masi61

I had seen some good prices at a German online bike part place. I believe it was bikeparts.de. They had lots of sizes and colors for the Challenge open tubulars that I like. The USA currency button defaults to Euros. Then you get a message that they are not currently shipping to the USA.

Star-bike.de is the other one. It also is not shipping to the USA right now apparently. Both these sites always seemed to have a great selection and good if not great prices, if you could actually obtain the items. One of them also carried Hope components from England at good prices.

Just curious if anyone knows is mailorder from Germany to the USA suspended for now due to Covid-19? Are there other good European on-line bike part places that ship to the USA that have competitive prices and a unique selection? Any French or Italian sites?

I understand that Shimano shut down grey market sales to the USA several years ago and I’m still bummed that Shimano part prices have shot up since then. A few years ago you could regularly find Dura Ace 9000 or 9100 pedals on sale for $130-150, now they seem to go for not much less than $230 just to give one example.

Mulberry20

CicliCorsa in Italy is a smaller website but carries neat things. You can get the new Veloflex open tubulars there. The site has Challenge as well.

sarhog

It’s suspended due to Covid-19. If you wear a mask when you’re on the website, the currency field will switch back to US dollars.
Make sure you wash your hands after ordering.

masi61

Thanks for the reminder. I just checked their site and see some discounted prices on 2019 model of Veloflex tires.

kingston 

I ordered some things pretty recently from rosebikes.com and bike-components.de

masi61

Cut me some slack here. Lots of businesses have had to modify their business practices to operate safely during the pandemic. Your response is out of line and not really very funny either.

sarhog

I happen to think it’s quite funny, maybe you can purchase a sense of humor online.


Not from Germany though.... they’re not funny.

Out of line? There’s a line? I don’t like standing in line, that’s why use the internet for my shopping.

kingston 

I have avoided shimano purchases almost entirely since they started enforcing sales territories.

delbiker1 

IMO, it is pretty funny.

2_i 

A regular post would commonly go on passenger planes and that got disrupted. In addition, USPS handling of international deliveries became broken beyond what could be understood even under the current circumstances. I had shipments from China stuck in the system for 4 months. A shipment from London went to NY, just to be sent back to London and then back to NY. Each entry into US cost several weeks at the minimum. The same went for the other direction. Our letters to family in Europe were stuck for months and, when they started arriving, they did do out of order, even though to the same destination.

In the end, most of my packages with orders from February-March on got through - the delivery losses were maybe at just 5% level or so. However, for the vendors the losses must have been well greater, as may customers were demanding and getting refunds while the packages eventually arrived. While AliExpress, with most vendors from Asia, still mostly ships to US, many vendors increased their shipping rates by a factor of several, $55 for handlebars or a small bag is not uncommon. Japan Post quit accepting packages for US entirely at some point - I think they restarted now. There were many other countries on their no-ship list, though, too, with the list updated every few weeks.

capt_velo

I recieved an ordered from bike24.com about 6 weeks ago that I had ordered 6 weeks prior to that. It's slow, but a lot cheaper.

Troul 

i wonder how well that's working out for them with all the supply/demand issues going on currently....

50PlusCycling

The problem is shipping. Small goods are sent in small packages in airmail shipments, and most of these ride in the bottom of passenger airliners. The cost of air mail is low, so the prices for imported goods is cheap.

I export from Japan, and normal ship by EMS to America and other places. EMS is cheap, it costs about $25 for me to ship a parcel. But due to there being only a little air traffic today from Japan to America, EMS has suspended shipping. I can ship via Fedex or DHL, but they charge $80 and up for the same size package. When the shipping costs get this high, and are added to the price of the products, no one will buy them.

Germany_chris

Thanks for that..I was going to order a stem from Alex cycles and the website said $13 to the states and 15 euro to Germany, I just order from the German vendor that's more expensive.