DVD Collectors Online
DVD / Blu-ray / HD-DVD Talk => Online Stores => Topic started by: GSyren on September 07, 2012, 10:40:31 AM
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When PlanetAxel shut down I was devastated because they had been my favorite source for R1 DVDs. I started looking for new online stores and ended up buying some stuff from Amazon, but I never really cared for them.
A few fellow collectors at a Swedish forum directed my attention to ImportCDs.com. I have now bought from them a few times, and I must say that I'm pleasantly surprised.
Pros:
Good stock
Really good prices
Fast - usually ships within 24 hours.
Cons:
Not very well organised web site
In order to put titles in your wishlist you have to put them in your shopping cart and then transfer them.
Wishlist nowhere near as user friendly as PlanetAxel's
They seem to ship to Europe and remail them within EU. So far I have had no trouble with VAT.
They are definitely worth a look.
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I have never heard of them. Thank you for the info.
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Thanks Gunnar! I'll have a look at them.
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Thanks! I will take a look. I also liked to use PlanetAxel because of their customer service and no trouble with VAT and import taxes.
I love Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de. But Amazon.com and Amazon.ca is not so good as a German customer because of the VAT and relative high shipping costs.
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I love Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de. But Amazon.com and Amazon.ca is not so good as a German customer because of the VAT and relative high shipping costs.
I usually order TV seasons on amazon.com. I wait until they dropped below $25. At this price they are below the €22 VAT threshold*. So when you order something for $25 + $6.50 shipping you end up with a conversion rate of pretty much 1:1 (right now $25 + $6.50 = €24.58).
If you want to pay the same in the UK you'll have to wait until the seaons drops to £18 (£18 + £1.78 = €24.72)
*When the package value (that excludes the shipping fee) is below €22 you don't pay VAT. If it is above that then you pay VAT on package value plus shipping fee.
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Thanks! I will take a look. I also liked to use PlanetAxel because of their customer service and no trouble with VAT and import taxes.
I love Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de. But Amazon.com and Amazon.ca is not so good as a German customer because of the VAT and relative high shipping costs.
Assuming DVDs/Blu-rays are not considered Heavy Items, ImportCDs' shipping cost seem to be between DeepDiscount and Amazon. Their initial cost for "first unit shipped" is higher than either of the others and than each additional item matches DeepDiscount, whcih is lower than Amazon.
So, it will depend on the prices of their products and the service that comes with it.
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No, standard DVDs and BDs are not considered heavy items. Box sets are. And DVDs that come with T-Shirt (http://www.dvdtee.com/) (I'm a sucker for those old B-movie T-Shirts).
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Placed my first order with ImportCDs today. upon comparison with Amazon it was about 10% cheaper; and that was before I applied the promo code for 10 additional 10% off the complete order (until November 20, I think).
Will see how quickly the stuff arrives. I might permanently switch!
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I've used them once and the shipping took 10-14 days which is about the same as Amazon.com for me. Unfortunately, they haven't been cheaper on anything else I've needed yet so I've only ever placed the one order, though I do order often for a Russian friend as they don't ship there.
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I've used them once and the shipping took 10-14 days which is about the same as Amazon.com for me. Unfortunately, they haven't been cheaper on anything else I've needed yet so I've only ever placed the one order, though I do order often for a Russian friend as they don't ship there.
I created a spreadsheet to does the calculations for me. At one point I realized that product prices alone are deceiving, so I include shipping costs when comparing resellers. The product prices were often near Amazon's but shipping per item is half price! Since my order had many low prices items the difference in the total was 10%.
10-14 days is about what I get with Amazon.
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I like ImportCDs because they seem to be more customs friendly than Amazon. It used to be that customs targeted Amazon (US) shipments for VAT here in Sweden. I don't know if that's true any more, but I just feel safer ordering from lesser known suppliers. ImportCDs re-ships from within the EU, so they should be safe. But on the other hand that procedure means that they take a bit longer to deliver. My experience here in Sweden is that 3 weeks is the norm.
I was really surprised to find a Deep Discount catalog including in the latest shipment. Seems really odd that they would include catalogs from a competitor. :shrug:
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Deep Discount is currently having their 25% sale. But I checked a few items, even after applying the discount the prices were mostly still higher than at the competition. I don'y think I will bother with them anymore.
I live in Asia (Taiwan), so I am not sure yet if they will do any sort of re-shipping for me.
I used to order everything with express service so I would get it quick. But eventually I realized than waiting a little while really wasn't a problem and stopped with that nonsense. Now it's up to the retailer (e.g. amazon.ca seems to use DHL often).
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Something seems to be seriously wrong at ImportCDs.com!
I have a title that has been on backorder since Dec 22 last year. It came into stock on Jan 29, but did not ship. OK, so maybe they had a lot of backorders. Then it came into stock again last Friday. It is still listed as in stock. When it did not ship on Friday I emailed them. No reply. Still did not ship on Monday. I emailed them again yesterday. No reply, no shipping. I have another order placed on Feb 4. Of the three items two are flagged as allocated, one as backordered. The backordered item is in stock, but the order does not ship.
:redcard:
Both of these orders were prepaid with Paypal. I'm getting seriously worried, not only because I have money tied up, but also because I don't know any good alternative to ImportCDs. I'd use Amazon, but the problem with them is that customs are much more on alert when it comes to big retailers like Amazon, and not only is VAT 25% over here, but when customs taxes a shipment they also add a handling cost of SEK 100 (about US$ 15) and delays the shipment about a week.
Whenever possible I use Amazon UK, but obviously there are a lot of Region 1/A titles that I cannot get from them.
[Edit] Going thru my emails I see that I did actually get a shipping notice for that second order, so it may just be the order history at their site that is (seriously) out of date. No emails about the old backorder, though. [/Edit]
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I order some stuff earlier this week and all but one item go shipped the next day.
I like them quite a lot. The above-mentioned order contains seven items, and I found that I could have only ordered six of those from Amazon (achieving the same total price. In other words, they are cheaper with almost everything. In Taiwan I just have to try to stay under USD100 and will have no further issues with the import.
Anyway, good to see that in the end it worked out better than you had thought.
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Well, better is not good enough. The fact that a box set that I ordered and paid for in December does not get shipped when they receive stock is bad enough. In addition, they don't answer support email and the order history info is at least two weeks out of date. So, what info can you depend on?
I have ordered quie a lot from them the last two years, but now my confidence in them has been severely eroded.
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Well, the last time I had an issue with one of their orders was last November. Quite some time had past since shipping that I got concerned. They responded quite quickly at the time and asked me to wait a title longer, which turned out to be correct, the shipment(s) arrived shortly after.
Pretty much all my shipments from ImportCDs.com have been substantially slower than from Amazon. Almost like they ask the snail mail peole not to hurry :headscratch: But I am not usually in a hurry and they are cheaper in the end...
If they didn't answer your mails, that is a point of complaint...
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I'm more upset about the fact that they don't ship my copy of Danny Kaye: The Goldwyn Years that I already paid for, than about not getting email replies.
I've used their "Notify me when in stock" function, so I know they received 11 copies on Jan 29 and 21 copies on Feb 14. Now it's out of stock again. Still no indication that my copy has been shipped. Their shipping notification by email worked on the previous order, even though the order history page didn't update (and still hasn't).
I'm not placing any more orders with them until I have received this title.
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Latest development regarding ImportCDs.
I contacted Paypal and asked them to impress upon ImportCDs to either ship the item or refund it.
Two days later I get a refund from ImportCDs. "Backordered items, if not fulfilled within 21 days, are automatically cancelled." Yeah? It's been 82 days and it was f**king not automatic! And what's more, the item is currently in stock!!!
I wish I could trust ImportCDs with more orders, but with customer service like this... :redcard:
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I am very sad to hear about your bad experience.
Luckily so far all my orders have eventually arrived and the one that didn't was replaced by them without a hitch. They are quit e substantially cheaper than Amazon for me (in average), so I hope they'll not follow the way Planet Axel went... :fingerchew:
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Yes, well, I ordered the Danny Kaye box set from Oldies.com (http://www.oldies.com/)instead. They don't have the extensive stock that ImportCDs have, and I have had some issues with their customer service, but at least they have always shipped what I ordered. It's been a few years since I last used them, so we'll see how well they perform now. They are usually cheaper than Amazon, and at least on this item they were cheaper than ImportCDs, but the shipping cost is higher, unless you buy a lot. Higher per order cost, lower per item cost. But then again, bigger orders means increased risk of "getting caught" by customs. 25% VAT plus c:a $15 fee is no laughing matter... :(
[Edit] Oldies have cheaper shipping on 4 single disc items or more. But shipping for box sets ("heavy items" in ImportCDs terms) is calculated differently. [/Edit]
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The shipping is a big part why ImportCDs.com is cheaper for me. Amazon has rather larger per-item costs... Amazon is often cheaper in the unit prices, but then ImportCDs.com catches up when it comes to shipping.
I usually order in such way, that each package is around USD100. That way customs are not a problem. If I go higher, I'll have to pay some custom duties. Most orders this way can have anywhere from 5-10 items, depending the various unit prices.
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You'te lucky. The "safe" limit over here is about $30 (incl shipping). Anything over that is a gamble.
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Well, it was fun while it lasted. I just wanted to order from ImportCDs.com again after quite some time and they didn't accept my address (which had previously been used!). From what I can tell is, that their overall management has changed to "DirectToU LLC", which seems to have caused them also to have a new website design. The site simply kept saying, that there is a problem with the provided address, without being any more specific, no matter how much I changed it, trying to accommodate the requested format.
Well, long story short, they lost a customer. I deleted the Wish List and removed all my personal data from the site. :shrug: My they will go the way Planet Axel went before them...
I'll have another look at some other providers I used before (DeepDiscount.com and DVDEmpire.com) and see how their pricing compares these days...
EDIT:
Hmmmm, unfortunately both mentioned sites are still more expensive than Amazon. Even worse, DeepDiscount.com appears to be owned by "DirectToU LLC" as well (maybe that was the reason I previously left them...?).
So, do any of my fellow "international orderers" have other recommendations of online shops, which you use besides Amazon?
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Have you looked at oldies.com?
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Have you looked at oldies.com?
Thanks, I hadn't, but now I have.
Their base prices seemed higher, but often this can be compensated by shipping costs. Which was rather weird, as their shipping prices are very different than others. While the "per item charge" is lowest I have seen, the base charge was higher than everyone else. (Depending how many items are within an order, this might still work our favorably though.) But that was also where I noticed, they don't ship to Taiwan :(
Then I looked at some other sites in my bookmarks (forgot about those yesterday):
Tower.com: Pricing seemed competitive, for those I sampled. Shipping costs are not explained, only calculated at check-out. Their website was very slow on my computer and I don't like that the search result list does not show prices. (I LOVED going to Tower when I lived in the US. They had this huge store in Boston which I could go and browse in for hours...)
DVDPlanet.com: Prices are slightly higher and shipping is probably on par with what Amazon charges.
CD Universe: Prices not competitive.
It was a bit sad to see, just how many of the links I had collected in the past were dead...
EDIT:
:hysterical: Now I understand why they calculate shipping costs at checkout... When clicking on "Proceed to checkout" I was transferred to Amazon.comand asked to "Please confirm that you want to add the item(s) listed below to your cart." No wonder the pricing seemed so competitive...
What I don't get: Why even do this? Why pretend you are your own store, but at checkout actually hand everything over to Amazon...? By not using their own checkout and just shipping through Amazon they are missing out on all the customers who maybe want to avoid Amazon... :headscratch:
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Founded in 1980, OLDIES.com (and Nina's Discount Oldies) is a family-owned and operated company.
Given this quote from the oldies website, perhaps you could email them and ask if they would make an exception and ship to Taiwan? Smaller businesses are often more flexible than big corporations. It worked with Planet Axel, so maybe it will work for Oldies. It doesn't hurt to ask.
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Founded in 1980, OLDIES.com (and Nina's Discount Oldies) is a family-owned and operated company.
Given this quote from the oldies website, perhaps you could email them and ask if they would make an exception and ship to Taiwan? Smaller businesses are often more flexible than big corporations. It worked with Planet Axel, so maybe it will work for Oldies. It doesn't hurt to ask.
i forgot about that, Planet Axel did make an exception for me...
I'll consider it, after all, their prices were higher.