Travelling to Madeira – update
Peter Groen has updated his website, detailing all of the latest procedures involved in travelling to the island in 2021. He has included details of those European airports currently flying to Madeira (obviously none from the UK with the travel ban) and details of when other operators currently plan to restart.
Amazon website now in Portuguese
Maurice has kindly alerted readers to the Amazon website now being available in Portuguese. He points out that the goods are still shipped from Spain, but it is now easier to navigate for those more conversant with Portuguese than Spanish.
Portuguese products on the website are marked with a tile.
Porto Santo Ferry
The Diario reports that the Porto Santo Ferry, the Lobo Marinho, transported 243,374 passengers during 2020, 31.7% down on the previous year, representing a drop in revenues of more than €3 million.
COVID-19 in Madeira: daily updates can be found on an earlier post.
I was talking to a friend in Madeira – her Amazon deliveries on orders after Brexit have all disappeared.
Living on Madeira one should only order from the German or Portuguese Amazon site and make sure the product is shipped from the EU. I always go for the slightly more expensive shipping possibility. The stuff comes with UPS at the speed of light . On the other hand: last week on Friday I shipped a large box not very heavy (4kg) to The Netherl;ands. It was sent by CTT expresse. It was delivered last Wednesday. That was a surprise, also speed of light…. who had have thought that !!!
I would normally order via the UK Amazon site but have lost my last delivery! However a recommendation to use Spain for little bits & Germany for larger/electrical items seems to work well so far. I have a basket in Amazon ES waiting to go to Madeira, so wish me luck!
Jayne, when you say lost your last delivery, do you mean they just cancelled the order or did the goods just never appear? Did you get your payment returned?
mauricereed, my goods have not appeared as yet – they have told me to request a refund, which I know from experience is normally most efficient. However, I still live in hope my order will appear soon and if there is no sign of this by Thursday I will finally give up and request a refund.
I have seen numerous recommendations for using the .es site as the goods arrive fairly quickly and all within the EU so no hidden extras. Now they have a Portuguese variant of the .es site it might make things a little easier. Now that the UK is out of the EU do not order stuff from the UK site as you will wait ages and get stung for import duty etc.
It is always wise to double check what the origin of the delivery is. Sometimes you can have the same product 100 % sure to being sent from the EU instead of UK which is hopeless these after Brexit days !
Even before the UK left the EU the shipping from the UK was extremely slow and indeed iffy. Many things simply never arrived. They were refunded, but that is not what you really want.
Which was bad considering there were many direct flights.
Maybe they wanted to use a more traditional way of transport. And then there was no wind. :/
You may get it yet, Jayne. Our orders from Healthspan take three weeks minimum, sometimes four.
Anyone sending a parcel via CTT is now since 1January told to complete a 4 page form online, get a code & then take that & parcel to the P.O! (This does not seem to be retribution for Brexit, it applies all over the E.U. now.) Tried to do that. It has a language option at top ‘Portuguese or English’. Great, I thought, chose English – did it work? No! Well certainly not on my I.O.S. tablet. Completed most of it in Portuguese & then at the end it cut out for no reason & wiped all my work off, pouff! All great fun. There is an cunning alternative though; you can ask the assistant to complete it for you and pay €3 for the privilege. Think I will trot down to DHL.
Jaquine, I presume the assistance option is with DHL?
No I meant the Post Office assistant, who I had to pay last time as I was in a hurry.
Even before the post-Brexit difficulties, I was in the somewhat crazy situation of ordering (UK) Cryptic Crossword books from Amazon DE rather than Amazon UK. To Finland, provided you added stuff to the order to get over €39 for free order, DE used to deliver to the door typically in a week (and at the moment you don’t have to sign for it, just wave from a window). UK on the other hand was anything between 2-3 weeks and if too big for the letter-box you had to collect the parcel from the post office.
So the Amazon DE suggestion should not be ignored even for stuff that seems typically to only be available from a UK source.