Rated by Guest   - 7/10/2008

I have had several good experiences buying directly from Amazon.de (Germany), even though the books I had procured were on the higher end of the price compared to other sellers. The service has always been prompt, and the purchased items delivered as expected.

However, the marketplace is, in my opinion, a suspect. These sellers seem to list books at incredibly attractive prices, and then declare that they are not available, or not in stock, once the order has been placed and the books paid for with credit card. The Amazon in my particular case did immediately credit the amount I had paid to the seller back to my credit card once the book was found to be unavailable; still it was annoying to have to go through the process and them be told it is not in stock at that price. I am now hesitant to use the marketplace for any purchase.

Rated by Guest   - 10/2/2007

'Amazon.de' and 'Amazon.de Marketplace' are not the same.
Thousands different sellers sell at 'Marketplace' and do not automatically sell to customers out of Germany. And the shipping costs you pay, are not completely given to the seller.
When thinking about buying german books, please remember, that in Germany there is a so called 'Buchpreisbindung'. That means, that new german Books have a fixed price. It is not allowed to sell them cheaper.
On the other hand the difference between the dollar and the euro is very high at the moment. But the fixed prices have to be sold in euro.

Rated by GMal   [From JAPAN  - 9/13/2007]

I ordered from them once, but it turned out that the seller (Buecheroase Muenchen) was a distributor that listed books that they didn't actually have. I waited for a long time before they admitted that they couldn't get it. Moreover, I was charged at the time of purchase (as with all Amazon sites) but refund didn't come until more than a month later, by which time the USD/EUR exchange rate had moved a lot. In general, the prices on Amazon.de also tend to be very high, and shipping costs, too, but that's true for everything in Europe. At least shipping from Germany (as opposed to, say, Italy) is very fast - typically it takes 4-5 days for me to receive a book from Germany at my home in Japan.

Rated by Guest   - 8/29/2007

They show A LOT of inventory that they do not have, so you waste a lot of time ordering things that do not come.