The fun of shipping charges

[Harry]

6 Euros to Norway, even if I buy only one CD. IfI  buy for more than 25 Euros, I have to pay not only Norwegian VAT (Vat get deducted at jpc so that is OK) but also a fee for the VAT payment at about 14 Euro. So I usually buy small packages, and then a postage across the North sea for 1-2 CDs at 6 Euro is far too much.

If had lived in Sweden it would have been 3 Euro - and that is the frustrating thing about shipping charges; they are not logical and do not relate to real shipping costs in any meaningful way! 

Oops, that is certainly not fair, neither logical!

[Maciek]

The 27 member states of the EU are split across three different shipping zones. The UK is obviously the UK zone. In the Rest of European Union (EU) zone are the other 14 states who were members of the EU pre 1st May 2004. The 10 countries who joined the EU on 1st May 2004 and the 2 who joined on 1st January 2007 are, for the purposes of the Royal Mail contract, included in the Zone 1 shipping. We apologise for any confusion this may cause and should our contract change we will adjust our prices accordingly.

The way they write it, it would almost seem it's all the Royal Mail's fault. But in fact there are lots of UK-based stores out there which don't have the same problem. This is just (massive!) laziness: they should get a new contract with the Royal Mail but they don't care enough to get it done (don't they want more customers??).

[Maciek]

I've never noticed this sentence on the Amazon.com help page, so I guess it's a recent addition:

Rest assured that the list of supported countries will expand in the future.

Wow! I feel so much better now! "In the future", the list will expand "in the future". That is so reassuring! Wheeeee!