Amazon.co.uk to finland

cors187 · Post by **cors187** » Sat Jan 16, 2016 6:33 pm

Anyone care to give a quick guide of does and donts when ordering from Amazon.co.uk to Finland.
There must be a few experts here.

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Beep_Boop · Post by **Beep_Boop** » Sat Jan 16, 2016 7:33 pm

Don't overcomplicate it. It's just like ordering from any other online shop, and especially like eBay.
It's simple - If it's on the site, and it's shipable to Finland (it will say on the listing), then order it. That's it.

Jukka Aho · Post by **Jukka Aho** » Sat Jan 16, 2016 7:50 pm

cors187 wrote:Anyone care to give a quick guide of does and donts when ordering from Amazon.co.uk to Finland.
There must be a few experts here.

Compare the prices to the other Amazon sites. Amazon.com and Amazon.de often have the same items (especially books) and are just as valid places for placing your order, and .com is often the cheapest of the bunch in the end.
You need to register and enter your delivery address in your profile (possibly even start the checkout process and advance a couple of steps into it, although sometimes it shows an estimate in the sidebar) before you get the actual, final prices, complete with taxes and shipping. Do not believe for a second that your shopping cart total would be the actual price at the checkout, although the site is designed in such way it somehow makes it tempting to believe so.
Make sure you understand who you are buying from and how it will likely affect the shipping and handling costs. The Amazon sites not only sell items directly to consumers but also host a number of secondary vendors. If you add items in your cart from several separate vendors, shipping & handling costs at checkout will increase quite rapidly.
Not all items will be delivered to all places. Sometimes you will only find this out at the point of checkout and will have to edit your order.
If your credit card is not in the native currency of the Amazon site in question ($ for .com, £ for .co.uk, € for .de), Amazon will sneakily try to make you use their currency conversion service instead of the one offered by your bank or credit card company, whose rates are often cheaper. Pay attention to the currency in which your credit card will be charged and do not let them do the conversion for you.
These American-originated e-shopping and related sites (eBay, Amazon, PayPal etc.) have needlessly complicated and all too baroque user interfaces and layouts, with all kinds of obscure nooks and crannies all over the place, and sometimes useful information intentionally hidden away or not made as explicit as it should. They could surely make use of a healthy dose of some good-ol’, clean “Nordic design” ethos. (Then again, a twisty maze-like user interface is an intentional thing, designed to direct and divert your attention and the time you spend on the site to the path the maintainers of these sites would like you to take.)

Rosamunda · Post by **Rosamunda** » Sat Jan 16, 2016 8:49 pm

When ordering from amazon.co.uk, remember that Finland VAT rates will be applied to your order when you go through the checkout. There is no VAT on books in the UK but in Finland the rate is 10%. The full price including shipping and VAT only shows when you actually go through checkout and enter your delivery address, but you will see the full price before you pay and you can cancel your order at that point.

(If you want to buy books, I find www.bookdepository.co.uk easier to use - everything included in the price shown - and often cheaper than amazon)

betelgeuse · Post by **betelgeuse** » Sat Jan 16, 2016 10:54 pm

Jukka Aho wrote:
cors187 wrote:Anyone care to give a quick guide of does and donts when ordering from Amazon.co.uk to Finland.
There must be a few experts here.

Compare the prices to the other Amazon sites. Amazon.com and Amazon.de often have the same items (especially books) and are just as valid places for placing your order, and .com is often the cheapest of the bunch in the end.

Just have to keep in mind that with Amazon.com you have to pay VAT to the customs unless the order is low in value.

cors187 · Post by **cors187** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 8:02 am

Im trying to find cheaper vitamins/herbs /mens health products. Im not a young man.
Thanks for the tips.

Rosamunda · Post by **Rosamunda** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 10:21 am

The Customs (tulli) are quite vigilant as there are rules in place that restrict the import of some suppplements:

http://www.evira.fi/portal/en/food/manu ... pplements/

10. Is it legal to order a food supplement from abroad for private use, e.g. on the internet?

– The laws do not restrict the ordering of food supplements from abroad for private use.
It is advisable, however, to check from the list maintained by the Finnish Medicines Agency that the product does not contain any substances classified in Finland as medicinal products. The receipt by post of medicinal products from a country outside the European Economic Area is forbidden.

http://www.laakelaitos.fi/laaketeollisu ... keluettelo

I usually buy anything I need when I visit the UK and then bring it back in my luggage.

riku2 · Post by **riku2** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 2:41 pm

One thing I have started doing recently is ordering from amazon.co.uk and having the parcels delivered to LHR terminal 3 post office. They will keep the parcels for a few weeks which makes it easy to collect them when changing planes at Heathrow. There is still free delivery inside the UK if the value is over twenty pounds.
I suppose a similar thing would be possible in Germany from amazon.de but I have not managed to work out how to use the Packstations in Germany yet.

rrrndrrr · Post by **rrrndrrr** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 4:55 pm

cors187 wrote:Im trying to find cheaper vitamins/herbs /mens health products. Im not a young man.
Thanks for the tips.

maybe use this site for that: http://www.bulkpowders.co.uk/ they often have good discounts, recently it was -30%. Although shipping is expensive (20€) , better to team up with someone.

cors187 · Post by **cors187** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 11:08 pm

Im actually just looking for suma in capsule form , dont want more than 1 bottle but wasnt able to locate it in finnish shops yet.

http://www.images-iherb.com/l/NWY-17400-2.jpg

harryc · Post by **harryc** » Tue Jan 19, 2016 10:26 am

Read this and weep:

For awhile - until about 2 years ago - Amazon would ship to Finland with no delivery charges if order was over 25£.

They now have delivery charges which are so high I can only think they are trying to get their money back from the free deliveries

riku2 · Post by **riku2** » Tue Jan 19, 2016 5:26 pm

harryc wrote:They now have delivery charges which are so high I can only think they are trying to get their money back from the free deliveries

The same applies to their prices for DVDs and BDs. They have put almost everybody else out of the market and have now raised their prices so they are seldom cheaper than high street shops (i'm comparing UK high street with amazon UK prices). Happily ali-express and ebay have supplied a replacement for cheap things like computer cables, batteries etc.

Rosamunda · Post by **Rosamunda** » Tue Jan 19, 2016 5:37 pm

harryc wrote:Read this and weep:

For awhile - until about 2 years ago - Amazon would ship to Finland with no delivery charges if order was over 25£.

Yes, I think I even ordered a gelateria mothership (13kg) with free delivery.

Hmm... their prices definitely have gone up, IIRC I paid about £189 for mine and - in those days - the exchange rate was way better than it is now. Double whammy.

harryc · Post by **harryc** » Tue Jan 19, 2016 6:28 pm

Yes - I might have added that their actual prices have gone sky high as well.

I had ordered all kinds of stuff - Indian food pastes, sauces, pickles (Patak's), Malt vinegar, molasses, popcorn, corn meal, pinhead oatmeal, peanut butter (natural) - etc.
Heavy pots - all kinds of kitchen appliances - electric meat slicer, Kenwood Chef yleiskone -- on an on.

Those prices have gone up by tens of %, delivery cost astronomical - plus currency. Triple whammy. Someone must have decided that it was unpatriotic to ship things out of the UK.

Upphew · Post by **Upphew** » Tue Jan 19, 2016 9:30 pm

roger_roger wrote:oh I miss the Amazon prime that had free delivery to EU if your purchase is above 25 GBP.

Nah, you got your free delivery without prime back in those days, they called it super saver.

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