Our call center does not have adequate staff for all of the calls coming in asking for advice about shopping in foreign countries. So we are writing this informative post to save you having to learn lessons we (like to think) we have already learned.
These are the top 10 things you should always ask yourself before making a purchase in a country other than your own (and quite possibly there too depending on how bad your judgment is).
1. How stupid will you look in it at home?
Blonde lies to herself about this one all the time. She claims a flamenco costume will be really useful in Boston and a wool cap with Puffins on it a good thing to have in Florida. This is why Goodwill had to open a special “ethnic market” division for donations from Blonde. Yes, you may look great in a sari, a dashiki, a cowboy hat, a sombrero or wooden shoes but are you really going to use them at home. No, you aren’t.
2. Will you have other opportunities to wear it?
When Blonde purchased this hijab she expected that she would only wear it once – to go to the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi. And she wore it there and suffered mightily as a result as she had failed to buy a model that allowed for air circulation.
Although there have been occasions when she may have considered wearing it back in the USA – bad hair days, armed robbery, freak out the people at TSA for the fun of it – she ruled each out due to her delicate sensibilities.
In Singapore we had dresses custom-made for us to wear to the upcoming wedding of Brunette’s oldest son to a Chinese woman (which is basically the same as Singapore, right?)
3. Will you potentially get in legal trouble for buying this?
You are forbidden to bring lots of things back to the United States. Among the prohibited items are “cultural artifacts and cultural property”. Blonde has long known this and was very careful when purchasing these “genuine antiques from the Forbidden City”. She requested documentation certifying that she could legally leave the country with the items. She was handed an impressive looking large yellow “certificate” for each piece and told that, with the certificates, she could legally take these items home.
No one at either end asked any questions or required any certificates. Years later Blonde decided to sell two of the items and took the “certificates” to a kindly person who could read Chinese at Sotheby’s . That is when she learned that the valuable certificates basically said “Some idiot bought this stuff in China and it’s of no value that we know of”. Not the culture, authenticity, history and dignity she had always assumed the certificate conferred!
Some commonly sold things in other countries that you are not allowed to bring back to the States are; real coral jewelry, anything made of ivory, Haitian animal drums and dog and cat fur.
Oh, illegal drugs are also not a very good idea.
Now we know you’re very upset that you can’t bring your dog-hair Haitian animal drums back with you but remember that few drummers can make a career of it and just appreciate your government looking out for your well-being.
4. Might it kill you or someone else?
When Blonde and Brunette were in Turkey we went to Avanos, a town well-known for its gorgeous and distinctive pottery made from a clay found only in that region. Blonde purchased an exquisite bowl with a hand-drawn design that had then been hand-painted.
Brunette was horrified at the price of the item so went to a back room which was basically the bargain bin. She found a very pretty bowl and asked the man how much that one cost. The cost was perfectly reasonable but the man informed Brunette that the bowl had lead paint that could slowly poison someone. Brunette asked how long he thought it would take to poison her husband. The man got a good laugh out of that. But then he took the bowl away from Brunette.
Not a day goes by that Brunette doesn’t rue revealing her motives!
5. Is the item you are considering buying made in the country where you are buying it?
This can be a real challenge. In Australia it was virtually impossible to buy anything that had been made in Australia. Blonde finally purchased a merino wool sweater that practically saved her life in some of the unexpectedly cold weather and Brunette bought a boomerang (and left it in the overhead compartment of the flight home.)
One thing you can buy in Australia that’s made there is dried meat called biltong. It’s the Aussie version of “jerky” in America. Oddly, Blonde’s Pilates instructor (all Blondes have Pilates instructors) asked to have some of a particular variety (ostrich maybe) brought back to her. Even though the Pilates instructor was a certified hot mess Blonde and Brunette diligently searched for weeks. Finally Blonde found and purchased some biltong of the requested species.
Not only did Blonde later learn that it isn’t legal to bring cured meats back to the States but the Pilates instructor said it was awful, so she gave it to her dog! She also made no attempt to reimburse Blonde for it and it had not been cheap. (This was several years ago but why let go of a perfectly good grudge?)
6. Do you actually know how much you are paying for this item?
There are several factors to this question: currency conversion, taxes, and credit card fees. We are so bad at currency conversion that it’s dumbfounding. We look at each other a couple times a day and say things like “Is their currency worth twice as much or half as much as ours”. Currency conversion apps are very helpful for this if you’re somewhere you have service on your phone. Or you can be smart and print out a little conversion chart before you leave home so you have a reference that isn’t a person trying to sell you something.
Ah, fees! How would we have credit cards and airlines without people thinking up creative fees to fleece consumers for doing business with them? If you frequently travel overseas get a credit card that does not charge foreign currency conversion fees. Blonde has a Chase Sapphire Visa and a Capital One Visa and neither charge foreign currency fees. She also has a Charles Schwab debit card which does not charge any fees for using foreign ATMs.
And even if you have a card that does not charge fees, when if the person doing the transaction asks if you want to be charged in dollars (assuming you’re American) or the currency of the country where you are, the answer is always the currency of the country where you are. This is confusing but has something to do with dynamic currency conversion which boiled down means you’ll always end up worse off having it charged in your native currency. Just recently some U.S. credit card providers have changed their terms to be that they will always charge it to USD at the point of sale. Read those dumb notices you get in the mail and don’t take those cards.
7. Is there a way to get someone else to buy it for you?
One of the most consistent themes of Blonde and Brunette is that Blonde will always buy it, whatever it is, and Brunette will never want to spend the money on herself. But on a trip to Florence Brunette fell in love with a necklace. She just couldn’t justify buying it and feared the wrath of the husband she had still failed to poison.
So Blonde told Brunette a story about how Blonde’s former boss’s wife would buy herself expensive jewelry, wrap it and hand it to him and tell him to hand it back to her. Then she would open it and declare that it was exactly what she wanted for her birthday, Christmas, Valentine’s Day or any other reason. Brunette had a big wedding anniversary coming up so she bought the necklace and pulled the stunt on her amazed husband. Well played!
8. Can you get it home safely and without incurring any additional costs?
Blonde famously buys items, many many items on the same trip, while blithely asserting that they will all fit in her luggage. They don’t and she invariably buys an extra suitcase. And this is the person giving you advice! But it could easily cost you $100 for that additional checked luggage and your valued items may get lost or stolen.
An even more idiotic thing Blonde does is buy very fragile things that have to be hand-carried. The example above is a giant blob of beautiful blown glass purchased on Malta. After being told she absolutely could not carry the bubbled blob on to a flight from Malta to Italy Blonde finally managed to persuade someone to let her do so.
How she did this is not something to be proud of (although she is) . An easy way to carry absolutely anything onto a plane is to have a brunette carry it. They do not draw the scrutiny that blondes do and that is why the bathroom shelves Blonde bought on the same trip were easily carried onto the same plane by Brunette, no questions asked!
9. Will it provide happy memories associated with the trip for years to come?
Clothing will go out of style, trinkets will break or get misplaced, and your third wife’s drug addict child will steal the Chinese artifacts to buy drugs, but some things can last forever.
10. Are you willing to wait a long time at the airport when you’re leaving the EU to get your VAT tax refund?
If you are a visitor to the EU and spend a certain sum of money, (which varies by country) but can range from 1 USD to 325 USD, in one shop, you need to get the salesclerk to give you the forms to get your Value Added Tax (VAT) refunded. (Not all merchants participate.)
Alternatively you can enroll to get a free Global Blue card (not a credit card) so the info can be scanned onto it when you shop at participating stores. (We haven’t tried this yet but just applied for one; they’re free.) The card will save you from keeping track of all of your receipts and tax-free forms.
Regardless of whether you have the proof of purchase on a card to be swiped or on paper you must (no exceptions and this is the catch no matter how easy they make it sound in the store) stand in line at the airport before you check into your flight.
This is to have a government agent verify that you have the goods with you, they are still unused and you are taking them out of the country that day. Here’s an article with more details on the whole refund process/nightmare.
Blonde just had to give up on getting the stamp in Lisbon airport in August 2015 because the line to get the stamp was going to take at least 2 hours to get through. She would have gotten more than $100 USD back so was not a happy de-camper.
If you are in a country where a lot of Chinese tourists are shopping, then forget it. We’ll probably get indignant remarks for saying this but they buy everything in sight. We have seen one person take an hour to get everything checked through the airport line. Shoppers beware!
Countries have no motivation to staff the VAT stamp lines so there is usually one person and supposedly in Geneva there sometimes isn’t anyone.
Blonde’s new outlook is only to buy things that have a price she’s willing to pay if she does not get the VAT refund. Less heartbreak that way!
And less swearing at the airport too (maybe).