A lot of the products from German Amazon cannot be shipped to Switzerland. Not sure why.

Because it is not in EU.

But it is in the EEA. I would imagine the barrier here isn’t legal policy or trade customs but simply currency difference. Since the price-cap charade a few years ago, the Franc has probably lost trust with quite a few businesses.

Switzerland is not part of the EEA. It has a bunch of EEA-like bespoke deals with the EU.

The most obvious gap for a traveler is that the EEA mobile roaming price regulation doesn't apply if you are on an EEA operator and roam to Switzerland.

It's not that hard to ship a parcel across a border. Maybe having to pay tariffs would destroy the "Amazon experience" or something?

Apparently it isn't worth the effort.

Could be that Swiss customs takes ages to clear parcels. Could be that tax or import duties are complicated or simply just so high that it's not worth it. I knew a lot of people in Switzerland near the German border used to go shopping in Germany because was significantly cheaper, probably still the case today.

Not so much the case today that it is significantly cheaper because the Swiss Franc weak-end 7-8% in the last year to the Euro. Also, the German food is not comparable to Swiss food in quality. Example: Swiss meat is more expensive but then again it is from Switzerland and not form Poland (which can happen in Germany but not in Switzerland because of the tariffs on foreign meat).

Unlikely to be about Amazon experience. They currently offer Fire TV Basic to EU countries that don't have Amazon presence but they don't do so from within the EU from e.g. amazon.de but from amazon.com going through customs.

Amazon is doing a lot of this now, for example into India. They take a prepayment for duties, clear it for you and refund if it ended up costing less to clear.

Not really. Amazon charges you the import duty when you place the order. The only difference is that it takes a bit longer to get delivered.

It's also true for The Netherlands.

It's true for many countries. The biggest reason is because they are not in the EU. The logistics of getting stuck at some border control is something most sellers don't want to deal with.

Last time I checked the Netherlands we're in the EU and there was no Nexit. Switzerland is different, though. They are indeed outside the customs union. (Which is always interesting to watch, when travelling across the border in trains and passengers are confused by the radom customs control, since they are part of Schengen, where people, not goods, can travel freely)

Well, I don't understand what's there to check, I never said Netherlands wasn't in EU.

The most probable reason why you can't get packages from EU Amazon to Switzerland is because they are not in EU.

The same reason applies to why you can't get packages to EU if you're trying to get them from US.

Yes, some big sellers don't mind but small ones do, and EU Amazon does have a huge variety of sellers.

For example, I've lived in Croatia before and after EU membership. The Amazon situation changed completely and now I can get packages from any EU Amazon.

I live in Finland (which is in EU) and Amazon (or their European sellers) is the only major web store inside EU that does not ship most of the products here. German Amazon even regularly pushes ads for products that can not be shipped here.

In contrast, most non-EU stores (except Amazon again) happily ship here, even if the shipping fees may be extremely high and border control is left to buyer's problem.

I meant it's also true that Amazon won't ship many thing to The Netherlands, which is in the EU.

Then it shouldn't be any products and not just some products.

Generally, but there are exceptions.

I usually just search for "Amazon Prime" items, but sometimes those items can't be shipped or aren't even available with Amazon prime! It's a total mess.

You can also punch the ASIN from one amazon site into another. And since the URL already contains the ASIN you can just change .co.uk to .de for example.

That generally gets you FBA though - which is where the worst of the counterfeiting problems are.