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> I can't figure out why it's so hard to ship stuff within the EU

it's not, at least not in my experience.



Shipping is quite easy, especially for small and expensive things like laptops, where adding cost of DHL/DPD shipping is not a major deal.

Tangentially, as they are doing it already, selling _to consumers_ is quite hard. Each country has different regulation placing a lot of obligations on the seller.


> Each country has different regulation

IIRC they are fairly consistent across the EU (simplifying cross border commerce is one of main reasons it exists)


> Each country has different regulation placing a lot of obligations on the seller.

Such as? Just curious


From Poland: obligatory non-renunciable 24-month warranty of fitness for the intended purpose for consumers. Instructions required in Polish. Detailed information about qualities of goods sold is compulsory (e.g. specification of components for a computer, just model number is not enough).

From Germany: specific requirements for "impressum" on each website. Definition of all quantities in SI units.

Things get more funny if you touch any food: labelling regulations have a common EU base, but definition of what detail level is required for each element is per country, and they do differ significantly.

For everywhere: obligation to collect and report VAT for each destination country.


Warranty terms, language support, needing a legal representative in every country, to start.


I'm a 1000% sure the place I order my stuff from in Germany doesn't have a representative in Finland.

That's the whole damn point of the EU.

I think there might be some regulation on having the instructions written in the native language, but that's like 100€ to a translator for an one-time job. No laptop comes with an extensive manual.

Warranty terms are EU-wide too mostly, there are some country-specific exceptions, but nothing that would require a huge legal team to handle.


Yeah that's what I thought, I've ordered from many places in the EU that do not have any kind of presence or representative in my country.




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