How to fight 100% EU inflation when ordering small goods?

[Serge_K]

EU centric.
Inflation on Aliexpress & the likes over the last 12 months is insane, and a lot of it is EU bloat: in May 25, i paid 28 eur for a crankset. It's now 57. That's 100% inflation.
We've paid full VAT on these platforms for literally years. The increase is in large part extra EU bloat (the 4 eur tax per item (3+vat=3.6), some countries charge additional 6 eur import fees per parcel. This is on <150 eur orders.

My gripe is with the hypocrisy and the uselessness. None of this money is going to re-industrialize the EU. The lobbies pushing for that have no plan to re-industrialize. The EU warehouses and websites selling you chinese products dont plan to make anything locally, they just dont want you to buy directly from the same factories. And given that Amazon is a disguised Temu for years now, by making Temu more expensive, it's more business for Amazon. Doesnt help the EU either way. What it does is finance more bureaucrats, more parasites, while taxing those who feel it the most.

For wheels and frames, DDP shipping works. It's a scheme to fight a scam, and it's been working.

if i buy from alibaba 2 cranks, 4 bibs and 1 coffee grinder, it's easy to get to 150 eur, and shipping items individually is a non starter. Therefore, what options do we have for >150 eur orders that comprise of low value items?

Are you guys using shopping agents, freight forwarders? Where are you buying things, who do you ship them to in China, and how do you get them shipped to you w DDP? I'd also rather have rail freight rates than air: the moment i buy a bunch of small things, i need to plan ahead. if i plan ahead, i probably want to arb freight costs.

When the law is retarded, and you dont have a say in what gets voted, it's a civic duty to be smart about it.

[Dan S.]

This bullshit legislation aiming to "protect the consumer" is nothing less than scamming of said consumer.
Also apparently starting November 1st, we will get hit by yet another fee on top of the already existing 3 EUR one. Hooray. 
https://euperspectives.eu/2026/09/temu-shein-eu-fee-november/

[Schumo]

I haven't bought any bike parts in a while, neither from China nor from Germany, so the experience specially for bike parts may be different.

But most of my China shopping I do now from Taobao via a shopping agent (Superbuy in my case). It has some pros and cons.
The biggest cons are that it's slower than AliX, it takes at least 2.5 weeks while my last AliX from China took only 6 days. And it's not worth it for (single) small and cheap items, as the cheapest shipping options are like 7-8€.

[rockerplates.de]

as a small business owner in Europe, this is a small step towards equal business chances...

[Bender87]

I'm also stopped buying random cheap stuff that i might need maybe, but not always actually needed.

But for me at the moment, it doesn't make any sense to get all the small parts from AliX anymore, the ~4€ makes it in most cases not anymore a no-brainer.
And than it makes more sense to buy it in the EU/DE.

I also learned that for the cheap-cheap stuff, they just use cheap or low quality raw materials and that reflects in most cases later to wear and life time of the parts.
So it's better to order it here for almost the same price and have (most of the time) a better quality.

Sure that doesn't cover all different parts etc. but that's my main shift in buying the cheap stuff.
There are always some random unique China Tools/Parts which you don't get here in EU/DE or they have a unbelievable bad price/quality ratio, than i go for the ~4€ and get it from AliX.

[Dan S.]

as a small business owner in Europe, this is a small step towards equal business chances...

Oh cut the crap. This was never the case.

[RickyM]

Hey. This is my point of view (and sorry for my english).
I´m 46 yo and live in Argentina, so we all kinda live with tariffs, taxes and inflation. We eat and sleep economic crisis.
Also periods of extreme opened or closed economy.
Long story short, politicians need money. More and more. So if they can´t tax producers (because there aren´t any), they tax consumers (or importers, the same).
Or they tax "transactions", services, walking or breathing. They don´t care, they want your money.
You will need to find the sweet spot where they take you the least amount of money. Study the laws, exceptions, when or what it´s conveniento to buy or not.
But you will pay more for the same, that´s for sure.
It takes time (time is money, rigth?) but you learn at last.
What can you do? Vote differently if your political partys are really different. Here, there is no way out, on election day we have to pick our poison.

Hope this helps for something (?)