[Yetanfou]

Yup, that's what I'm using as well, usually in combination with a check on ebay.de and ebay.co.uk for products which fit the bill - i.e. not for heavy, bulky goods like fridges and washing machines but certainly for smaller electronics and tools. For larger computer hardware - servers etc - I tend to look towards Germany and the UK since prices tend to be quite a bit lower than here in Sweden. I have only bought something at Amazon once, using the French version, my reasons being that they tended not to want to ship to Sweden and even if they do the price tended to be matched by other sellers. I do not want to get an Amazon monoculture so I'll continue to do so unless the price difference ends up so big that the offer is "too good to refuse". Swedish prices tend to be on the high side but they have come down, most likely due to competition from abroad. The Swedish postal service does its best to counteract this by putting a fine on parcels from outside the EU - they call it a handling charge but that is just word play, the intention is both for them to pad their budget and for you to stop buying from overseas - so I've been exploring ways to get around this by having goods delivered to the Netherlands (where I'm originally from) to import them myself when I happen to be there.

[kevinak]

I don't think your point about the handling fee rings very true. If you followed the news at the time when it was added you would know that it was put in place to counter the huge workload that came with handling all the packages from cheap Chinese online stores (like Wish). Before that PostNord almost never charged for handling packages from outside the EU. The same can not be said about DHL, UPS and Fedex who ALWAYS make sure to charge extra for handling any package from outside the EU, almost without fail.

It makes sense in my mind that the buyer should be the one to pay for the handling of what they buy. I don't want to subsidise your shopping/shipping via my taxes, they're high enough as it is.

[Yetanfou]

Postnord's argument that the handling of parcels from China took too much time was utterly nonsensical, especially given in the light of their usual complaints about the fact that fewer people were mailing stuff so they had to raise prices. If handling parcels from China took too much time they simply had not been very good in negotiating a deal with China Post about parcel rates.

Another factor in the nonsensicality of this tariff is that Sweden is more or less the only country which starts charging sales tax (called moms here, comparable with VAT in the UK, BTW in the Netherlands etc.) from a value of 0kr (i.e. free, but sales tax is paid on the shipping costs). Where other European countries start charging sales tax when the value of imported goods rises above (e.g.) €20, Sweden starts at €0. Many parcels ordered from China fall under that rate which make it a very common thing to be represented with the following:

   price of ordered goods including shipping: €4
   sales tax: €1
   "handling fee": €8
   total: €13, of which €9 goes to the Swedish state (directly or through Postnord)

Mind, this is not the shipping fee as that was already paid for in the €4 purchase price. If the same parcel were ordered to the Netherlands the customer would pay €4 and that's it, no import fees and no tariffs.

The so-called "handling fee" is nothing but an excuse to put a tariff on international trade for individuals, a way to make sure the fruits of globalisation stay out of reach of the public.