In the US, because of differences in state sales taxes, people who live near the border of a lower-tax state sometimes make the drive to save money. That used to be true for mail order as well, where some states did not charge taxes for internet purchases, though I don’t know if that’s still valid anywhere.
Do you travel to another country in the EU to save money on big purchases? Or maybe go to a store with low prices that is not available in your country?
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I’m from Portugal, gas tax is lower in Spain so people living near the border will often go to Spain to full their tanks.
It depends on how far you are from the border. In some cases taxes create a price difference (fuel taxes for example), in other cases you have products you only find on the other side of the border.
Some Portuguese cross the border to Spain to buy petrol. Some Spanish cross the border to Portugal to buy towels and bedsheets.
Happens all the time. Switzerland is surrounded by significantly cheaper countries and quite small. So very few people live more than 1-2 hours drive from a border.
The border towns also very much cater to the swiss “shopping tourists”. With small towns of just a few thousand people having 5 massive supermarkets, multiple big clothing and drug stores and way more restaurants than a town that size would normally have.
Many people do all their grocery shopping in germany, if they live close. Others go for rare but big purchases, such as car repairs or dentist appointments.
Ironically some globally priced goods such as iPhones are actually cheaper here tho, because we have lower VAT (sales tax).
Happens all the time. Switzerland is surrounded by significantly cheaper countries and quite small. So very few people live more than 1-2 hours drive from a border.
The border towns also very much cater to the swiss “shopping tourists”. With small towns of just a few thousand people having 5 massive supermarkets, multiple big clothing and drug stores and way more restaurants than a town that size would normally have.
Many people do all their grocery shopping in germany, if they live close. Others go for rare but big purchases, such as car repairs or dentist appointments.
Ironically some globally priced goods such as iPhones are actually cheaper here tho, because we have lower VAT (sales tax).
Yes, I go to Belgium for gasoline and tobacco. I know a lot of people who do so. I know many people who go to Germany for groceries too.
It actually is in Finland.
Estonia is an obvious one where people go to buy alcohol. Taxes on it are smaller there and prices are generally a lot lower due to a lower GDP per capita. As long as you buy a lot, it would be cheaper for me to drive 600km to Helsinki, take the ferry and buy from Tallinn than it would be to buy in Finland.
Sweden is an another one, but mainly for tobacco producs and regular food stuff. These products are cheaper there and it’s even cheaper now as the Swedish Crown is dropping in value against the Euro.
And then unfortunately there are a few scumbags who go buy fuel in Russia. But surprisingly Russia is being nice in this one and blocking visas for that kind of stuff.
Finnish people cross across the gulf of Finland to Estonia for cheap booze. Sometimes they make a weekend of it, and the booze cruise companies are happy to oblige.
Look up “harry-handel” on YouTube. Enough Norwegians go shopping in Sweden that they have built entire malls just across the border. People get together and arrange busses for the express purpose of going shopping.
Oh, and “Harry” in this case means something like trailer trash-redneck-tacky-kitsch.
It is very common for southern Swedes to go to [The Bordershop](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bordershop+Puttgarden+GmbH/@54.5039637,11.226461,15z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x47ad65d6cae3eb8b:0xd1f59ab9d11d4c77!8m2!3d54.5039637!4d11.226461!16s%2Fg%2F1pzw8029_?entry=ttu), just off the ferry in Germany, to buy a years supply of alcohol.
It takes the whole day, and is still a trolley dash through the aisles. But if you buy enough, the travel cost compensate the retail price.
Booze is generally cheaper in the UK so it’s sometimes handy to pop up to Northern Ireland to stock up on wine (as it’s what I drink). Especially when one of the supermarket chains is having a multi buy sale.
Example, there’s a particular wine I like that costs about €40 a bottle and can be purchased for about £15 when on sale.
There’s such a thing as buying used European cars, repairing them and reselling them here. I don’t know much other than that, I’m not a car person but there seems to be a whole drama about it
The Hungarian towns of Sopron and Mosonmagyarovar just across the border from Austria must have the most dentists per capita in the world.
People in northern Greece do go to Skopje and Bulgaria for tabbacco and gas since it’s cheaper.
If I want to go to IKEA I go to the Netherlands. Most things there are cheaper in the Netherlands than here
Living on an island with an aggressive banking system and heavy taxes sometimes sucks 🙁
For England, we invented the word “booze cruise”. That is going on the ferries to Hauts-de-France, to the giant hypermarchés to stock up on alcohol that was half the price. While there, also pop over on the motorway to head to Adinkerke in Belgium for cheap cigarettes and tobacco.
For some people this is the only reason to visit Andorra.
What about yourself in the States, I know that cigarettes are a third cheaper in New Jersey compared to New York state.
Yes it’s not often but from England, I would sometimes go to Ireland or France to buy things in Euros because it can be cheaper + VAT refunds
We are that country everyone goes to to buy cheap. Even Belarusians come here to buy things like clothes because the prices are lower.
I live in the UK and a previous colleague of mine would travel to Europe to get his quarterly supply of cigarettes. He got stopped many a time but said it was worth it
There’s exactly one tiny gas station in the large and touristy German city of Trier.
That because anyone who has at least a litre of gas left in the car drives to nearby Luxembourgish village of Wasserbillig, where there are three gas stations with sixteens pumps each selling gas at 30% lower price than in Germany due to lower taxes.
Pun: *Wasserbillig* means *cheap water* in German (and Luxembourgish somewhat as well).
Yes. Especially for things that are taxed very harshly in some countries, such as alcohol.
It could e.g. be like:
Norwegians go to Sweden. Swedes go to Denmark. Danes go to Germany. Germans go to Poland.
It’s common and go both ways. Poland is rather cheap so our neighbors do come in high numbers to take advantage of that. However Poles as well travel to those countries shopping, simply because their offer is different than ours and you can grab a lot of things, that you won’t find within own country.
I’m aware of people crossing the Italian border (usually to Ventimiglia) to stock up on cigarettes but I wouldn’t say it’s super common. Almost everything seems cheaper in Italy.
Of course that happens a lot and depending on where you live, people also commute to work every day to another country.
I grew up in Northern Germany and especially in Flensburg you see a lot of Danes buying alcohol, sweets and stuff like that since it’s cheaper here.
My grandparents live near the Polish and Czech border and my grandpa always drives there to buy gas and cigarettes. Some stuff also isn’t available here so we sometimes go to our neighbours to purchase it.
When I lived in Switzerland we used to go mostly to Germany for all sorts of things.
Now living in Portugal I’m usually shopping online from other EU countries. Things come to me, I’m not actually crossing borders for stuff but it’s quite easy to find/buy stuff and a lot of things tend to be far cheaper in other countries.
For instance, all my kids autoseats were bought this way since they’re far cheaper in other countries ( last one came from Finnland).
I think it’s more common for people living near the border to go to Spain for gas and groceries.
People go on ferries to Sweden and Estonia. The alcohol is cheaper in Estonia, and tax-free on Stockholm-bound ferries that stop in Åland.
People by the eastern border and have the visas used to go to the Russian side to fill up, the fuel prices are obviously much, much lower there. And people living by the border with Sweden in the north might travel across for something. Particularly snus which is legal there.
Turkey is not an EU country. There is a border. However Bulgarians come to Turkey for cheap stuff. Because of the purchasing parity not taxes.
Also there are many people who go to Georgia from Turkey to buy playstation and phone with low taxes.(There is a lot of tax on these products in Turkey.)
We drive to Germany. It’s not really worth the trip anymore though if you don’t live close to the border. But in the 80’s and 90’s, we saved a lot of money by going there to buy sodas, beers and wine.
There are organized daily shopping trips by bus to Turkey, but not so much because of the prices, but rather regional exclusivity of some products and higher quality of others for the same price. For example, all the major brands for washing detergents like Ariel and Percil still dump their lowest quality batches here for the same prices as the high quality ones in other countries.
Before Brexit, it wasn’t uncommon to cross over to France for a day and stuff your bag full of cheap alcohol and pastries from Calais.
Even during Corona lockdowns in 2021 larger travel groups went by coaches to Poland to buy cigarettes and fireworks. It’s cheaper and you can get the banned ones.
Yes. People close to the bordering countries often do that. Either it be Bosnia, Serbia or Slovenia. That used to be the case with Hungary, but now, I’m not sure, since Hungary’s prices went up. So we had a funny swap. Where we bought stuff there and they bought stuff here.
If you live close to a border people do this yes.
People here even take a detour on their way home to luxembourg for cheap booze/cigs/gas.
Many people in the west of Ukraine go to Poland for high end electronics and vehicles as the tax here is quite high. Sometimes the same exact car is twice as expensive here!
I do quite enjoy popping over to France on a whim for some baked goods! Don’t really drink though so I don’t head over to Germany &co. that often.
After Scotland introduced a range of measures targetting excessive alcohol consumption, including minimum pricing, static pricing, and no multi-buy promotions, the first two supermarkets you reach when crossing the border to England (Berwick on the East coast, Carlisle on the West) saw an uptick in revenue.
There is however little evidence of this being long term, and could have been more of a knee jerk reaction, or simply due to nice weather and the football world cup going on at the time the law was changed.
It’s common here to go to Luxembourg for gasoline, tobacco and chocolate.
We also go to France for baguette and wine, though that’s not about the price.
My nation’s borders are meaningless to me. The most pressing question most here had during Covid is if we were still allowed to go to Ikea in Belgium.
Almost everyone regularly goes to Germany for beauty products and groceries while all the neighborhood comes to Luxembourg for cheap gas and tobacco.
I am German and currently live in Latvia.
The only Drugstore here, “Drogas”, is a chain, which basically belongs to a corporation from Hong Kong. 50% of the stuff they sell is the store label of the German drug store chain “Rossmann”. The other 50% international brands like Nivea etc.
I am ordering stuff from Rossmann for like 200€-300€ every 6 months and my family sends it to me for additional 20-30€.
The problem with Drogas is:
1. There are always (!) “Big discounts” (mostly over 40-50%) on 99% (!) of the products. They are still expensive as hell and when the next “discounts” come the next month, the same product is still more expensive. It’s shocking to me, that this is even legal.
2. Products that cost in Germany like 1,50€ (e.g. Hair styling products or after sun products) cost in Drogas 5-6€. It’s such a scam and I just hate this place. I really hope that soon some other international company will enter the market to stop these scammers and fuck them out of the business.
Furthermore I am also sometimes ordering stuff from Amazon.de. Delivery costs are around 10€. But as there is no Amazon in Latvia and electronics etc. are much more expensive, I am still saving some money.
Yes, frequently. Those living in the Spanish border often buy fuel in Spain. The Euro, and Freedom of Movement, made that even more feasible.
It still occured even before that and Spanyards also came to Portugal to get cheap stuff.
My father had a side business based on that. In Poland we repair things 10 times before we throw them. Germans, on the other side, can give you working things for free when they come to the conclusion that they don’t need them anymore. Germans make auctions on Ebay where they sell things for super cheap or even for free. My father looked for good offers, took a car with a trailer, gathered those things and sold them in Poland. Once he got a solarium and a set of electrical saunas. Germans are insane.
Sometimes we go to Germany since their food is cheaper and the quality is higher.
Nowdays people go to Poland for food too, since the VAT on it has been waived for covid, but I personally don’t live close.