How to do online shopping on a store the easiest from abroad

How to shop overseas online

Products are usually cheaper and more competitive elsewhere than they are in Sweden. Sometimes, the products aren't even available, and you'll be tempted to try to find the product from an e-retailer abroad and ship it to Sweden instead.  Did you know that almost 80% of all consumers in the Nordic countries have tried this according to numbers from PostNord. But there are a number of things to consider before you order that amazingly awesome but cheap drone from another country. Below are some tips and tricks from us at Panprices.

Carefully examine what you want

The right of withdrawal exists throughout the EU and is two weeks from receiving a product. It does not apply to all goods, e.g., not travel and custom made goods. But that does not mean that it is necessarily easy to return and use the right of withdrawal. This can be quite costly as you usually have to pay for shipping to the store, which can be more expensive than the shipping you possibly paid to get the product home to you. If you bought products from a merchant outside located outside the EU, there might be some difficulties in invoking the right of withdrawal. Always be extra careful when shopping online and try to research all products and the stores extensively.   

Find the lowest price - think about VAT, duty, and other import taxes 

Finding the lowest price is not easy. You can't just look at the price tag you see on the website. If you are buying something from outside the EU, i.e. internationally, you also always need to consider VAT and additional import duties. You can find the specific amount of customs duty at your local Customs Administration. For example, clothing is usually taxed at 12 percent. There are also additional charges from the shipping company, which handles the goods declaration at customs clearance. 

If you buy from an online store in the EU, no customs duties and VAT will be added. Free shipping is sometimes available, depending on the online shopping store you buy from. If you are going to buy from a retailer in the EU then be sure to visit Panprices who have aggregated over 5,000 stores in the same price comparison tool by collecting data from several of the largest price comparison sites in Europe. We also have, in most cases, added the shipping cost to order the item home to Sweden. Making it easier for you to anticipate unpredictable charges.

Making sure you can trust the merchant

Once you find the product you want at a reasonable price at the e-commerce store, you need to investigate whether you can trust the retailer. There are many scammers out there, where the store charges but then does not ship the product. The way to examine whether it is a scam is to check if they have social media accounts with many followers, if the website has many visitors, and if the site itself looks modern and functional. Also, check customer ratings. If it is an online store who is often wrong and gets low customer ratings, it might wise be to pick take another store. To return an item abroad to the store, e.g., they delivered the wrong size, can take quite a lot of time making ultimately making it a hassle to shop online. At Panprices we have gathered information about these online stores, and combined customer ratings, store size, social media presence into an easy-to-use system that makes it easy for you as a customer to choose the right online store.  

Shipping options and length for shipping

Have you ensured the authenticity of the online store selling that new Nintendo Switch 2019 or the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active? Are you sure that you can trust the merchant? Remember to always read the terms carefully. Who bears the responsibility of the package being damaged or lost? Shipping from abroad to Sweden often takes an extra day, which is worth thinking about. Who takes care of shipping? Will they provide free shipping? Will you pay for shipping but returns are free? Sometimes these merchants don't even provide shipping to countries like Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, etc. In those circumstances, what do you do? You could, for example, use a parcel forwarding service like Parcl, which helps you in purchasing products from countries that do not ship to Sweden. There are also other peer-to-peer solutions, such as Grabr, where a private person visiting the country you are shopping from personally brings your products to you. If you want to shop and ship from the US, there are a variety of shipping companies that can help you. MyUS and Shipito are two such companies both of whom have received stellar customer reviews. 

At Panprices we show whether the merchant ships to Sweden or not. You can also choose to see prices including and exclusive shipping costs. For merchants who do not ship goods to Sweden, we add a cost of what it would cost if you used a parcel forwarding service such as the ones mentioned above.