Online shopping in Ireland

Hi all,
I actually wrote a blog about shopping in Ireland.  Check it out:
Shopping in Ireland

Slainte!

The possibility of online shopping made our life much easier. We live in a remote area in the Southwest of Ireland and the nearest town with shopping malls, hardware stores etc etc is a 1.5 hours drive away.

Online shopping with Littlewoods is quite good as you can open an account, order the goods (free delivery) and if for example clothing items don't fit you can send it back free of charge through Parcel Connect or Parcel Motel.

As almost everything can be ordered online these days, the more important point is how it gets to your door step and what are the costs of postage. Shopping on ebay and Amazon is great, but sometimes they don't deliver to Ireland.
AddressPal from An Post is a great help for that, as you can register online for an address in the UK and get your order shipped to this address. Your order will then be delivered either to your nominated Post Office or to your home address for decent prices.

You can also register for an US address, but we have no experience with that and don't know how this works with customs.

The UK AddressPal is absolutely fantastic and we ordered many items in the UK, where often the delivery charge within the UK is free. When the item is available for collection in "our" Post Office, we get a text message and also an email notification, the charge is 3.75 Euro for the postage between UK and Ireland for a parcel up to 20 kg and max. measurements 31 cm width, 25 cm depth and 72 cm length.