Amazon.co.uk versus Amazon.de – PSA?

I saw the newsarticle on the Knipex pliers wrench on STW. Looked like would answer a tool need/desire I have.

On Amazon.co.UK cheapest with delivery for 86 05 150 mini plier wrench with thicker handles – £47.25

On Google Shop – £41 from FFX is the cheapest

On Amazon.de – 43 euros, plus delivery – came to about £36 total – ordered yesterday afternoon, arrived with 2-3 day delivery this morning..! from Amazon UK… 😕

Sometimes it does like we get screwed over on prices in the UK.
Always worth a look on other countries websites…

Yeah but they’ll only work in German 🙂

Always worth a look on other countries websites…

Hence the popularity of the German bike shops, like Bike24 etc.

Although, Amazon prices fluctuate quite a lot, so I assume at some point they will become cheaper.

I think I just ordered one by mistake. Guess my GCSE german isn’t up to much 🙂

It’s ok, I did kind of want one anyway

useful PSA

doesn’t always work though, certainly in reverse. many products, especially electrical items, Amazon won’t let you order cross border, even within the single trading area that is the EU.

There is some kind of tax dodge for the German sites, so they should generally be cheaper

yeah VAT is only 19% here 😉

It is odd, but can save a few quid – ordered a set of Henckels knives from amazon.it; delivered from UK fulfilment centre.

I regularly buy stuff from amazon.de, amazon.fr and ebay.it (ski & boarding stuff, car & bike bits, toys). I’ve always found delivery to be super-efficient and prices to be much better than the uk. You have to watch for some things though – I have one linked identity for the whole of amazon but gift cards can only be applied to the site from which they were bought.

Supposedly ebay is transparent to the end-user, but it’s not & many items which are flagged as “shipped internationally” on the .it site never turn up on searches from the .uk site, despite setting the correct flags for search location.

Look at the pikes we all bought from France. Some definite bargains in the EU

@andytherocketeer

– Member
useful PSA

“doesn’t always work though, certainly in reverse. many products, especially electrical items, Amazon won’t let you order cross border, even within the single trading area that is the EU.”

POSTED 2 HOURS AGO # REPORT-POST

Sounds dodgy if Amazon don’t support the eu’s free movement of goods within member states.
Not being a lawyer, but surely some kind of litigation is needed?

Likewise ebay always favours usa traders at the expense of eu ones, and their idea of including traders from the “rest of the world” is like the usa’s idea of a World Series sporting event, I.e. Usa only! 🙂

Jamie – thanks for the camelcamelcamel thingy – hadn’t seen that.

Supposedly ebay is transparent to the end-user, but it’s not & many items which are flagged as “shipped internationally” on the .it site never turn up on searches from the .uk site, despite setting the correct flags for search location.

I find that if i use Ebay.de to search/buy stuff then german sellers start turning up in my subsequent Ebay.co.uk searches later

There is a big price difference with the Kindles. Lot cheaper in Germany.

Quite annoying.

like hot_fiat I regularly buy from amazon.de and amazon.fr as well. The two things to remember are that you will likely get an EU plug with electrical devices and you may find it a little difficult if you have to return it and go through the paperwork. Other than that why not

One word of caution. Do not use any of the Italian sites during August – you may as well be emailing the clangers.

Likewise ebay always favours usa traders at the expense of eu ones, and their idea of including traders from the “rest of the world” is like the usa’s idea of a World Series sporting event, I.e. Usa only!

I think unless your search /trading history suggests otherwise it only returns results for listings written in english. So until I was buying stuff from germany the only international sellers i was seeing were US and Aussie ones.

@mcruisken

Yes, there is a certain correspondence between what you search for on ebay and the countries which are flagged up.

However, given the vat paid by us Brits on goods imported from out with the eu, it seems strange that ebays gives such a high ranking to the usa in its search results.

Despite the shared language between us, the usa and Australia, etc, you would assume that ebay would assist other countries to get a fair chance to flog their wares.

There may be a fender strat lurking in the loft of some Liberian trader, but we may never find out because ebay gives too much prominence in its search results to the usa.

But the real problem is about the obstacles when using ebay or Amazon to purchase goods between eu member countries…you would think that Amazon would incorporate some kind of translator into its search engine, and you would expect ebay to rank the results from other eu traders higher in relevance than those from the usa, by default.

More to the point…I saw a hifi on Amazon UK, then searched for it on amazon.de
The hifi was £10 cheaper from Germany, postage included.
Though not speaking German, I had to cut and paste each step of the transaction at Amazon de into Google translate.

Not really keeping to the spirit of the free movement of goods within the eu.

The same hifi should have appeared on the Amazon UK site.

Apologies for the slight hijack and rambling…

Will definite try .de and .it next time for Amazon.

Sounds dodgy if Amazon don’t support the eu’s free movement of goods within member states.
Not being a lawyer, but surely some kind of litigation is needed?

Nothing to do with free movement of goods. Amazon are licensed and contracted to sell certain items only in certain countries. Depending what I want to buy (as we have no local Amazon, despite having their EU HQ in the country), we have to order from the surrounding countries and sometimes you have to spend a while finding which other country will sell you the item.

Amazon prices change extremely quickly to reflect demand – just watch toys, Lego etc in the run up to Christmas – I’ve seen things double in price before now over a week or two.

As always, caveat emptor..

I think their business model is to be the cheapest. If nobody else is selling cheaply or nobody else has stock, up goes the price

Jamie – thanks for the camelcamelcamel thingy – hadn’t seen that.

It’s one of the true great services/extensions.

Doesn’t work on Kindle books annoyingly.

How does the camel thing work? What do I set it to? Lowest, current etc….

Amazon also practise ‘personal pricing’. If they can identify you, they’ll often charge you what they thing you’re prepared to pay, and it’s not always the lowest price.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20396091

How does the camel thing work? What do I set it to? Lowest, current etc….

The way I have it set up, is I created an account at Camel³[/url], this allows you to set up email alerts so you are notified when a price watch hits your selected threshold. Then I use the Chrome extension. This allows me to just set up a price watch on the Amazon products page, rather than having to copy and paste the Amazon url into the Camel³ website.

For example:

> Amazon also practise ‘personal pricing’. If they can identify you, they’ll often charge you what they thing you’re prepared to pay, and it’s not always the lowest price.

I must admit I’ve seen different prices depending if I’m logged in or browsing incognito.

Rather odd, and makes you wonder if there’s any advantage in having more than 1 account?

@atlaz

It should have read “sounds dodgy if Amazon doesn’t support the eu’s free movement of goods (and services) between member states”.

Though if as you assert “Amazon are licensed and contracted to sell certain items only in certain countries” then surely that is a very dodgy practice?

Assuming that I can buy a hat (for example) from an Amazon trader based in Spain then the goods should be available on whichever of their eu websites I find most convenient to use.

I shouldn’t have to go from Amazon UK to Amazon France to Amazon Spain to find the item.

Amazon certainly should not let language be a barrier to the free movement of goods between member states.

Likewise if I was on argos’s website looking for an electric blanket then it would be daft of them not to flag up at which stores the item was available.

Similairly, if there’s a difference in prices for goods between EU member states then Amazon should make you aware of this.

I’m sure that if Amazon is actively thwarting competitiveness then again it sounds very dodgy?

Hai Jamie,
Is there a similar plug-in/extension for the Apple refurb store?
Ta!

Could always try https://refurb-tracker.com/en/ to create an alert, never used it myself, tho.

They do provide a RSS feed, which could be plugged into IFTTT for more options.

Jamie,
Forgot to thank you for this – it worked this morning!
(Unfortunately, it was at 00:25 and at 6:30 when I woke up and clicked the link, it then told me it had sold out 5 hours prior…)