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Kittycat66

By Kittycat66
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Formaleins Silver Member

Formaleins

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You won't want to buy anything there though. It appears to be an American site with international shipping - check out their costs for delivery, in most cases it is in excess of 25%! (It is often cheaper to buy direct from Amazon UK or US and then specify the shipping address to Thailand while leaving the billing address as UK or US, I know that this partially defeats the object of buying from here, but no way would I pay 25% for shipping.

 

You will be better off using Ebay or even Lazada (Lazada here is getting a lot better than it used to be and the choices are growing all the time, but what I have found is that if Lazada lists the item as " This Item Will Be Shipped From Overseas"  then simply go to Ebay and you will find the very same item listed there and often about 5-10% cheaper.

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noise Gold Member

noise

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14 hours ago, Formaleins said:

You won't want to buy anything there though. It appears to be an American site with international shipping - check out their costs for delivery, in most cases it is in excess of 25%! (It is often cheaper to buy direct from Amazon UK or US and then specify the shipping address to Thailand while leaving the billing address as UK or US, I know that this partially defeats the object of buying from here, but no way would I pay 25% for shipping.

 

You will be better off using Ebay or even Lazada (Lazada here is getting a lot better than it used to be and the choices are growing all the time, but what I have found is that if Lazada lists the item as " This Item Will Be Shipped From Overseas"  then simply go to Ebay and you will find the very same item listed there and often about 5-10% cheaper.

I am confused by your first paragraph.  My experience says Amazon and it merchants don't care what your billing address is.  Shipping costs are based strictly on from the object you bought is coming and to where you what it shipped.   

 

Shipping costs of over 25%; I assume you mean over  the purchase price.  Again, my experience has been they ship DHL, which is expensive to begin with, and add in the expected duty (and that duty will be  based on the purchase price and the shipping cost) and VAT to be collected when it reaches Thailand.   So, yes, easily over 25%.  My total costs the few times I did it were right around the Amazon purchase price plus 75%.

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Suradit69 Diamond Member

Suradit69

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I use Amazon regularly to buy Kindle books. Available to download in minutes. No delivery charge.

 

when I've wanted hands-on books or videos on DVDs, if not available locally, I've ordered from Amazon UK. The things were sent via post office quickly and not overly expensive.

 

For other things, quite often they won't ship to Thailand or require the use of exorbitantly expensive shipping that may include prepaid customs duty.

 

Not sure what was meant by the post about billing and delivery addresses. Both my Us and Uk Amazon accounts are billed to my my credit card with a US billing address, but obviously I use my Thai delivery address if I want something sent to me here.

 

 

 

Edited by Suradit69
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connda Star Member

connda

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I've given up on Amazon as their simply are too many restrictions on purchasing items.  I'm beyond tired of seeing "This items does not ship to Thailand". 

Lazada Thailand and AliExpress get all my business now except for books.

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MikeN Silver Member

MikeN

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3 hours ago, connda said:

I've given up on Amazon as their simply are too many restrictions on purchasing items.  I'm beyond tired of seeing "This items does not ship to Thailand". 

Get the Amazon mobile app, change the settings to international site, Thailand and you will only get items that are available to be sent here.

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TallGuyJohninBKK Star Member

TallGuyJohninBKK

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Perhaps someday Amazon will launch a local online market presence here.... But I'm afraid by the time they might get around to it, others like Lazada will have already taken over the marketplace.  That said, Lazada doesn't carry even a fraction of what's available from Amazon U.S., and a lot of what Lazada does have is cheap Chinese junk odds and ends.

 

As noted above, Amazon U.S. does have a special home page on its website that's reserved just for accessing the portion of its online catalog that's available for international shipping, including to Thailand. However, for me, their shipping prices are too high because they're relying on private couriers like FedEx and DHL and thus are automatically adding in Customs duty.

 

IMO, it's far better to take advantage of one of the various reshipping companies in the U.S. like Planet Express or Shipito.com, which both give you your own personal U.S. shipping address. Then, order from Amazon U.S., have their entire catalog available, have your items shipped to your U.S. reshipping address, and then reshipped to Thailand at a fraction of the shipping cost that Amazon charges for the same things.

 

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elgenon Platinum Member

elgenon

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There is a story in the Los Angeles Times today about a company that makes cords for tech products that are wrapped in steel wire and are super strong. They are suing Amazon for mixing fakes with the real thing in their bins. So the company has been getting bad reviews while Amazon gets big fees from the fakes. Buyer beware.

So sad. Who can you trust? Well, the government I guess. :giggle:

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ben2talk Advanced Member

ben2talk

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I'm interested why aliexpress is so highly recommended.

I recently decided to go for an e-ink device.

 

Amazon has nice prices until you start trying to checkout, but the import duties and postage rule it out pretty much for anything (except ebooks maybe). Also then you have incredible problems/failures with logging in, verifying/resetting passwords and getting locked out with requirements to start chatting with customer services to try to fix issues. It's very bad - fortunately there are many alternative sources of ebooks that sideload well (I'm currently reading nice AZW3 formatted Robin Hobbs trilogies which have now been removed from Amazon - they'll only let you order paperbacks and pay huge international shipping prices!!! Insane).

 

So I started hunting - online you can easily match the B2S price 7990 in Thailand.

Aliexpress has CASE COVERS for the kindle priced at around 1800 US Dollars - something not quite right there, I found the paperwhite listed at $152.

 

Priceza is a 'starting point' and searches a few sites. Again, some Paperwhite 3's listed at 7990 - but also there were a few others - opening those links took me to Shopee and Lazada.

Lazada seller had the better price, so I ordered it at 4500 after contacting the seller and getting the answer that this is indeed the latest paperwhite 3.

 

A basic kindle arrived, got returned, and 3 weeks wasted... So next I ordered from Shopee seller (4700 baht) and a Kindle arrived 3 weeks later.

 

So basically there are hurdles, stuff doesn't always work so nicely here (though a case, 150 baht, came 3 days after ordering from Shopee COD) - but Amazon is just not in the running. Can't deliver, or duties and taxes just price stuff out of sensible ranges.

 

So my advice is to try Pricezaa/Shopee/Lazada first (Shopee app is very Thai, when I find stuff there I get my wife to order on her phone).

Edited by ben2talk
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Suradit69 Diamond Member

Suradit69

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13 hours ago, wgdanson said:

Is that not the same for all downloads? Minutes? Mine take seconds.

I didn't say the download took minutes. I said it was available in minutes. Actually it's often available immediately, but there have been times when it took a minute or two before the download started.

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