I did an order from Amazon.co.uk in 2005 (Batfink DVD set) which got intercepted and given the duty/tax/fee treatment. I did another two or three in April/May 2006, as well as a couple from HMV Australia, and none of those 5 or 6 shipments got caught at all (details here). I doubt if the contents of any of the shipments would have been over £20-30 max.

I'm not sure what factors enter into them leaving a shipment alone. It probably depends on how busy they are - during quiet times they may pick up a larger proportion of the small-value things, which I assume might be one of the criteria for being skipped when they can't. I haven't an order in a year, so I don't know if last spring was a fluke or not.

The only things I order like this are films that are unavailable as R1 DVDs. I've got about a dozen (either R2 from UK or R4 from Australia), including some goodies like Greenaway's "Drowning By Numbers" or John Huston's "The Dead", which are criminally unavailable on R1.

 

Hmmm...

My order was only £28 and they still decided to ding me on it. Bad luck I guess.

Maybe it is worth it to order the discs separately next time, to save on the extra taxes and fees. Sure, the shipping is more, but in the end it would come out cheaper (assuming they're not tightening up stuff in general).

ie.

Harry Potter: £11.04 + £3.08 shipping = £14.12
La Haine: £12.75 + £3.08 shipping = £15.83

Total: £29.95. At the exchange rate I got charged for my shipment, it ends up being CAD$66.88, or a savings of $11.

Not a huge amount to be sure, but it saves on the hassle factor cuz you don't have to go to the post office, and if most single disc orders are cheap enough that Canada Post won't bother stopping them, then one shouldn't be too afraid to pay the proportionally higher shipping costs for single discs.

Mind you, that's assuming the single discs are as cheap as what I paid for them. A lot of the discs on Amazon.co.uk are much higher priced unfortunately.

 

It only 2 days to ship from the UK!

Oops. That's wrong. 4 days. Still, that's pretty good considering it went thru customs.

 

I ordered the "Network" brand Space:1999 Season 1 DVDs from Amazon.uk back in October. They are Region 2, PAL discs but play in my off-brand Chinese DVD player. Anyway, it took only 3 days to get them and I had to pay duty and taxes right to the Canada Post mailman (he took my credit card and processed it right at my front door).

I couldn't be happier. These discs are not available in North America and were recently remastered. They are much better than the A&E versions available here. For those who are interested:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Space-1999-1-Martin-Landau/dp/B000B0QJC2/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/026-2638275-9856419?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1181063303&sr=8-1

 

Mr.

i want to order from amazon in the uk to canada how is this done

 

Just go to Amazon.co.uk in a browser and order as usual. You may need to create a Amazon.co.uk account. Orders over $25 may be subjected to import fees and taxes (as noted above.) Some items don't ship to Canada so it may be necessary to find another vendor on Amazon or eBay, or by searching with Google.

 

You can get some really good bargains from Zavvi in UK, they usually ship multiple items in separate packages.
Same applies with Groovesland in Germany.
They might not have what you want but it's worth a look.

 

This is wonderful news. I recently booked an order from zavvi and was wondering about duty.. Does it mean they ship individually so it wont attract duty? whats your experience.

 

For movies and music, a lot of US and UK sellers also list on Amazon.ca. There are a lot of good deals compared to Canadian retail prices. Even with the extra shipping, it will often be half the price of ordering from Canada with free shipping.

 

And thankyou for getting me to read 10 year old posts.

 

They still apply. Not much progress in the Canadian retail sector in 10 years.