So... I don't know if anyone else has considered it but MyGermany.com offer a way to buy items from German vendors who won't ship to the UK. They offer a street address in Germany and can provide anything from drop shipment to the UK right up to purchasing on your behalf on a German credit card.
My experience so far has not been good. I've tried two transactions with them. The first was a driver's seat (LHD) which they bought off ebay on my behalf. It arrived at their warehouse and their online system, which is a little clunky, showed pictures of the seat inside a box. So far so good.
When I then went to to pay for shipping to the UK all of the quotes on their system showed as €999. So I tried to use their live chat only to find they don't have live chat, they just have a link which says live chat. So I then requested a call back only to receive an email saying that it wasn't practical to call me in the UK. So I then sent them a message through their contact page and didn't receive a reply. I tried to reply to one of their emails sometime later and the email bounced so for a little while I thought they were going bust.
Along the way I also tried a second transaction with them where I bought an item on eBay which was offered for local collection only and instructed them to collect the item and ship it to the UK. They came back to me and said that couriers that were able to to pack and send were giving unreasonably high quotes and it became clear that they are not able to handle seats. I cancelled the purchase with the eBay seller.
Two weeks ago I received an email from them to say that my first item has now accrued storage charges. I sent them an email telling them in no uncertain terms that I would not be paying any storage costs since they had still not given me a reasonable postage cost for the seat. Bearing in mind that in the intervening period I had successfully bought a seat from a German eBay seller who was prepared to ship to the UK and also a seat from Austria on eBay and had myself registered as an importer with HMRC and have an agent.
MyGermany eventually responded to my email to say that they were waiting for information about where I wanted the item to be shipped to and that they would not charge any storage fees . I pointed out that I had already sent them all of the information including my importer code and and my clearance agent. This week they finally came back with quotes for shipping which were much higher than I had paid directly with German vendors but I was able to instruct them to ship the original seat with ups and I hope to receive it soon, some 3 months after originally starting the process with them. Right now I have had confirmation of my paying for the postage but no confirmation of dispatch and it has been 3 days.
While I have tried to stick to the facts in the above it is my opinion that they are only really suitable if you want to buy small items that are either well packaged by the original vendor or that they can understand readily. I simply can't recommend them to anyone based on my experience.
My experience so far has not been good. I've tried two transactions with them. The first was a driver's seat (LHD) which they bought off ebay on my behalf. It arrived at their warehouse and their online system, which is a little clunky, showed pictures of the seat inside a box. So far so good.
When I then went to to pay for shipping to the UK all of the quotes on their system showed as €999. So I tried to use their live chat only to find they don't have live chat, they just have a link which says live chat. So I then requested a call back only to receive an email saying that it wasn't practical to call me in the UK. So I then sent them a message through their contact page and didn't receive a reply. I tried to reply to one of their emails sometime later and the email bounced so for a little while I thought they were going bust.
Along the way I also tried a second transaction with them where I bought an item on eBay which was offered for local collection only and instructed them to collect the item and ship it to the UK. They came back to me and said that couriers that were able to to pack and send were giving unreasonably high quotes and it became clear that they are not able to handle seats. I cancelled the purchase with the eBay seller.
Two weeks ago I received an email from them to say that my first item has now accrued storage charges. I sent them an email telling them in no uncertain terms that I would not be paying any storage costs since they had still not given me a reasonable postage cost for the seat. Bearing in mind that in the intervening period I had successfully bought a seat from a German eBay seller who was prepared to ship to the UK and also a seat from Austria on eBay and had myself registered as an importer with HMRC and have an agent.
MyGermany eventually responded to my email to say that they were waiting for information about where I wanted the item to be shipped to and that they would not charge any storage fees . I pointed out that I had already sent them all of the information including my importer code and and my clearance agent. This week they finally came back with quotes for shipping which were much higher than I had paid directly with German vendors but I was able to instruct them to ship the original seat with ups and I hope to receive it soon, some 3 months after originally starting the process with them. Right now I have had confirmation of my paying for the postage but no confirmation of dispatch and it has been 3 days.
While I have tried to stick to the facts in the above it is my opinion that they are only really suitable if you want to buy small items that are either well packaged by the original vendor or that they can understand readily. I simply can't recommend them to anyone based on my experience.
