I also order directly from SNS to the UK using the "First Class Mail® International (USPS)" option. I've not had to pay customs or taxes across 6 or 7 orders. Unsure if this is built into the shipping option (like for iHerb) or if I've been consistently lucky at the border processing.
With the 25% and 30% holiday sales pricing can work out a lot cheaper than purchasing in the UK, even with shipping. I get the shipments pretty quick - probably 7 to 11 days or so. When the £ to $ was better the price advantage was bigger - but given typical pricing for SNS in the UK, I still tend to order from SNS directly. Currently waiting for the next big sale (Halloween? Black Friday? Thanksgiving?) and hoping a lot of things will be back in stock by then. That's actually one point for purchasing in the UK - sometimes SNS will be OOS, but suppliers in the UK may still have stock (albeit at high prices).
Just me - but I keep each order under about £200 or £220 or so. On other sites (not SNS) I've seen warnings that orders over a certain amount won't include VAT/duties. Unsure if that's also true with the method of shipping used by SNS - but just to be careful, I do multiple orders to go over those amounts.
Thank you for sharing that and I'm glad that you've had positive experiences ordering from us.
We typically do intro sales for products and then holiday sales and there may be a holiday sale.
For international customers that want to place large orders, if there isn't a sale going, are always welcome to contact me and I'll help in any way that I can.
As for out of stocks, we have over 70 sku's so something is always going to be out of stock, that's just an unfortunate part of the supply chain issues and also of us being very picky as to the raw materials that we'll use for many products. Overall, our stock levels continue to improve weekly and are a lot better than they were at the peak of the supply chain issues.
As for the last part about VAT/duties, we do not do anything specific for that or make any guarantees on that. I'm happy for people that they generally don't get charged them, but I want to make it clear that we don't guarantee that bc I don't want anyone getting upset at us if they do.