Amazon DE (Germany) What To Do If You Have A Problem

Hi!
When you order things from German Amazon, how do you cope with the shipping costs and VAT? How does it work? Is all the product coming out of German fulfillment centers or what? Curious about that especially for items actually sold out of Amazon's own inventories.

Just color me ignorant if I should already know these things!

 

In addition to Graham's excellent guide, Amazon.de now offers the option to be totally in English.

Amazon.de: Günstige Preise für Elektronik & Foto, Filme, Musik, Bücher, Games, Spielzeug & mehr »

If you do this while you're logged in, your default language for browsing and receiving communications from Amazon.de will be English.
I tried, contacted Amazon.de just like I would with Amazon UK, and received a reply in English within some minutes...

 

Why is it so much cheaper? A record on uk site is £30 whilst on de site it is 25 euros. Exactly the same product as well

 

Here in Oz we are VAT free but postage costs a LOT. The prices sometimes seem to make it worthwhile so I ordered 4 classical boxes off them over the last month. The early signs are not good: one order delayed for 2 weeks now, one item not dispatched after some days despite being in stock, one item mysteriously delayed in transit with no ETA on it's starting to move again.

1 out of 4 ain't bad?

 

I struggle to comprehend how endless Amazon packaging surveys fail to result in any discernible improvement in their standards.

Yet again a 50+ CD box arrived in a huge carton with padding on only two sides leaving the other two sides plus the top and bottom to get battered. There was enough padding in the box to have protected all four sides with little time required in redistributing the contents.

Luckily the box was in its original shipping carton from Decca and suffered minimal damage; not enough to bother returning as the replacement could well be worse off.

 

I thought it might be worth updating my post so that folks can get an idea of Amazon.de service and shipping as it stands. The delayed item turned up on time after all, I cancelled the order that was (now) 3 weeks delayed after they failed to reply to emails enquiring about it.

The one that has not been sent despite being in stock has still not been dispatched even though they have charged my card. They did reply to my queries on this one and here is an excerpt from their reply for the information of anyone waiting on an order:

"Thank you very much for your patience.

Unfortunately, the shipping of your order shifts at short notice. Our logistics center had technical problems, and therefore could not send the usual speed. We are currently working flat out to bring "broken-down" shows on the road

As a rule, we comply with the delivery times indicated on the website. I very much regret that it has come in this case a delay. We apologize for the delay very much!

I just sat down with our logistic center in connection, so you will receive the products as soon as possible."

 

Amazon.de has option for English. Why not use it?

 

Oh it was already mentioned in the thread. My bad.

 

I had two orders from Amazon.de that never showed up for some reason. They were very quick to replace them... better customer service than I received from Amazon.ca....

 

I had an issue with a LZ remastered lp.
I just logged an incident in english and they sent a refund and told me i could keep the defect.

 

Thank you so much for posting this ! Really helpfull I hope AMazon will reply me soon