In general deliveries between the islands work very well with Correos, the national delivery service, which is very efficient and grants sending a package between 24 and 72 hours depending on the chosen service but if we speak about international deliveries it’s a whole different story. The main thing to know? You have to be patient. Very patient.

Canary Islands have the big disadvantage of having Customs, which were introduced by Europe to protect the local economy but nowadays, with e-commerce kicking in, this Spanish region is almost excluded by most big brands and companies deliveries including most of Amazon’s products.

This happens for different reasons:

1) Customs is very slow in processing packages and during high peak seasons (Christmas, Easter) their offices are completely flooded with orders and the overall logistical structure hasn’t been properly designed for such volumes.
2) Customs apply a fee if your parcel coming from a European country has a value higher than €150, and this fee is calculated in very unclear ways. Usually for products over €150 you have a €30-€35 customs administration fee + 7% import IGIC (or different rate depending on the product). There can also be extra expenses but each product category has its own rules so it’s hard to get very detailed especially because these rules change almost monthly.
3) A new module for goods import has been introduced, the H7 module, and it is complicating the delivery companies job because it needs to be filled in certain ways and timing so many carriers apply an additional fee on transported products because of this extra serviced they are obliged to fulfill (asking extra money for filling up H7 modules is considered illegal though).
4) European delivery times are long. A normal delivery arrives in around 1 month, including Amazon Prime. If it’s a slow delivery it will take around 2 months to arrive, like for AliExpress.

Because of all these problems many European companies decide not to sell to Canary Islands. But things are changing, though! Amazon has recently started selling to Canary Islands some of its most popular products with a little trick.

If you plan to shop on Amazon it’s a good idea to install a plugin called “SendHerePlz” that will track whether the products shown are eligible for being sent to Canary Islands (make sure to set the right delivery address for filtering). Once you have selected your products and are in the checkout area you will notice there are 2 delivery options Standard and Amazon Global. This is a very important difference because on the Standard option the price will be lower because taxes (like IGIC and customs fee) are not included, while if you select Amazon Global the company itself will deal with all the tax procedure and you will only have to wait for your delivery.

My suggestion is that if the goods you’re buying have a value lower than €150 make sure to use the Standard Delivery, in this way you won’t pay taxes but you will also be sure that Customs will not stop your products because their value will not be taxable. Instead if you’re buying something with a value higher than €150 you absolutely have to check Amazon Global, in this way Customs won’t stop your package and Amazon will deal with all the procedure for importing the good.

If you have Amazon Prime a good trick is to place multiple orders with a value lower of €150, in this way you will always select the Standard shipping service and won’t pay taxes on those goods.

Another trick can be used on AliExpress as well. Recently the website has introduced a filter where you can decide where goods are coming from. If you are in Canary Islands make sure to select a European country as your source for goods, especially Spain if your products are available there. When you select China you’re almost guaranteed that Customs will stop the package unless it’s something with an extremely low value (€1-€5). Technically AliExpress will still import your product from China but because of some regulations and free-trade agreements it will look like you bought it from Spain or a European country (AliExpress bought some warehouses around Europe for this free-trade trick).