Amazon US or UK?

Mr E

I'm looking to buy some books, and they seem cheaper on Amazon.com than Amazon.co.uk.

Are there any factors to consider when buying from .com? Duties? More expensive shipping? Anything else?

- Dave.

Woden

i'd say more expensive shipping is the main one and not sure about books but there is a chance you could get hit with VAT on top of your charge, i'd say the delivery alone woudl make it cheaper to get the stuff from the uk

Mr E

Books seem even cheaper on B&N. I'll have to check out their charges before ordering, though....

Any other good (european!) online bookshops?

- Dave.

Woden

tbh i don't know any i put a post up myself a while ago with the same question, basically i was looking for bookstore that shipped free to ireland, let me know if you find one

B&N are cool, star trek books which i normally buy here where only $7 + tax in new york, they are like £7 here about €10

Samson

Try www.splashdvd.com
They are cheaper than amazon.co.uk on every book I've checked.
As far as delivery cost is concerned, they charge £1.00stg per book, compared to about £2.00 per book on average with Amazon.
Don't know yet how prompt delivery is, I just placed my first order late last week.

Owenw

I bought some books from amazon.com a few years aback and it took ages for them to arrive, they charge more for shipping and you might get hit with customs duty.
Just not worth the hassle, IMHO.

It's worth checking out amazon.fr and amazon.de sites for Euro price comparisons. I've seen CD's etc cheaper on one site over the next and both sites sell books in English (although the Website navigation is in French and German, respectively).

I see the amazon.ie domain redirects to the UK site.
Anyone know when Amazon Ireland will be available?

Mr E

Decided to go with SplashDVD in the end. All 4 books I was looking for were a quid less than amazon, and all were in stock.

Rgds,
Dave.

Manach

I had a look at amazon.de.
They have cheaper P&P and their prices are in euro so not prone to currency changes. But, when I compared their book prices, to the US or UK sites, they did not appear to have any or at least the same level of price reductions. With a quick review, I found US slightly cheaper than UK, with the German site having about a 20€ dearer difference on an order of 10 books.

Woden

Originally posted by Owenw

Anyone know when Amazon Ireland will be available?

is there definetely going to be one available?

Art_Wolf

Originally posted by Manach
II found US slightly cheaper than UK, with the German site having about a 20€ dearer difference on an order of 10 books.

Just curious if they inculded the vat in with the US books - dont they generally leave that out till you go to pay for them?

Manach

I don't think I got charged Book Vat the last time I ordered from the US.
Also btw, I had a quick look at the SplashDVD did, and they do seem cheaper on books the Amz UK but did did not stock some just published Computer books that Amz UK was selling.

Mr E

Just got my first order in from SplashDVD, and it was completely wrong. I'll have to sent it back tomorrow, and wait ANOTHER 10 days for the real order. Not exactly a good first impression.

- Dave.

Bannor

There is no VAT on books in Ireland (unless there was a sneaky change in a recent budget) so you won't get nabbed by customs by ordering from the U.S.

luckat

I used to get books from amazon.com, but they really do you on the postage. So now I wouldn't use it unless I couldn't get a book elsewhere. OK for CDs, but then cdwow is probably better for them anyway. But it's a good resource for reviews.

amazon.co.uk has a facility where you can set the prices to display in euro rather than pounds, by the way.