Amazon shipping issues

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
#1

There are other Amazon threads but they are dated and not really relevant.

Up until last year, I was able to order stuff on Amazon (the US one) and have it shipped to Taiwan with relatively little issue.

This Black Friday, Amazon advertised that you can now get free shipping to Taiwan if your purchase is over $75.

The iRobot Roomba is on sale and the Cyber Monday price is just $599. That’s half the price in Taiwan, and even if you get a customs fee it’s still way cheaper.

However, when I actually click buy now, all the electronics that I wanted to purchase take me to the the dreaded “Does not ship to your location” page.

Why send the time and money advertising free shipping to Taiwan when nothing actually ships to Taiwan?

Is there a way around this issue?

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#2

Shipping to other countries is up to the seller not Amazon, you need to check each post to see if it ships to Taiwan at all. It usually tells you before you even click purchase.

#3

Next to the Amazon logo at the top left of the home page had you clicked Deliver to: Taiwan?

Or were you logged to Amazon and had chosen a delivery location?

I think these are the only reliable ways it knows to detect your location. If you were logged out of Amazon and on a VPN it may have no idea where you are coming from.

I share your frustration that websites, particularly American ones, are generally bad at detecting location. They just assume all their visitors are 'muricans by default, annoying.

#4

https://www.amazon.com/iRobot-Roomba-7550-Wi-Fi-Connecte/dp/B07GNPDMRP/ref=sr_1_3?crid=11LOOZ2VT7BZD

This one definitely says it’s from Amazon.

#5

If you start out in Taiwan then many of those electronic items won’t even show up. However, even if you get pass that, once you’ve entered a shipping address outside of the US, then you would see this:

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I’ve tried entering a Canadian address, and it’s the same. It only works if I enter a US address. However, I kind of don’t want to bother people in the US to go out and mail the package to Taiwan for me given how the pandemic is doing.

It’s the same thing even if I just want to get a Google Nest Mini.

#6

Oh I see, yes I have experienced that! There is some sort of two stage check going on, just really bad UX. Typical “agile” managed IT product outcome, just feature upon feature without any integration. Just like AWS…

#7

It could be. The sad thing is it used to work fine. I bought my current robot vacuum from Amazon a year ago without any issue. So if something changed, I don’t know why they would make that change, especially when Amazon has been advertising free shipping to Taiwan.

Is it COVID-19 creating new shipping hurdles that Amazon just can’t overcome?

#8

Just to show I’m not crazy with this free shipping to Taiwan thing

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#9

I’ve actually always experienced this, even after selecting my location, occasionally a product, once clicking through, says cannot deliver to your location. I do remember though it seemed more likely to occur when the seller was not Amazon itself but an ‘Amazon seller.’ I think it’s a longstanding problem with their interface.

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#10

Some items will show “FREE Shipping to Taiwan” below the price

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for example this SSD , has FREE Shipping to Taiwan and shows AmazonGlobal Shipping is $0 , however you still need to pay the import fees

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#11

If you read the whole sentence it says "on qualifying orders’.

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#12

And I’m sure they will calculate shipping cost to value to see if it makes economic sense for them. An SSD hard drive might be small enough that shipping doesn’t account for much, but I don’t see them offer free shipping for a nice full-size American barbecue grill.

#13

Pretty cool that they do offer free shipping on some stuff. I have not seen that before.

Last week I have had issues shipping to Taiwan even with a “text book” that was not heavy and SHIP/SOLD by Amazon. When I changed to Taiwan address it said it could not to me. There is a link to possible reasons for the restriction, but they did not specify why for this book.

Some iRobots you can ship to Taiwan (with shipping fee) so must be a combination of weight or the deeper discount that makes it restrictive for that particular item.

If you have both US/Canada/EU and Taiwan address the first thing would be to switch your address at the top of the page to Taiwan address, that way you can see what “Qualifies” for that $75 free shipping.

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#14

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oh, the shenanigans…