Foreign Perspectives

Clearly it’s normally cheaper buying stuff online where no delivery is involved so, yes, buy your software online if it can be delivered via download. However, for big stuff it’s not necessarily the case that buying online is really cheaper.

Take our planned new car for instance….

The list price is EUR 13,000, the online price is EUR 12,000. However, few people pay the list price and in fact we have already gotten the offered price down to EUR 12,600 and hope to get that down a good deal more.

Even at that price though there’s little real difference from the online price. For one thing, if we get the online car delivered, they add EUR 600 ie the price would be the same. Even if we collect it ourselves that costs a fair bit as it’s in Paris and we’re in the south of France so if we drive up to get it that’s EUR 50 each way in tolls, plus EUR 50 in petrol each way, plus at least three hotel nights at around EUR 50 each: total, a minimum of EUR 350 and more than likely over EUR 400 but even that is before you count at least three days worth of meals which could easily add another EUR 200.

OK, so a car is a pretty big item to deliver and therefore it’s none too likely that you’ll find them on Amazon anytime soon but even for relatively light things the postage charge can exceed the savings that you make online unless the discount is very substantial.