Dear EFrs,
I will be relocating to Switzerland from the UK and I currently live in a partially furnished flat and I will have to move my personal items from the UK to CH. Since I will be relocating first and my wife will join me at a later stage and I will have to import our personal items and pay for their transportation.
I was considering purchasing other household items (e.g a couch to furnish my new flat in CH) and take advantage of the transports fees that I will eventually pay, can you please let me know if there is a big price difference between household items and furniture (e.g. dishwasher, couches) between CH and the UK? Can you please recommend a website to check prices of household items?
Thanks
I know a few expat friends have recommend IKEA. You can compare
ikea.co.uk and
ikea.ch and sofas appear to be cheaper in CH, but integrated dishwashers more expensive for the models I checked.
But there's lots of other shops around, so a good place to compare prices is https://en.toppreise.ch/index.php
CH has only 8% VAT, but then shipping tends to be more expensive or unavailable to CH from many EU countries (maybe its the customs processing that the shipping companies charge a premium for). So this probably accounts for variations in pricing for imported goods.
This has been answered many times before, I suggest you do a search for specific answers but, in short, you need to have owned items for 6 months or else you may be liable for import duties and tax.
Wait till you get here and buy off people advertising on EF.
Good luck with your move
This may help some.
General Info / Cost of living
As for things like a dishwasher, I really woudn’t bother unless you know the place you’re renting doesn’t have one. For one thing the dimensions are often different and it may not fit anywhere.
I assumed OP knew this, but its a good reminder. You also won't be able to get a UK tax refund, as you won't have a CH residents permit until after you've taken the goods out of the EU.
Although, if you're spending 1000s, perhaps you register with SwissPaket.de, deliver your new stuff to their shop in Germany, go register in CH, wait for your residence permit, then drive back over the border to DE, and then finally declare the stuff for export from DE, and import to CH. But it will still be difficult persuading a UK shop to give you the GlobalBlue forms before you have the CH residents permit. Its just not worth the effort.
Yes I did, thank you for the swisspaket tip
Thank you, I have been in that topic however I felt it didn't apply to my particular question, I know it was quite a generic question just trying to trying to pick the mind of people that have been in a similar situation
ps: how can I thank people for their posts, like banjo just did for you?
There is a good chance your new flat will have a dishwasher already fitted. A major problem here is that Swiss kitchens are designed for 55 cm wide appliances, and the European standard is 60 cm. This little trick helps the Swiss white goods industry, and explains how this monopoly can charge more. But you can order brand new 55 cm wide Bosch-Siemens appliances in Germany, much cheaper than here.
The couch will definitely be cheaper here, as the VAT is 12 % less, and you won't have to pay for transporting it. Or you can buy new stuff in France / Germany tax free and cheaper, and of course collect it yourself. But you should be ready to pay 8% Swiss VAT when you drive over the border. (They do deliver across borders, at your expense)
There is plenty of good clean second hand furniture here, selling at half price, and even free of charge.
We bought some new furniture from Moebel Dick and Moebel Drogern over the border and they deliver and take care of all of the taxes etc... it was still cheaper than comparable items in CH and with a better choice IMO.
We were buying high end items, so it also depends on what your budget is.
And when shipping a household it would be rare for customs to check if something is older than 6 months. as long as all the paperwork is in order and nothing looks suspicious I can't imagine they check in that much detail.
I have also bought items from the UK from a company that would not deliver to CH. I had the items shipped to a transport company Luker Bros in Oxfordshire and they brought the items over with their weekly run. Again still cheaper than buying same items in CH. Luker bros took care of the import taxes and gave me the shipping certificate to claim back the UK taxes.
Company name is spelt Luker,
http://www.lukerbros.co.uk/