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Brexit: Alternatives to Amazon.co.uk

masterboy123

I have seen on the news that prices of goods ordered from UK are going to spike in case of no deal Brexit.

I am wondering what are the alternatives available?

Does Amazon.de seem to have similar products available? And what about using English language on .de website?

Any one could share their experience /opinion on this?

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McGinniesta

masterboy123 wrote: »

I have seen on the news that prices of goods ordered from UK are going to spike in case of no deal Brexit.

I am wondering what are the alternatives available?

Does Amazon.de seem to have similar products available? And what about using English language on .de website?

Any one could share their experience /opinion on this?

Why?

How?

[Deleted User]

ReginaldSmythV wrote: »

And ship very little to here. Did you really think the language thing was the reason people didn’t use these already?

I use them lots of music purchases - particularly multi-disc CD box sets. The German one has a great 3 for 2 promotion that runs a few times a year.

ILoveYourVibes

Dublinandy3 wrote: »

What chemist do you use please?

hard one to remember ....zwitsereapotheek its in belgium

They do a lot of Dr hauschka stuff ... cheap cacau also

https://www.zwitserseapotheek.com/en/

The other one
https://www.farmaciaenandorra.com/shop/laboratorios-cosmetica/avene

Dublinandy3

ILoveYourVibes wrote: »

They do ..i use them.

I use chemists from brussels and belgium because they are cheaper than boots.

I get books from spanish amazon because they are cheaper.

I get some skin creams from spain because again cheaper.

Never found anywhere inside the eu that didn't ship to ireland.

I have bought clothes from the continent during lockdown more than in ireland or the uk.

What chemist do you use please?

ILoveYourVibes

ReginaldSmythV wrote: »

And ship very little to here. Did you really think the language thing was the reason people didn’t use these already?

They do ..i use them.

I use chemists from brussels and belgium because they are cheaper than boots.

I get books from spanish amazon because they are cheaper.

I get some skin creams from spain because again cheaper.

Never found anywhere inside the eu that didn't ship to ireland.

I have bought clothes from the continent during lockdown more than in ireland or the uk.

[Deleted User]

ILoveYourVibes wrote: »

There is german amazon ..spanish amazon..french amazon...etc etc

They all have translation buttons

And ship very little to here. Did you really think the language thing was the reason people didn’t use these already?

ILoveYourVibes

There is german amazon ..spanish amazon..french amazon...etc etc

They all have translation buttons

AutoTuning

Drumpot wrote: »

So buying from Amazon euro sites is grand but just maybe bit more deliver cost?

Amazon have their own logistics, so it's quite feasible delivery will become much easier from continental supply chains.

I've had a few items from .de arrive at no charge.

They need to ensure Prime can allow Irish prime video and a continental prime delivery service tho.

Drumpot

So buying from Amazon euro sites is grand but just maybe bit more deliver cost?

bnt

I occasionally buy music-related stuff from gear4music.ie, but they are also a UK company, and I'll be interested to see what happens to their (decent) prices next. A recent purchase from the UK cost me less than I'd imagined because of the exchange rate.

The German music retailer Thomann is good too, but their shipping charges only make sense for larger purchases: they would charge €15 shipping on a €5 pack of guitar strings, but free shipping on a €200 guitar.

It's been years since I bought any tech stuff online, but the Dutch company Komplett was pretty good then.

theguzman

Ok lets say post hard-Brexit I buy a pair of socks for £10.00 from Amazon.co.uk, the fact this was being exported outside of the UK into the EU (Ireland) would those socks be exempt from the UK VAT rate of 20% lowering the cost to £8.33 and then attract the Irish VAT rate of 21% meaning I'd pay say £10.09. The fact that Amazon have the customs arrangement and can charge me the higher £10.09 and have the parcel come in domestically thus avoiding the An Post €10 ripoff collection charge means it can be business as usual for Amazon.co.uk. Or am I reading it all wrong?

jmlad2020

I have used deliverme.ie. They charge €22 for 1 item.. €5 for every extra item. Basically you deliver to their Newry address and they redeliver to Irish Republic..

My item was poorly packaged by seller and arrived cracked.. so I will give them benefit of the doubt. But an expensive service.

golfball37

Parcel Motel address in NI is ceasing from December 28th.

Kermit.de.frog

Amazon are investing heavily atm in Ireland so I wonder will they just gives us our .ie site already.

Especially given the paperwork going to be involved now for them getting goods from the UK.

Sheep Shagger

el Fenomeno wrote: »

Is it known if Prime will still include free delivery?

I'd keep it if so, as I'd make a lot of small purchases that are less than £25...

Assuming they would have told us by now, no changes in that respect. Ordwrs over the €150 threshold will have duties and taxes added.

el Fenomeno

Is it known if Prime will still include free delivery?

I'd keep it if so, as I'd make a lot of small purchases that are less than £25...

AutoTuning

It must store some products as I’ve had delivery next day of stuff I’ve ordered.

Sheep Shagger

Mr.S wrote: »

Isn't that just a logistics centre vs fulfilment depot? - they don't store any products.

Seems to be a huge mystery what exactly the site is , lots of speculation on various trades on boards.

AutoTuning

Ubbquittious wrote: »

Feck sake. Let's just bring back the bakelite BS546 sockets for the laugh

Don’t be giving the Brexiteers ideas!

They’re mad enough to go back to the most awkward system ever invented - different size sockets and plugs for different rooms and appliances and probably with a Union Jack or imperial crown on the back.
Ovens in °Fahrenheit or British Gas Mark numbers, in Roman numerals of course. Maybe use 243 1/8th volts 51 3/16th Hz.
Perhaps non decimal currency too - good old pounds, shillings and pence and obviously ban the metric system.
Cars can go back to fuel consumption of 40 rods to the hogshead.

Relikk

Poncke wrote: »

At the moment 8 day delivery for me for basically everything

Odd. Even without Prime and as long as they have it in stock I've been getting deliveries in around 3-4 days from when they were ordered.

Poncke

bigar wrote: »

Amazon has a warehouse in Rathcoole now so I assume they will be using that as much as possible. You can see a difference now already with next day deliveries including in the weekend. Now I hope they will get an .ie shop soon.

At the moment 8 day delivery for me for basically everything

FGR

bigar wrote: »

Amazon has a warehouse in Rathcoole now so I assume they will be using that as much as possible. You can see a difference now already with next day deliveries including in the weekend. Now I hope they will get an .ie shop soon.

I wonder about this. It made sense to use the uk site for Ireland as it was neighbouring and had similar plugs and the like - same goes for the de site servicing Austria and other neighbouring countries - but expecting irish users to go to the German site would need serious advertising as most people wouldn't be naturally inclined to think such a thing.

That is, unless the .ie domain will forward you to the english version of the German site as opposed to the uk one.

I do hope they bite the bullet and just open an Irish storefront with goods being forwarded to their Irish depot from Germany - as that would sort out the cost of postage and hopefully the issue with plugs and the like.

bigar

Amazon has a warehouse in Rathcoole now so I assume they will be using that as much as possible. You can see a difference now already with next day deliveries including in the weekend. Now I hope they will get an .ie shop soon.

AutoTuning

Unfortunately, until Sunday we can't really confirm anything. It's likely that it would only require collection of VAT based on what Revenue has been saying, but everything's up in the air until a deal is finalised.

The biggest risk is parcels getting stopped due to lack of any documentation at all.

I'd predict a lot of confusion and teething problems in January.

Sheep Shagger

Can anyone confirm if a €50 item for example will attract any new vat or duty charges if ordered on co.uk for delivery to Dublin? Or will it be BAU.

Some news outlets saying it won't....personally order very little that is over €50 or €100 on an individual item.

AutoTuning

ablelocks wrote: »

as far as i know, the additional VAT is included in the upto €150, so something that is marked £147 could bring you over the €150 once you click the buy button.

That's all fine and well except if items are shipped as international and declared properly. I could see a lot of UK retailers opting not to export if it attracts complicated paperwork. The ones that are geared up for it might, but the ones that just see the odd order from Ireland might just see it as more hassle than it's worth if they don't have a volume of trade.

There's really no way for something like Parcel Motel to do this if they're just received packages without any information on the outside. It could be a €10.95 book or it could be a €2000 laptop.

It's not impossible but it's not straightforward at all. For example, you might be able to provide receipts to parcel motel online and clear customs & make payment but it's a lot of extra bureaucracy and a big volume.

ablelocks

Sheep Shagger wrote: »

So according to RTE News, Revenue have confirmed that for online shopping from the UK...

Purchases up to €22 - no duties
€23 to €150 - additional VAT only (no duties)
€150 + - new duties for importing from outside the EU

Not sure about people here but 99% of my Amazon purchases would be worth under €150 so basss on the above there just be an increase in VAT (which we see anyway already)?

as far as i know, the additional VAT is included in the upto €150, so something that is marked £147 could bring you over the €150 once you click the buy button.

AutoTuning

golfball37 wrote: »

Does NI count as part of UK or EU for these charges? Will the parcel motel depot in Dublin just have a permanent customs officer

No. Basically the customs arrangements would allow goods for use or consumption in Northern Ireland to be passed through, but not a package forwarding service that uses NI as a backdoor into the EU.

If anything, this is exactly the kind of thing that would have to attract attention from customs.

There's also a big issue in the sense that UK packages delivered to the likes of Parcel Motel would need a customs declaration. If you buy something normally within the EU, it's just shipped in the same way as a domestic package. There's no external customs paperwork declaring the value and contents, as there would be on an international package.

Parcel Motel is diverting domestic UK packages into the EU. The seller doesn't know they are exporting, so won't have any paperwork and without those declarations that'll become very problematic.

It's likely that unless the seller is packaging the items for international shipping, they would have serious difficulty clearing customs entering the EU/Ireland.

There are exemptions from tartifs for many items and also for items below a certain small value, but without paperwork on the package, that's not going to work.

It's potentially very problematic and bureaucratic, even with an agreement in place. Without one it's a total mess.

Either way you're looking at pre 1993 style customs with just NI existing in a bubble of both.

Ubbquittious

AutoTuning wrote: »

That's more of a question of ancient sockets that should have long since been replaced still hanging around in some buildings on the continent rather than a problem with CEE 7/X. It retained backwards compatibility with some obsolete systems that aren't really part of the standard at all.

Denmark's rather unfortunate decision to design an socket outlet that fits the earthed plugs used throughout the rest of Scandinavia, the Nordic region and Germany without connecting the earth is really an issue with the Danish system, not Schuko. They're now installing French type sockets in Denmark btw - which is basically polarised Schuko, with shutters.

I mean, China managed to adopt US 2-pin sockets and use them with 230V. That doesn't make it a problem with the US system, rather someone making some very odd design choices elsewhere. It can result in some interesting experiences for US and Japanese tourists who plug in 100-120V appliances into 230V.

If for, for example, Schuko were adopted (or rather re-adopted as we did use it once) here in Ireland after Brexit, it would be only using modern fittings. There would be no non-grounded sockets of any type, the safety shutters would be mandated (as they are in France, Belgium, Nordic countries etc) and the plugs wouldn't fit the BS1363 sockets that are here already. So, none of those problems with obsolete systems would exist here.

The main thing we need to do with the Brexit situation is ensure that there's clear information on what adaptors are safe and proper regulations about banning dangerous travel adaptors that are often not fully compatible with any plugs. Plenty of them, for example, accept our 3-pin plugs, yet have no contacts in the earth receptacle! I've seen several UK/IE to Chinese (grounded) adaptors that don't connect the ground at all.

The simple reality is going to be that appliances will be arriving here with continental plugs regardless as we're part of a single market and the only big user of the connectors used here has left. So we either provide people with safe information and adaptors, or we pretend it's a non issue and it will result in people using stupidly dangerous adaptors that don't connect earths or that are complete rubbish.

Pre-1993 and the single market, it wasn't at all unusual for appliances here to be sold with CEE 7 plugs or no plugs at all, with the expectation that you fitted your own. A lot of our appliances would have come directly from continental sources as there was still a customs barriers to all other then EEC markets, so it wasn't all that logical to just plug into the UK supply chains.

Also all European appliances and fixtures / fittings have evolved in fairly harmonised safety steps due to the evolution of the Low Voltage Directive, which goes back as far as 1973. Things like the adoption of finger protection on UK/Irish plugs came about because of that. Originally they'd none at all.

The issue for us now is that the UK may well wander off into its own bubble entirely on these things and we can't use UK equipment that isn't CE approved. In the short term that won't matter. In the medium term, you may see a lot more non-CE marked things appearing in the UK. It's not a tiny market and it shares technical standards with places like Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong etc...

We end up being the EU market with the weird legacy UK standards.

The one that's concerning me far more is cars. All of a sudden there'll be a market of about 6 million (Ireland, Malta and Cyprus) driving on the left, of more than half a billion (EU, EEA, etc) who drive on the right. Our cars will still have to meet European norms for safety, emissions, etc etc... but the EU RHD (Left of road) market will have shrunk from 72+ million to just 6. It's no issue in the short term, but give it a few years and you could find the UK's car market is linked directly to Japan or Australia/NZ.

At present cars marketed in the UK comply with the same rules and regulations as cars marketed in France or Germany. That may all change, particularly if they think there's an economic advantage in doing that or they decide to maybe relax environmental regulations or emissions standards - could popular amongst some Tories etc to be able to buy gas guzzlers.

It could mean we will need derogations on car imports.

That's not something we can solve with a plug adaptor.

Feck sake. Let's just bring back the bakelite BS546 sockets for the laugh

golfball37

Does NI count as part of UK or EU for these charges? Will the parcel motel depot in Dublin just have a permanent customs officer