amazon.com vs amazon.ca

[gusl]

First, here are the 4 books I decided to buy, and their prices on amazon.com vs amazon.ca .

US: Flake - The Computational Beauty of Nature, new US$34.54
CA: Flake - The Computational Beauty of Nature, new CDN$33.71

US: Wasserman - All of Nonparametric Statistics, new US$67.96
CA: Wasserman - All of Nonparametric Statistics, new CDN$70.27

US: Kullback - Information Theory and Statistics (Dover), new US$14.78
CA: Kullback - Information Theory and Statistics (Dover), new CDN$16.02

US: Badii - Complexity: Hierarchical Structures and Scaling in Physics, US$39.00 new (managed to find a used one for US$29.99 but it can't be shipped Internationally)
CA: Badii - Complexity: Hierarchical Structures and Scaling in Physics, used CDN$78.95

Note that Canadian prices are better, except for the last one. As we will see, taxes, shipping costs and import fees will complicate this.

While my user account transfers between amazon.com vs amazon.ca (i.e. I didn't need to enter my addresses and credit cards again), my cart does not: I have a US cart (at amazon.com) and a Canadian cart (at amazon.ca).

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Methodology
* I selected Free Shipping whenever possible.
* each time around, I selected a shipping address, credit card, etc, and stopped right before "Place Order". The prices quoted by Amazon before that point are not complete.

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The results:

buy-from-US, ship to US address

Items: $156.28
Shipping & Handling: $9.96
Super Saver Discount: -$5.97
Reward Applied: -$0.00
TOTAL $160.27 (CDN$ 193.92)

buy-from-US, ship to Canadian address

bought-from-US, shipping to Canada:
Items: $156.28
Shipping & Handling: $29.45
Reward Applied: -$0.00

Total Before Tax: $185.73
Estimated Tax:* $0.00
Import Fees Deposit $15.20
Order Total: $200.93 (CDN$ 243.12)

buy-from-most-convenient, ship to Canadian address

3 books from Canada
GL CA: Items: CDN$ 49.73 + CDN$ 70.27 =
GL CA: GST: CDN$ 2.49 + CDN$ 0
GL CA: Shipping & Handling: CDN$ 0 + CDN$ 6.49
GL CA total: CDN$52.22 + CDN$76.76
GL CA TOTAL = CDN$ 128.98 (but they don't add it for you, until after you've ordered!)

1 book from the US
GL US: Items: US$39.00
GL US: Shipping & Handling: US$12.49
GL US Total = $51.49 (CDN$62.27)

No import fees. I think because the seller takes care of that (maybe part of "Handling"?).

my total: CDN$ 128.98 + CDN$62.27 = CDN$ 191.25

If I ship the Badii book to a friend in the US, I can save doubly (on the item and on shipping): instead of $51.49, it would only cost me $33.98.

I was surprised that amazon.com wouldn't refer to me amazon.ca (seeing where I was shipping to). Also surprised that amazon.ca wouldn't tell me to buy the Badii book from amazon.com (but not as much).

amazon.com vs amazon.ca look alike in almost every way. But they are not.

^{This whole research was surprisingly painful. (Took me ~2 hours)}

Comments

[roseandsigil.livejournal.com]

It turns out that the only page Amazon cares about being actually correct is the Place Order page. Up until then, it doesn't bother to keep things coherent across servers and what not. I'm told that even the order fulfilment code that sends orders to warehouses can actually fail, but it errs to the side of sending multiple copies rather than not sending anything.

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

This whole research was surprisingly painful. (Took me ~2 hours)

But it saved you C$2.67 -- enough for a coffee and a couple timbits!

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

No, it saved me a trip to the US.