Amazon Shopping Guide for Aussies

There are a few tricks you need to know to take advantage of buying from Amazon and having it shipped to Australia.
If you just accept the first price that Amazon gives you chances are you will still save money. I haven’t as yet found a book thats cheaper in Australia, even considering the cost of sending the package around the world. Here is the fruit of my research in trying to find the cheapest way of getting items to my doorstep.
The reason it’s not so straight forward is because of the Amazon Marketplace. THis allows other retailers and individuals to sell the same material Amazon does. In most cases they are cheaper, which is suprising considering the huge buying power Amazon has. The catch is that there are no shipping discounts when you buy multiple items from a Marketplace seller, whereas Amazon charges less per additional item.

Here is an example of what you might see on many websites, including mine:

There are 2 ways of buying it new, the top option is from Amazon directly, and the second in “used and new” are various bookstores throughout the US that sell through Amazon Marketplace.
When you click this link you will be presented with all the various options, cheapest first.

After clicking that link, or searching for a book on Amazon and then clicking “New and Used, this is what you will see (click it to make it full size):

Then it’s just a matter of scanning the third column to see which is the first retailer to ship internationally.

How much is shipping?
Amazon has different shipping options, allowing you to pay more if you want it quicker. I’m assuming seeing as we are trying to save money, standard shipping (the cheapest) taking 12-20 days is fine.

A shipment costs you the per shipment ammount (imagine an empty box) and a per item ammount (each time you put something in the box, add this ammount). So one book is US$6.99 for the box, and US$4.99 for the first book. Thats a total of $11.98.

Buying from Marketplace seller costs $9.79 per item flat. Buy 10 items at once and you will pay the same ammount as buying 1 book every week for 10 weeks.

Obviously if you buy 2 books the postage form Amazon becomes cheaper, but maybe not enough to offset the savings from a third party store on Amazon. As always, the key to saving money is buying bulk!

Taking the above book as an example, to buy 1 from Amazon cost $12.34, plus $6.99 for a box, plus $4.99 to put the book in it. Total $24.32. Ouch. Buying if from b5b books will cost us only $3.75 for the book, and $9.79 to ship, total $13.54. Much better. To buy 2