Why you need to learn how to buy goods online abroad

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The modern Internet offers incredible opportunities. These include online shopping abroad. We can shop in the best stores in Europe and the USA without leaving our couch.

However, many people prefer not to get involved with such a "complex and dangerous" phenomenon as buying goods on the Internet abroad, continuing to regularly pay from their wallet for the greed of local entrepreneurs. The desired item is not for sale in your city? Okay, we'll get by. The new smartphone came to local stores with a delay of 3 months at a double price? Well, what to do.

Often, a person limits himself in his possibilities only because he sees the opened alternative as extremely difficult to understand and use, while underestimating its advantages.

We at Lifehacker believe that online shopping is the future, and over time it will replace classic shopping as a phenomenon. Regular readers know that we periodically touch on the topic of shopping in the digital space, publishing reviews and experiences of interacting with intermediary services for you.

Now we will move this topic even more actively, and we will start with a motivational and educational post.

Saving

Perhaps this factor is already enough to join the online shopping community. For example, you don't have to go far. Just remember the events that happened after the release of the Nexus 4 smartphone.

It's a great pure Android Googlephone, powerful enough to get things done, and the fastest way to get operating system updates. In general, the choice of a practical person. Products labeled Nexus are more and more relevant from year to year, and local store chains know this. As a result, a person sees the coveted device in the American Google Play store at a price of $ 349 for a model with 16 gigabytes of memory. Wow! It's also budgetary! Class, it remains to wait for the device to arrive in the Russian Federation. Long wait gives way to outright shock. Our stores are starting to sell it for 19,990 rubles. Almost 100% margin. We understand that it still needs to be brought and so on, but this is already too much. Unfortunately, this is and will be the case with all future innovations.

10 thousand difference is definitely worth it to master the procedure for buying abroad, but the sad fact immediately becomes clear: Google Play, like many other American and European stores, does not sell or supply goods to Russia.

No delivery to Russia?

What to do? I still do not want to overpay completely inadequate amounts, but there is no direct way to purchase goods either.

Imagine that we have a friend-acquaintance-relative living in the United States who agrees to buy the goods we want, and then on his own will send it from America to us in Russia (the mail communication itself between countries works great). Of course, not everyone has such a person, and therefore the problem is very widespread.

Where there is demand, there will be supply. There were people who put the purchase process to an American / European address and then send the goods to the client's country on the conveyor. This is how intermediary services.

Proxy services work in several ways. We will briefly describe the most common ones:

1. You buy something yourself, and specify the intermediary's warehouse as the delivery address, which forwards the purchase to you.
2. When buying a product, there is a high probability of problems with the means of payment. The Russian card may not be accepted. In this case, the intermediary offers the client to transfer money to his account. The advantage of this method is the removal from the client of all worries and hemorrhoids that may arise during the payment process. We transfer money to an intermediary, throw in a link to the desired product, and that's it. In fact, buying from an online store comes with more than just financial hardships. Sometimes it's hard to figure out how to fill in the shipping address correctly. In this scheme, the user will not have such problems.
3. The evolution and development of the industry of such services has led to the emergence of some resellers of their own courier services, and this fact is extremely important for the buyer. We all know about how our beloved Russian Post works. We've heard a lot about the customs service. When delivering on his own, the intermediary actually carries the parcel himself, without the participation of the Russian Post. He also solves problems with customs, if such problems arise. Do you understand how cool it is? We advise you to pay attention to this possibility when choosing a service.

It is clear that the intermediary will ask for a certain amount of money for his services. So what is more profitable, to buy goods at your local store, or through an intermediary?

We count using a simple formula:

Delivery terms

This question is relevant only in cases where the purchase is not a novelty. You can buy goods in a local store "here and now". He immediately appears in your hands. In the case of online shopping abroad, you have to wait. If the product has not yet appeared in Russia, then you will have to wait anyway. Here it is only necessary to say that the likelihood of the appearance of a novelty at local points of sale before the arrival of a parcel from an intermediary tends to zero, especially if the order was made in the first days of the appearance of the goods.

Availability and access to all goods in the world

Even if you are afraid that the product you like will be on local shelves before the package arrives, then do not forget the opposite situation: it may not appear in your city at all. This is especially true for the province. The product may be available in an inconvenient store, it may end before you have time to buy it, and a new batch will be delivered in a week (if at all).

In the case of online shopping, everything is simpler: if the product is presented in an online store, then you can buy it. From anywhere in the world.

Do not forget about the variety of available products. A huge number of brands, whose goods are available for purchase on the Web, or in stores in the country where this brand is physically located, are not represented at all outside the digital space and in other countries. That is, you simply won't be able to find some cool thing of this brand in a random store.

Life hacks

Many people are afraid to buy clothes and shoes on the Internet for only one reason - it will not work. In fact, there are a couple of simple tricks to reduce risks to zero.

1. Let's say that you find the garment of your dreams at a local brand store, but at a very scary price. If time is running out, then try to do this: try on a thing, find your size and remember the brand + model + size. Now you can safely go to the online store of this company and order the same clothes, but at a much more pleasant price.
2. Many people are conservative when changing clothes. Simply put, your favorite jeans of the world brand become almost familiar, and you don't want to change them for something else. But it is necessary - the wear is merciless. Next time, instead of heading to your local store for a change of your favorite sneakers or clothing, check out the online retailers for these brands. You will most likely be pleasantly surprised. In this case, you already have the name, model and size.

Even more savings

We started this material with the financial component of the benefits of online shopping, but you can save here not only due to the actual price difference.

In online stores, as well as in ordinary stores, all sorts of things happen. promotions and discounts, and if we have a 10% discount - this is already ogogo, then there you can find goods with prices 20, 40 and 60 percent lower than usual.

Another option for additional savings is use of promo codes and coupons … There are dozens of smart sites on the Web that aggregate information about current discount coupons and codes.

Leave the items in your cart for a few days, and the store may give you a discount or some kind of bonus.

Also in foreign online stores there is a phenomenon called “ closed sales . What it is? In fact, it can be both the prompt sale of old collections, or just a marketing ploy, but for the buyer only one thing is important here - a cool designer thing or accessory can be bought literally for a pittance. All you need to participate in a closed sale is to be a registered user of the store. It is quite problematic to detect such actions in a timely manner, but aggregator sites come to the rescue again. They post on their pages up-to-date information about current and upcoming sales.

Additional services of intermediaries

The intermediary service helps not only by sending purchases that are not available for delivery to Russia.

Calculating the cost of shipping a parcel is a whole science with its own tricks. Obviously, the larger and heavier the cargo, the more expensive its delivery will be. Packaging is always an extra expense. Now let's imagine that we bought 10 different things in several American stores, and all these things need to be sent to us by the reseller. The trick is that an intermediary can help us. At their warehouse, the packaging will be removed from each item, after which they will be folded into one large box, which in general is much less voluminous than 10 separate boxes. It is called consolidation of a parcel … The savings from such an operation can be significant.

In the case of a fragile or moisture-sensitive parcel, the intermediary can modify the packaging accordingly for an additional fee.

How to choose an intermediary

Perhaps it is impossible to advise any one of the best mediators. Currently, there are more and more of them, and everyone takes something of their own. Here, additional services are cheaper, there are a little savings on delivery, this one specializes in a specific country, and the other carries something exclusive, but with restrictions on other categories of goods.

The only thing worth remembering is security … Fraud is everywhere, including in the shipping industry. Do not get fooled by the "cheapest delivery" from dubious services that offer you almost free shipments with bonuses. Before contacting a particular intermediary, read reviews about it, but not on the website of the service itself, but on independent thematic forums.

Popular intermediaries

On our pages, we have already published a comparative table "", which will help you choose the best intermediary based on the availability and cost of relevant services. The table shows the 3 most relevant and demanded intermediaries according to the readers of LH.

In addition, we have separate articles dedicated to the features and tricks of the work of intermediaries "" and "". Everything is verified by personal experience.

To be continued

It is clear that this material only scratches the surface of the advantages and subtleties of online shopping abroad, and in future publications we will talk about each of the topics raised in more detail.

We will also try to expand our collection of reviews and experiences of interaction with various intermediaries.