheaper price, I actually don't care from where
they ship it *grin* :)
I think it's worse here in Canada, where a lot of US places won't ship, even though they'll ship to places in the US that are a mere 6 hour drive away. They usually mark up Canadian versions of stuff well over 20% making it cost less to have an amerifriend buy it and ship it to you.
What would be really cool is if I could order a Dell running Ubuntu from Amazon US, rather than a more expensive laptop from dell.co.uk with an OS I would have to delete and a wifi card that wont work on Linux.
Author
You know, you're not forced to delete Windows. You could leave it and create a big Linux partition and dual boot. Then you can boot into Windows when you want to use the WI-FI card :)
This topic is closed to new replies.
Advertisement
Popular Topics
Advertisement