I spent $333.82 for shipping and handling, as printed on the Amazon shipping invoice. I had the shock of my life when I saw it.
There are 7 items on that invoice. Each item should cost only US$6 for shipping, and then there's the box charge. So total shipping should be under $50 to my country.
What happened was, I bought a lot of stuff. Many are still on pre-order. Amazon would sometimes ship part of the order for those items in stock.
While part of the orders are being prepared to be shipped, I decided to cancel the other part as I found new stuff I wanted to add to the order. You can't add new items to the order that was already placed since there's no Update button. The only way was to cancel and place another order. I did just that and somehow all the shipping charges from those canceled items got moved to the preparing-to-ship items.
I didn't notice the discrepancy until I stared at the physical invoice inside the box.
Of course I contacted Amazon on this and they refunded the excessive shipping charges so I just paid the correct amount.
But I still had to pay some import taxes for packages that exceed SGD$400 in my country. Well, at least the tax is way less than the shipping charges.
To end on a positive note, even with all these unnecessary erroneous charges, I still paid less for the books compared to what I would have paid buying them in Singapore.
11 Comments
That's actually something I
Submitted by chappy on
That's actually something I learnt a long while back. Never mix pre-orders with items that are ready to be shipped.
Splitting them up is easier to manage should there be cancellations or changes needed.
That's odd. Amazon ships for
Submitted by Sesam on
That's odd. Amazon ships for free in Europe, even when you order small amounts. I order about 20 or 30 books per year, never paid a dime for shipping costs. Is this an Asian thing?
No, Sesam, that's a worldwide
Submitted by LIRCH on
No, Sesam, that's a worldwide thing.. the shipping, the handling, the taxes.. if you live in Europe than I guess you are lucky, if you live elsewhere, well... it wont be that easy to buy 20-30 books per year :-[
Parka, are you able to import
Submitted by cetriya on
Parka, are you able to import or get imported korean art books not translated/ localized by some one else?
that seriously sucks to see
Submitted by Ri-chan on
that seriously sucks to see the charges for shipping and handling alone.
I rarely shops for books online, anything I want that is not available anywhere in Singapore, I'll ask Kino to help me order sometimes. Its ex but at least its worth than to pay so much for shipping. Either that, getting my friend to help me order stuffs off Amazon, that's shared shipping which will cost cheaper too.
And the tax part still sucks. *bleh*
One of the reasons I stopped
Submitted by Benny Fuentes on
One of the reasons I stopped buying books at Amazon, it charges way too much for shipping and handling to Mexico, I´ve found other cheaper alternatives.
That's a staggering amount...
Submitted by powree on
That's a staggering amount...
Hmm they should refund the
Submitted by Tom on
Hmm they should refund the tax fees as well. Its completely their fault, if not you might be able to reclaim the tax from the authorities.
A few years back, Amazon had
Submitted by Eric Tan on
A few years back, Amazon had three different shipping options for those of us in Asia. Now there's only two and they're both pricey, but still relatively inexpensive compared to buying the same items locally (i.e., Singapore and Hong Kong).
One thing worth checking out is the different print editions of books in the the USA and in the UK. Different publishers can mean different prices and different discounts in two different websites of the same company (Amazon). I find that Amazon UK nowadays ships faster than Amazon USA, but then again any mail from the USA now takes twice as long. Maybe this is related to their counterterrorism policies...
Have bought from Amazon Japan (toy related books for my little son) and these are inexpensive and hard to get outside of Japan, but beware, as Amazon Japan only ships internationally using FedEx, the most expensive courier in the world. So with them, it's usually the case that the shipping is more than the subtotal cost of the items...!
Hello there, What was the
Submitted by Fayaz on
Hello there,
What was the total weight of the package that you received and what was the actual shipping charges after refund? This would help to better understand the prices and easy to compare with Basheer Graphic Books.
@Fayaz You can calculate the
Submitted by Teoh Yi Chie on
@Fayaz
You can calculate the exact shipping charges using this guide:
https://parkablogs.com/content/guide-buying-and-shipping-amazon-singapore
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