Want to save a packet on Amazon? Brush up on your German!
FRANTiCAllY flicking through a German dictionary from my schooldays, i finally work out the phrase for ‘add to basket’ is ‘ in den einkaufswagen’. Not long afterwards, i’ve also mastered the same phrase in French ( ajouter en panier), Spanish ( anadir a la cesta) and italian ( aggiungi al carrello).
Whoever would have guessed that shopping could be so educational?
Particularly when the shopping trip in question, which encompasses much of europe, is taking place without my ever having to leave the comfort of my sitting room in Kent.
My aim is to test out the claim that it is possible to save hundreds of pounds when shopping with Amazon by shunning its UK site and instead looking further afield for bargains.
And so it is i find myself stretching my linguistic skills searching for cut-price vacuum cleaners in France, coffee-makers in italy and lego sets in Germany — all via their local Amazon sites.
if that sounds like hard work, the task has, in fact, been made much more easy by a price comparison website called curiua.com.
Simply type in the item you are looking for in its search bar and it will automatically scan the prices available on each of Amazon’s sites in the UK, Germany, France, Spain and italy.
Prices are instantly displayed in euros and pounds, allowing for easy comparison.
While it might be imagined that the prices would be largely similar, in fact there are considerable savings to be made. This is in part due to the strong pound, but also due to regional variations in the cost and availability of particular items.
even when additional costs are taken into account — postage and the charges banks levy when you buy goods abroad using a debit or credit card — the difference in prices can be substantial.
Take, for example, the duffel bag by designer luggage maker Tumi that i managed to pick up.
in the UK, Amazon is selling it for £ 345. But enter the details at curiua.com and it reveals that i can buy it on Amazon’s French site for €345 — that’s roughly £245.
Now that’s a good deal, in any language, but what about postage? When you buy from Amazon in the UK, deliveries are free for orders of £20. Delivering from France — once you’ve navigated your way through the French Amazon site — is €8.24, around £6.
There is one more additional charge to take into account. Paying in euros on a debit or credit card incurs what is known as a foreign purchase fee. My card issuer charges 2.75 pc of the transaction — roughly £6.86 in the case of the bag. So, the final cost for the bag is £245 plus £6 postage and packing, plus £6.86 for the transaction fee — a total of £257.86.
Compared with the cost from Amazon.co.uk, that is still a saving of £87.14.
And there are similar deals to be found on items across the board.
A pair of Bose headphones can be bought from Amazon italy for a saving of more than £50. From the same country i also pick up a coffee-making machine for £210, an £80 discount.
(And, to be clear, it is not just a case of the items on the Amazon site here being expensive. The same machine offered by Amazon for £292.60 was being sold by John lewis for £399.)
The biggest saving of all — £150 — was on a cordless Dyson vacuum cleaner from France. The cost of postage for this item was just £5.80 and, as with all the items i bought, i didn’t experience any problems with deliveries.
The quickest came within two days, the slowest a week. When you order from the UK, you can secure next-day delivery on certain items for an annual fee, but normal deliveries can take anything up to a week — so definitely comparable.
That being said, the cheaper the item is, the more the cost of postage eats into any potential savings.
even so, i was surprised to see i could save £10 on a £100 lego set from Germany and almost £20 on a le Creuset casserole dish from France. As for more specialist items, it was interesting to note a £30 saving on a kitchen mixer tap from Germany.
Add in the fact that the european sites have similar 3 0 - day returns policies for unwanted or damaged goods, and it’s clearly an interesting option for bargain-hunting Brits.
And, don’t panic. As my teenage daughter later showed me, rather than trying to remember your rusty German or French, most web browsers will translate entire web pages for you at the click of a button. Meaning there’s absolutely no chance of ending up with the wrong item in your einkaufswagen.