Recommendations for cost-efficient places to buy supplements/vitamins

[PracticingAcceptance]

I'm sure this question is answered elsewhere but my research skills are currently inaccessible.

I can see now that several vitamins (magnesium, cod liver oil, vit D and possibly others) are working for me.

Holland & Barratt is really expensive. I suspect some of you have found a good online place for buying supplements? Can you recommend please?
If you have shopped around and specifically know the cheapest places to get certain vitamins, please say.

More details:
- I prefer tablets to powders or liquids - means I can use my pill box organiser.
- I'm in the UK.
- Worried about delivery costs - maybe delivery costs mean it would be cheaper to buy elsewhere. I have a pharmacy close to my house, do you think they're just going to be the cheapest?

This is the pill box organiser if you're interested:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B076RVYDY8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Made me so happy to get it this week. Really makes a difference - my sleep is all over the place so I never was quite sure if I'd taken a pill or not.

 

[Hip]

I suspect some of you have found a good online place for buying supplements? Can you recommend please?

I have never found anybody cheaper in the UK than www.healthmonthly.co.uk . They have nice website, large range, reasonably fast delivery (it can take up to 5 days though), and free postage. They sell a lot of Swanson brand vitamins, which are known to be good value, but also other brands.

I also usually check Amazon UK and eBay for cheap deals.

 

[pamojja]

Till end of January LifeExtensionEurope has it's Supersale, when most essential become affordable if one buys at least 4 bottles of each. They have a premier reward program which costs 59,- €, which gives you 4% on all purchases, 40,- credit and free shipping for 1 year (without this program, shipping is a cheap flat rate). Also throughout the year they have affordable overstock sales from time to time. Otherwise, they're mostly very good quality, but too expensive. I get most essentials, like for example their Two-per-day multi, B-Complex, Omega-3 fish oil, individual vitamins and minerals, etc. for the whole year at this time of the year.

http://swansoneurope.com/ is an other one reasonable priced throughout the year with a flat shipping rate.

healthmonthly isn't that good from central Europe. I use it only for stuff which I can't get otherwise. Because for some unknown reason they send the shipments divided in multiple plastic bags with unreliable ordinary postal service from Spain. Usually takes at least a months till all bottle of an order arrives (luckily, nothing lost this way yet. But costs me a lot of nerves each time).

 

[Hip]

Because for some unknown reason they send the shipments divided in multiple plastic bags with unreliable ordinary postal service from Spain.

Health Monthly also do this in the UK, for some unknown reason. It's OK if you are just ordering two or three supplements, as often these will fit in the same plastic bag envelope. But if you order say 10 items, these will arrive in 3 or 4 separate bags (though often delivered at the same time).

Usually takes at least a months till all bottle of an order arrives

You have to be careful not to order an out of stock item, as this is the reason for many delays. When you search for a supplement on the Health Monthly site, they will show you all the products matching your search, including currently out of stock items. When you are brain fogged, it is easy to select an out of stock item by mistake, and then you will have to wait several weeks for it.



Another silly brain fog thing that I sometimes do when ordering is I forget to press the final order confirmation button, so that my order does not get registered. Then three weeks later, I start to wonder why my supplements have not yet arrived!

 

[Carl]

I too use http://www.healthmonthly.co.uk/index.php
for a lot of stuff. They do have some discounts at certain times of year and also coinciding with people's pay day. There also tends to be a discount when spending over a certain amount. Prices did rise significantly after Brexit due to the change in exchange rate with the dollar. They did add free delivery to offset it a bit. There is also a tiny cashback with Topcashback too but far lower than it used to be when it was about 10% then 8% and now around 1%. I use any cashback towards purchases on Amazon.

For more specialist things I tend to use https://www.amritanutrition.co.uk/

I was using their Swanson P-5-P capsules but have found it far cheaper to buy P5P powder on eBay instead. A mg scale is needed to measure it out. I order that from a company on eBay. I will not post the company here because I do not want them getting into any trouble. I will provide a link to anyone who is a member.

They also sell Milk Thistle extract powder which is getting harder to find now as it is only meant to be sold to practitioners due to drug companies and the THMPD.

I am concidering purchasing from https://www.luckyvitamin.com/departments
This is a US site but can deal with Duty and VAT so that nothing needs to be paid on delivery. I have not ordered yet but the charges do seem okay from what I have seen so far. They do sell a Vit D3 supplement which I was purchasing on Amazon until they stopped selling it. It's difficult to find in the UK now but it is very good value for money. I just paid quite a bit more for another product of less volume on an Amazon lightning deal.

Healthmonthly can get a bit slow at times, it's fine if you are not waiting and can deal with an unpredictable delivery time. I leave a tiny porch window open so the RoyalMail can post any small packets though it. Occasionally they do send direct from the US and that can incur VAT and duty if over £135 and a Royalmail collection fee. Healthmonthly do repay that but it is a bit annoying have to deal with it. They should work out a better way of doing it by prepaying the fees or at least marking the package so that the receiver will pay the fee directly to HM customs who would then write to confirm the amount payable. That would mean no rip off £9.60 RM collection fees.

I am waiting for some items from Healthmonthly and it is delaying the destruction of the cause of CFS which can be different in every sufferer. It's the location which is most important. I have already had delays because of eBay sellers sending incorrect items prior to Christmas and it taking a month to recover a substantial amount of money after they did everything possible to prevent a refund. Claiming that they did not receive the item back even though tracking and a signature shows that they did. They have even sent me 6 email messages trying to get me to reverse negative feedback. Chinese ebay sellers, I will consider carefully before using any in future. However I have found Chinese people actually in the UK such as TCM herbalists to be nice people and very helpful. One drove me to accident and emergency when I broke my wrist which he had no involvement in. But the Chinese eBay seller I have been dealing with is a right lying SOB! Twice telling me via messenging that they were sending the item that I wanted and one recall and then I got the wrong item after all the wasted time.

 

[PracticingAcceptance]

Thank you all so much for this.

It took me ages to get my head round what was the most cost efficient one... they're all different strengths.

Eventually I sat down, put the details down in a spreadsheet, and worked out per DOSE (however many pills I'd have to take to add up to the amount I need to take) what the cost was. All of them are cheaper than Holland and Baratt!

I've gone with Health Monthly this time. It's great you can get things increasingly cheaply in bulk. Once you know what you need to take, it's useful... not so useful when you're not sure what works for you yet though.

 

[vaer]

I have never found anybody cheaper in the UK than www.healthmonthly.co.uk .

great site! check it's amazon seller page, sometimes it's cheaper (if they sell it through them)

bodykind.com is another good site to compare.

For more specialist things I tend to use https://www.amritanutrition.co.uk/

yep, stocks a variety of the USA more quality brands such as Pure Encapsulations. although can be pricey sometimes compared to the equivalent RRP you can get in USA but i guess you can't find much of this branded stuff here in the UK and import costs passed down to consumer etc

Natural Dispensary is another great specialist stockist. I compare from both

i can get some discount on these specialist/practitioner refereed stockists...so yeah pm