Anyone has problems ordering from Japan?

[Seiiki]

Hi Members:

Does anyone here order items from Japan throught Japamart? Any positive experiences with them for bidding items from Yahoo!Japan?

I registered with them because I had no choice. Then I bought some rare items from the auctions. Before bidding I have to give them deposits, that's fair enough. But sometimes the deposits I had to give them which takes a day to process. When I won the items, they charged handling fees and shipping charges. Sometimes they were outraegous with items that were 1000 yen and lower. So I have to keep sending money over to cover their costs.

Then I lost my credit card just before Christmas and took more than a month to get a new one. I explained to them my situation and asked to be lenient with my outstanding USD 10 cents shortage. They still charged me 2 late payment fees of $10.00 USD which I still paid. In addition, my fully paid 45,000 yen plus 9,800 yen EMS first package packed back in November was still sitting in their warehouse. It wasn't shipped until last week.

Needless to say, I was a trifle upset about all those nonsenses and wrote them that it was unfair. Guess what, they suspended my account with money still in my deposit and two paid items sitting in their warehouse.

What should I do?

[lezdep]

I don't have an advise for you. But thanks a lot for letting us know. I was just about to try their
service. Now I would not. What they did is outrages. Sounds like a very poor service indeed. They at least
must ship your paid items and return any extra money left back to you, before suspending an account.
Otherwise that is simply a rip off.

[nmasahiko]

Don't use Yahoo Japan action from over sea. Most of people don't want to ship over sea because shipping cost is very expensive now.

[brabhamboy]

I have used Japamart several times to buy some rare Meri 1/43 kits, without any problems, and would continue to do so. The charges and shipping can be expensive, especially if the item was bought fairly cheaply, and I have been stung on 2 occassions by UK postal customs charges
All their commission/handling/shipping fees are clearly displayed on the website, so if the model is rare enough and you MUST have it, you pay the ferryman.
That said, they do seem to have been really heavy-handed with the treatment of your account.

[BruceO]

Hi Guys have purchased three 1/20 kits through Japamart in the last couple of months and I'd agree their charges are somewhat steep, with kits about £10-20 GBP i recon to pay around double with all the commission charges etc, which for unusual/rare kits i guess is not too bad. Shipping well thats a different story, they appear not to want to ship SAL saying it costs the same as EMS???, for the same size model kits, shipping has been USD 26 OK, USD 31 So so, USD 36 Expensive, but the killer for me was with the expensive shipping it took it over the UK customs limit and I had to pay £3.50 VAT a joke! and £13.50 handling charge from Royal mail Parcel force, a £20.00 kit cost me the best part of £60.00

Will still use them but I wonder if there are better services than Japamart. Yahoo Auctions Japan is fantastic such variety, take a look if you haven't before

Cheers Bruce

[gilles.r]

Hi,

Some words to share my own experience.
Good , no problem. Great service , communication.
You know the rules , so , what to pay.
What you don't know are 2 shipping costs :
the internal Japanese , depending on the locations of the seller and Japamart headquarter and what will be the packing choosen to send your item, more or less heavy.
When purchasing at HLJ or HWJapan , you know basically your usual cost for one kind of product because they use standard boxes.
Here , the boxes are different , more or less light.

Yes , the time before your deposit and its activation can vary : for me , from 2 hours to 1 day.
This means you can not bid without this activation.
You must know that before bidding, and make your deposit in advance.

Finally , having some problems , you know that you are honnest , but they don't know that. And they do as their rules says.

Before decide to go with Japamart , if some people want to know examples , I'm ready to share my purchases and costs.
Just pm me.

Bye
Gilles

[eyckles]

hi,

recently i ordered decals from hlj. the price on the decals where 10$. but they didn't give any shipping fee. i had to leave my paypal account and i thought that the shipping would be like 5 -10$. was i wrong i payed double(20$) for the shipping fee. so lesson learned. i bought a couple of weeks later the same decalset from a webshop in uk payed half the price including shipping. sometimes i buy modelkits from hongkong via ebay or e-store and didn't have this problem. so before i buy something i search the net and see what is best to buy.

regards