Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Ugh, I have Amazon prime in Canada and use it constantly, but amazon.ca has an incredibly smaller selection of items than .com. Amazon seems to be slowly expanding it, but still only 25% of the inventory of it's American counterpart. So jealous.

Border/customs tariffs from American websites ruins any cost savings (like paying $20 in fees for a shipping a $40 item [1]). That is the root problem, given the geographic nearity.

http://www.ups.com/content/ca/en/shipping/cost/zones/customs...



Try living in Australia. It's a great country but Amazon won't ship many things to me.


This is particularly true for electronics. However, I've noticed that if the fulfiller is Amazon then there's a better chance of shipping an item to Australia. I can't remember what it was now, but I remember one item where storage option A was fulfilled by Amazon and would ship to AU but storage option B was fulfilled by another company who would NOT ship to AU.

There's also an option somewhere to restrict search results to only items that can be shipped to the chosen country. You'll be disappointed by the reduced selection though. In this case, I suggest Amazon UK who has reasonable shipping to Australia.


The other trick I've used is shipping forwarders.

priceusa.com.au places the order for you and is closer to a personal shopper service (at a premium)

shipitto.com seems to be a mail redirector but has silly postal costs.

myus.com is similar to shipitto.com


Just to note it's priceusa.com.au .


Fixed, thanks


I've been shipping to a US drop location at the border, and crossing by car. Paying duties and taxes that way still makes it worth me while. :-)

(I use Ship Happens, but there are many more)




Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: