Retro and DIY stuff found here for sale. Lots of little web shops.
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I like the idea of Tindie and know a couple of folks who sell there… However if you’re not in the US then it’s pretty rubbish. It’s all priced in US$ and worse, the shipping (if it’s a US based product) to the UK is expensive (inc. customs, etc.). I even tried to get a UK seller to sell direct to me once, but he wasn’t having it, sadly.
The down-side is that there simply isn’t a UK/Eu equivalent (that I’m aware of!)
-Gordon
There are a few UK sellers listed. Shipping from the UK is better than from the USA to Canada.
Mmm, tasty. I see sellers from UK, SE, IT… also from AU and NZ so postage might be extreme in those cases, unless you happen to be nearby.
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I think your UK maker may have been doing it wrong, as everything I’ve bought there has been sold and shipped directly.
There’s also SellMyRetro, who are kind of like a retro ebay. Each seller is responsible for their own shipping
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In that particular instance, I believe the seller would be shipping from the UK, however it was the payment fees I was more interested in reducing. If the seller had accepted payment directly then they would have gotten some £10 more for the same product and I’d have payd about £5 less by the time exchange fees and £ → $ → £ rates had been factored in.
Maybe they factored the extra hassle into their fees, however I just saw it as a gross waste of money to several middle-men, so didn’t bother in the end.
-Gordon
Interesting - I had the opposite thing, where an ebay seller wanted me to cancel the purchase (after it was made) so they didn’t pay the fees. It’s a kind of ethical probe - I don’t really want to make ebay rich, or paypal, but I do want to play by the rules. Each to his own!
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Bought products on Tindie, from the UK (Zigbee stick ZZH) and from China (the PAL-1 KIM-1 clone) sellers and all went well sent to the Netherlands. No VAT tax, no import tax, high postage, for products around Euro 30 (or what the seller ‘lies’ on the package).
How that will change after July 1st 2021, when every purchase will include VAT and if the seller does not collect tax at the sale? The local post will collect it and add (Netherlands 21% VAT) and 4 to 7 euro cost extra.
Beware and check!
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I’ve purchased a couple of items from Australian vendors on Tindie over the past year without any issues whatsoever. Shipping was reasonable, considering the distance travelled.
And since the AUS dollar is nearly on par with the CAD dollar, I didn’t have to recover from the same exchange rate shock that I suffer when dealing with US or European vendors.