Amazon has now upped the ante to lure Filipino customers away from Lazada. They have introduced PayCode where Filipino customers without debit or credit cards can pay direct at Western Union. If you do not have an Amazon account, please scroll down and see instructions.
Over the past year more and more Amazon products are becoming available to ship direct to The Philippines. Although the shipping cost on some items is prohibitively high, other items ship for only a few dollars. This gives Filipinos more choice whilst shopping online. Previously the only big players were Lazada and Shopee, but now the mighty Amazon have joined game.
For the best experience, I highly recommend you create an Amazon account with your address in The Philippines or add a Filipino address to an existing account. Then when you login your name and location will appear on the left top corner, like in the sample below.
Whilst logged in, Amazon will mostly only show items that can be delivered to The Philippines. Some items will show the shipping cost on the item page itself, whilst others require you add to cart, and click ‘proceed to checkout’. This is usually the case when there is more than one shipping option to choose from, at two or more different prices. For example, one option may be to ship in 7 days at a higher cost than the normal cost for 14 days. We would much prefer if Amazon put the actual shipping price range under the item itself.
You can save quite a lot of money by pooling items together for shipping. See the scenario below where all items came from the USA.
When I bought this DR-05X the shipping was $16, but when I added on several other items the total shipping only increased by $5.
This also happened when I bought several Japanese saws and chisels from Japan. I pooled them all together and the shipping cost was vastly reduced. So the rule of thumb with Amazon is to pool as many items together before placing your order. This will also prevent you from doing impulse buying, which is always a good thing.
I hope you enjoyed reading this short article. You can create an Amazon account by clicking on the link above
