What's the point of the Amazon Global Store?

[Condottiere]

What's the point of the Amazon Global Store?

Back in July, I purchased La bataille oubliée : Agnadel, 1509 : Louis XII contre les Vénitiens via AGS, instead of through Amazon UK or France, but I didn't see any benefits and ending up paying $2 or $3 more than had I bought the book from the UK store. There's the ease of returning a defective item domestically instead of shipping overseas, but Amazon UK in the past has handled this without hassle: was told I could keep the damaged book and they shipped me a new one.

For those in the UK who've used this option, were import fees taken care of as mentioned on the help page?

I'm not charged customs duties/fees for buying books from overseas and haven't been refunded the amount included in the shipping, also mentioned in help page.

If Amazon's estimate for the Import Fees Deposit is greater than what is needed, you will be automatically refunded the difference to your original payment method. You will never be asked to pay more than the estimated Import Fees Deposit.

There might be some Amazon Marketplace sellers refusing to ship overseas, so Amazon acts as the middleman, but there are alternatives like Abebooks, Biblio and etc..