Once you have chosen the model of your car seat and considered crash tests, safety with rear-facing travel and the right model for your conditions, it is time to strike and buy your car seat. If there is something you still feel unsure about, you can read more about this in our Car Seat Guide that can be found under Articles & Tools.
When you buy your car seat, you can either buy it in a store, online from a retailer’s E-commerce website or directly from the car seat company. From a safety point of view, it is not advisable to buy second hand car seats.
In store
The advantage of shopping in a store is that you can often receive help and support from the store staff. In most stores today, there are staff with good knowledge of car seats and child safety in the car. If you have a lot of questions and feel uncertain about what suits your situation and car, you can ask the store´s staff for help. Receiving recommendations based on preferences and needs is what many people appreciate most about shopping in a store. The advantage of also being able to see and feel the product, install the car seat in your car and in many cases, take it home immediately are also appreciated benefits.
E-commerce
The advantage of shopping on the internet is that the range is often larger, you can shop whenever you want to and you have the opportunity to conduct your research at a pace that suits you. Today, most e-retailers also have good support when it comes to both advice and help, but also for any returns or complaints. Today, there are also car seat manufacturers that sell from their own E-commerce and offer a so-called "Car fit Guarantee", which means that if your car seat does not fit in the car, you can send it back free of charge.
Second hand
As previously mentioned, you are advised not to buy a second-hand car seat. Much depends on all the uncertainty factors involved in buying a car seat on the second-hand market. Especially since, in most cases, you have no idea about the history of the car seat or don’t even know the seller. The car seat may have been involved in a collision and should then always be discarded, or it may be old and have hidden faults that cannot be detected with the naked eye.
As with everything else, development is also progressing, both tests and safety are being developed and higher demands are placed on new car seats. But how do you really know how old a car seat is and when it is too old? Normally, on the underside of the car seat there are small markers stamped that indicate when the car seat was manufactured. You can read more about how these should be interpreted here: https://axkid.com/safety/how-old-is-a-car-seat/
Read more about the choice of car seat and how the car affects the installation options in our car seat guide, which you will find in Articles and Tools.