Buying from Amazon.com (US Site) - any obvious disadvantages?

[MummyToSteven]

Having seen that the pound is doing rather well against the dollar at the moment, it occurred to me it might be an idea to save money on cds/dvds by buying from amazon.com. Are there any hidden drawbacks/import costs to be added on?

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they do deliver to UK - for a price and you have to pay squillions to get delivery earlier than 4 -6 weeks. will have to look up the tax thing

I've bought cd's from Amazon recently. Both took about a week or 2 I think but no problems at all. MUCH cheaper.

What drove me to it was checking the price of baby einstein DVDs - £18 in UK, £8.10 in US!!!

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shouldn't be a problem - i got my DVD player from Richer Sounds

I tried to buy Playstation games from Amazon US (we have a US system), but they would not ship computer games or Region 1 DVDs overseas. There's blurb on their website about this.

I have successfully made purchases from Ebay, where there are plenty of brand new games and DVDs on offer.

You would not have to pay sales tax on US purchases - you only do that if you are in the same state as the warehouse, or a state that has a sales tax agreement with that state.

If you buy a DVD from the USA, you need to make sure that your UK DVD player is multi-region or region-free.

From HMCE site:
I have been charged VAT and duty for goods bought over the Internet, why is this?

Any goods purchased from outside the EC are liable for duty and in some cases VAT. If you have been sent a gift and the value is under £36 you will not be liable, over that amount you will be charged depending on the product. For purchases bought by yourself with a value over £18.00 you may have to pay duty depending on the product; it may also be liable to VAT. Under that amount you will not be liable.

If you want to buy US games (i.e. US distributors & US prices - for some of our online games we've actively wanted the US version) then the best way to go about it is to buy from a smaller store in Canada - they don't seem to have the export restrictions.

We use CD Rom Shop and have been very impressed in the past.

Of course, that only really applies to games, although I'd imagine Region 1 DVDs would be the same - you'd just need to find an equivalent Canadian shop.

I've been buying DVDs from Amazon.com for years, mostly because they are cheaper AND often come out a lot sooner (got Lost In Translation at least a month before it was available here), they also have more products, e.g. old B&W films etc.
The only drawback is that, if you get too many in one batch, the Post Office/Customs & Excise might notice and make you pay some import duty thingy. Its only happened to me once and was still cheaper than buying here. Always check prices though as I have found things occasionally not much difference so need to weigh up carefully.

You can use this, Region Free to play region 1 dvds on a PS2. Some dvd players will be able to play region 1 though. Looks like this place sells multi region stuff from the UK. I haven't looked through the site though, just googled to find it. Or you could download baby mozart etc but I wouldn't do that, oh no.