Amazon UK Allowing Standard Shipping To USA Again

[Bobaray]

Originally Posted by hariseldon

Try something -- I don't think they're factoring Vat differently, but are adding US sales tax now

Price * 0.8333 (or divide 1.2) =subtotal price without VAT

Multiply by your US Sales tax rate and see if the subtotal prior to shipping isn't correct

Your formula worked! They are adding my California State Sales Tax to my purchase price!

On the order summary they are also showing tax of £6.95 on my £73.64 order (which doesn't equal my California Tax on the items I ordered before or after I remove VAT and with or without shipping included). This has always shown as £0.00 on previous orders.

I wonder if they are going to be sending this collected tax to California!

[hariseldon]

Can you show your order summary -- or just the line items with money on them?

I have seen an order with the sales tax yet, but know several retailer do the numbers and put them on the invoice in unusual ways. I know one of the problems with international retailers doing US sales tax are the absurd number of variations with State, County, city, local community taxes. Even same zip codes have different numbers and include/exclude different items -- I can certainly understand why it's nearly impossible to get it right

Is your tax amt any combination version of your tax rates?

[Bobaray]

Originally Posted by hariseldon

Can you show your order summary -- or just the line items with money on them?

I have seen an order with the sales tax yet, but know several retailer do the numbers and put them on the invoice in unusual ways. I know one of the problems with international retailers doing US sales tax are the absurd number of variations with State, County, city, local community taxes. Even same zip codes have different numbers and include/exclude different items -- I can certainly understand why it's nearly impossible to get it right

Is your tax amt any combination version of your tax rates?

This is from my invoice:

Price
£14.60 (16.00 before VAT/CA Tax removal)
£6.37 (6.99)
£5.46 (5.99)
£23.72 (25.99)
£17.32 (18.99)

Item(s) Subtotal: £61.62
Postage & Packing: £12.02
---------
Total before Tax: £73.64
Tax: £6.95
---------
Total: £80.59

My tax rate is 9.5%. The £6.95 above doesn't seem to correspond to my tax rate, but when I do the calculations as you suggested, the item price after tax removal is correct. For instance, £16.00 x .8333333 x 1.095 = £14.60.

[hariseldon]

I can get close to the total though still not exact

Subtotal incl VAT
16+6.99+5.99+25.99+18.99 = 73.96
Remove 20% VAT (*83333) = 61.63

Add shipping -- 12.02 (I guess postage doesn't have/remove VAT) = 73.65
9.5% tax = 7.00

Total == 80.65

Not sure if there's some sort of rounding errors going back and forth with % and currencies, but at least within a few pennies. I guess I'd need to see several more to see if the calculations make sense

[Omen2002]

Is there a trick to get shipping to the US? I tried to pre-order The Bride With White Hair BD from Eureka and got the message saying it cannot be delivered to my area.

[jkoffman]

Originally Posted by Omen2002

Is there a trick to get shipping to the US? I tried to pre-order The Bride With White Hair BD from Eureka and got the message saying it cannot be delivered to my area.

I don't understand why, but now Amazon typically won't allow pre-orders to the U.S. until it's closer to or on the actual release date. I only started buying import BDs this year, so I haven't memorized the best route for each company I like yet. Eureka already includes shipping in their prices though, so I order direct with them. They have some great sales too, so tack on some of those to your order.

[hariseldon]

Originally Posted by jkoffman

I don't understand why, but now Amazon typically won't allow pre-orders to the U.S. until it's closer to or on the actual release date. I only started buying import BDs this year, so I haven't memorized the best route for each company I like yet. Eureka already includes shipping in their prices though, so I order direct with them. They have some great sales too, so tack on some of those to your order.

Won;t allow preorders for certain labels it seems

Arrow, Network, and Eureka items most often seem blocked until release day .

Other worldwide labels (Disney, Sony, Universal, etc) mostly seem unaffected. Not sure why, but it's been like this since they reopened shipping the first time in June.

[Jr7936]

I have been using the cheapest shipping or the 2nd cheapest to get music box sets from the UK to the USA and their shipping is so much slower
still arrives before estimated delivery date but it could be at least 2 weeks to get to the USA

[Baguda]

Originally Posted by hariseldon

Try something -- I don't think they're factoring Vat differently, but are adding US sales tax now

To quote Lando "This deal is getting worse all the time". It seems every time I check this thread it's more bad news. First Amazon UK jacked up the shipping rates and now they are charging US sales tax, even though we don't know if Amazon UK is actually sending it to those states. Amazon UK went from a good alternative for cheaper Blurays to a place where I probably wouldn't order anything unless it's something I desperately want and not available anywhere else.

I regret not having placed an order a couple months ago for Gemini Man 3D and Hobbs & Shaw 3D (right before whenever they jacked US shipping rates), but unfortunately my crystal ball has been broken since birth.

[MifuneFan]

So everything I'm looking at has a shipping charge of 13.44 GBP...

[Humdinga]

That’s cray

[noirjunkie]

Originally Posted by MifuneFan

So everything I'm looking at has a shipping charge of 13.44 GBP...

I was going to place an order on Amazon Germany, but it's just as bad over there, too.

[jkoffman]

Originally Posted by MifuneFan

So everything I'm looking at has a shipping charge of 13.44 GBP...

Yiiiikes. I'm seeing the same. ~$18 USD. I'm still waiting for my preorder of Dawn Of The Dead to ship, when it was just $3.08 GBP for shipping.

[whatsgood]

Originally Posted by noirjunkie

I was going to place an order on Amazon Germany, but it's just as bad over there, too.

I think if you buy 3 or more in one order, shipping per item is much less.

[evanft]

I usually make big Amazon UK orders once I have a ton of stuff in the cart so I can spread out shipping costs.

Anyone else notice a BUNCH of stuff is no longer available from Amazon directly? Did they just sell out on a number of items cause of the holiday?

[noirjunkie]

Originally Posted by whatsgood

I think if you buy 3 or more in one order, shipping per item is much less.

Not for me. I wanted to buy ten blu-rays, and they wanted over 43 euros for shipping.

[ikms]

Originally Posted by noirjunkie

Not for me. I wanted to buy ten blu-rays, and they wanted over 43 euros for shipping.

Lucky that, for less than 10 discs it was going to be 86 pounds to Japan. About 50-50 between the item and the shipping cost. Up until Covid-19 AmazonUK was my go-to site for BD purchases. Nearly all of my BFI, Indicator, Arrow, Eureka and Network discs came this way. They would remove the VAT (as they should for international purchases) and S&H almost makes up for it. Probably spend several grand a year there... but now I shop direct from the disc labels and Zavvi. A lot more expensive than before, and piecemeal so I missed out on a number of limited runs, but can't see supporting Amazon until they go back to behaving like the rest.

[ilovedealsbaby]

what happens to the uk shipping used to be super cheap to us canada now the cost to ship is more then all the movies i put in the order lol

[EndZero]

Sounds good. A couple of weeks ago Zavvi actually let me order Dawn of the Dead. For a long time U.S addresses weren't allowed. The light at the end of the tunnel is there fellas.

[jkoffman]

Originally Posted by EndZero

Sounds good. A couple of weeks ago Zavvi actually let me order Dawn of the Dead. For a long time U.S addresses weren't allowed. The light at the end of the tunnel is there fellas.

For as long as I’ve used Zavvi, they’ve always shipped to the US. What period did they not? They even have a US version of their site.
After placing a few orders and reading reviews of their service on this forum, I only consider them a last resort.