I just replied to an old thread but then realised that this forum would be a better place for it. After a bit of info on Yahoo Japan. If a moderator wants to remove this due to the double post thats fine, just not sure why the original post was in "off topic" and not here.
I say dont bother with these fucking companys for useing yahoo japan amazon japan it works out more some of the time its only worth it if you can't find the item plus there not easy to use.:nod:
The company i use is plenty simple enougth. Just wondering if there is a more cost effective way of purchasing those harder to find items.
They will almost never ship abroad, and don't take Paypal anyway. There is a minimum amount of work involved (even for 500 yen items), thus, it gets pricey. I adopt the system that allows you to combine multiple items in one transaction (from the same seller) but that's about the best break you can find. 10 transactions at 500 yen each is still 10x the work for 1 5000 yen transaction. Makes sense that it costs 10x the fees. I think w/ the smaller proxies you'll have better luck not getting nicked for import duties though.
Find a friend in japan i had one once who had a shop i just sent him an email after i brought some goods of his ebay shop and he said i will help you the best i can. and he found me all the games i wanted in mint condition after about a month postage for 5 psx games was 16u.s no fee. what a nice guy used to do this for me alot until he did not want to sell on ebay.lost contact:crying:
Yeah, I have a couple items I can only seem to find on yahoo jp, (doremi fantasy, have a thread about it and still no luck, and a couple others). I've got a friend there that might be able to hook me up as a middleman, but I also don't want to bother him and seem like I just want to use him as a tool to get myself some stuff. I'd just find someone on ebay and just ask if they can find it for you. They just might.
How do you mean? Just find a seller on ebay selling from japan and ask them if they want to make a few quid buying from yahoo for me?
You're going to have to pay (about the same?) either way. Bottom line: locating games and reselling is work, and it takes time. This is where the fees come in. It's going to have to be a very good friend to do it for free. I've seen a few of these pop up recently. I've got a system than notifies me when items of interest are around. Pretty handy.
Well, sort of. I'd think more along the lines of "hi, I'm looking for xxxxx, you wouldn't happen to have it or know where I could find it, would you?" I'm not sure if these people have some sort of source for their goods, but maybe they can keep their eye out for it, or maybe they have a lot of stuff they haven't listed.
I totally understand. I figured perhaps some sellers might have more stock than what they have up for sale, or have a simple way of looking for items, as opossed to having to go out of their way and truely search for an item. Either way, if someone wants someone to go out of their way to get something, it would have to be something they CANNOT find elsewhere, and be willing to pay extra for the special service the seller is doing for them. I can't get DoReMi Fantasy here WHATSOEVER it seems (unless I get lucky). The cart-only is listed on Yahoo Japan for y2000 (BIN y2500ish), and I'd be willing to give someone at least another 10 bucks beyond final price and expensive shipping to get it to me. So, I suppose as a summary: expect to pay for what you're getting, realizing all of the game's price, shipping, the effort to get it, etc. It sucks to hear that people can't follow up on their "orders". They should make it clear exactly what they want, so the seller can get an item that fits all their priorities (condition, etc). Perhaps offer the seller to set up an auction that they can "win", so that you're then put into the legal contract that eBay offers that an auction is. Even then, yes - it's a bit sketchy at best.
Oh this is so f*cking true. how it pisses me off when people expect me to sell them stuff for the cost price or slightly over. Another one quoted for truth. I remember some retard wouldn't pay the traveling expenses to buy the item he wanted. He couldn't understand that there were none locally. These people think that there are super cheap quality gaming items on every block of Japan. yakumo
I figured out a long time ago that it is cheaper to fly to Japan once or twice a year to go shopping than to use auctions or shops. The advantages are obvious: - You can shop around for the best price and condition. - You can ship everything out by boat which is way cheaper than most online shops or auction agents are willing to do. - You can carry your most prized acquisitions home in your luggage. - At home, you save huge amounts of time by not have to deal with auctions and emails only to get a single item. Assuming you collect in volume, the savings on shipping costs are enough to offset the hotel and plane ticket especially with the current (nice!) euro/yen exchange rate.
There are disadvantages too... If you are searching for common machines, Saturn, Megadrive, Famicom, Super Famicom, Dreamcast, Playstation 2, GBA, DS, Xbox 360, Wii, N64, PS3, PSP, Game Gear, Virtual Boy, then you should find most of what you want, but other machines could be tricky to find certain titles, unless you really like visiting shops over and over again. Took me over 3 years to find all the Dead Heat Fighters in the wild (and I spent over 2 months at a time at least 3 times in a year, so I wasn't go out there for a week...), Playstation isn't in that list as the sheer amount of titles mean that hunting down specific titles can be quite tricky. If you want software on any computer that isn't an MSX (and for that you are still paying a stupidly high premium) then you aren't going to find anything much in Osaka or Tokyo. So things like FM Towns, Macintosh, PC-9801 and anything older you would be looking very hard to find anything. If you do ship by boat and it goes missing, then you need someone in Japan to make a claim for you unless you send it unregistered... Nice? It's fallen over 40 yen in the last year, okay it's gained 10 yen since the lowest point but it's nowhere near nice... Anyway I still enjoy buying things in the wild, just a lot more trickier....
Yeah, I don't see any time that flying to Japan would be cheaper, unless ordering a very large ammount of items, and then you'd have to have at least most of them them shipped back anyway. How much is a round-trip ticket halfway around the world? Has to be in the $500-1000 range.
I think if someone knows about Yahoo Auctions, and wants to buy something, and knows people can buy it and send it to them, then they probably know about proxy services. And if they aren't using a proxy service, there's usually a reason. And 99% of the time the reason is that they are looking to save a few bucks on commission.
Yep Proxy service comission is around 20% most of the time and some are coming up with rules on min price for items. With the yen how it is right now makes things pretty hard. Also on any buyers behalf its just silly to do work for less then 20% on a item worth less then like £50.
If you play your cards right, you can keep it down much lower (multiple auctions from 1 seller, specifically). The internal shipping and bank xfer fees can get nasty though. Some YJ sellers will only ship securely, which is rather costly. $6-$8 for a single game at times. If they require chakubarai, it's even more.
