Virtuell adress öppnar webben för ny shopping
As Published on: EKSTRA BLADET
September 2, 2008
The phrase "Only ships to the U.S." is not very fun to face when you found an interesting product to buy online. But despair not, because there is a solution - namely to obtain a U.S. virtual address.
On the auction site eBay often the various objects are only sent to addresses in the U.S. and there are also many U.S. retailers who do not accept buyers from Europe.
Web shops in Gap and Ralph Lauren, for example, are not available for the Swedes.
For those who still want to act on this type of sites, however, there is hope.
Access USA (myus.com) and U.S. Global Mail (usglobalmail.com) offers anyone to create a virtual address in the United States.
It can then be used as the delivery address when shopping, for example, on eBay. The company helps then to send the goods to Sweden.
The price of an address is around 15 dollars per month, about 100 kronor, but depending on the type of service you choose, it may be further charges.
Note from MyUS.com: Standard service has no monthly fee; Premium service for packages only is $7 per month.
Although the dollar recovered back a little of its value in recent times, it is still many goods are much cheaper to buy in the U.S. U.S. clothing brands is a good example of this.
However, it is important to keep in mind that there are some fees when acting in this way. First take the company to buy the goods of a freight charge for delivery to a U.S. address. Thereafter, it is an additional shipping charge from the U.S. to Sweden.
With Access USA it cost slightly more than 26 dollars to send home a package that weighs 0.5 kg. Kilo price will be far lower if you send something that weighs a few pounds. The company can help repackage several products to a large package to keep shipping costs down.
Many carriers have begun levying a surcharge due to petrol price went up so much in the USA. As a result, Access USA's customers pay 9.5 percent of the extra freight charges by Sept. 1.
Note from MyUS: this temporary surcharge was eliminated 5 Nov 2008.
In Sweden you should then pay the customs duty and VAT. The duty is calculated on the sum of the price plus shipping fee and are usually between 10 and 15 percent. VAT, which is often 25 percent, is then calculated on the sum of the price, shipping fees and customs fees.
For precise information on the various charges, it is best to visit the Customs Administration's website or call - there is approximately 20,000 different codes.
To make it a good business requires do some research into applicable fees and also compare prices - or that we found something that does not exist in Sweden and that the price may not be the most important.