This is a list of recommendations that I can give you from my experiences buying at amazon in the last years:
- Starting by the most logical buying from UK you should first go to amazon.co.uk, it has a complete selection, maybe not as much as amazon.com. Also you have to take into account that amazon.co.uk offers free shipping for orders with a cost of £10, you can check the detailed info on amazon's deliveries site.
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Where Should I Buy?, a third party website offers a simple service that searches the best online stores, of course, amazon included, and compares its price for different countries, easy and faster than amazon website.
- When you want to buy on other amazon locales, look out for the exchange rates and use Amazon Currency Converter, the automatic exchange tool of amazon, so when you are reviewing your order will be in your preferred currency, without bank surprises.
- Be careful buying at amazon.com, due to customs, as the package will get dispatched from USA, is probable that gets reviewed and hold, although amazon now includes an extra for the customs. If you sum it up with the delivery the price gets too high, that's the main reason why I always have bought in the European amazons.
- Try to buy products that amazon is the seller, third party products are recommendable always that amazon manages their delivery then you will able to combine the delivery costs for the different products or the delivery is free of charge, else you will have to pay deliveries for each of the articles.
- Third party product are more recommendable to buy on your country's amazon, to avoid future problems with refunds. Also check thoroughly the delivery costs.
- Check prices in all European amazons before buying anything, one account can be used in all country's amazons, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.fr, amazon.es and amazon.co.uk, put the product on your basket and start confirming your order, in the last step, the review page, you will see the final price in your currency (if you activated the Currency converter), with this price you will be able to make a real comparison between countries.
- And for last, patience if you want to buy at good prices, keep in mind that at amazon prices oscillate constantly, it may be because the product has not sold very well or it receives many visits, we don't really know the real reasons. But to keep track of the prices we use a windows application to monitor the prices and check its evolution called Wishlist Manager, this way we buy the price when the price is lower.