One stop proxy?

[theultimatebrucelee]

Would like to purchase a resin kit on Yahoo Japan and due to its fragile nature, I would like to use a proxy service that ships from Japan directly to my address. Can anyone recommend me a proxy they had used/heard of that packages really safe and would charge a relatively low fee on really expensive items?

Thanks in advance!

[cutiebunny]

Rinkya ships directly from Japan but as they add a handling fee, the shipping fees are high.

[teggacat]

Rinkya ships directly from Japan but as they add a handling fee, the shipping fees are high.

yeah, I have to second what CB says, while Rinkya proxy & shipping fees are rather high they do pack EXTREMELY carefully and do ship direct

[ReiTheJelly]

You could also look at Japonica Market or Treasure Japan. Both ship directly from Japan.

Rinkya takes excellent care to package your items carefully, but they are on the expensive side. As much as I love their automated bidding system, their fees are much higher than other deputy services, so I've basically stopped using them.

[theultimatebrucelee]

Yeah, I've heard some gossips about Rinkya before and because of it, I have not purchased with them yet. as much as excellent packaging means to me, the fee difference certainly takes its toll at times.

on a side note, I just got a reply from SMJ saying that its possible to ship directly from Japan to US. what do people think of SMJ's packaging?

out of Japonica Market and Treasure Japan, JM looks like the cheaper of the two, but SMJ has the 35$ flat rate fee which is really tempting me.

[Sui Kune]

For SMJ I've never had any problems with their packaging since I began using them in 2007. If anything there's always an abundance of packaging peanuts with every package. XD However, I also have my items stored in the US warehouse and never had them ship something directly from Japan.

I do use Treasure Japan too and they're excellent, their only downside is their lack of real-time bidding but if an item doesn't require bidwarring, they're definitely a good go-to.

[sugarcels]

I have used SMJ since around 2005, and aside from one or two incidents, I don't think I really have any issues with them. They always ship items very well - in fact, lately they've sent my things in unnecessarily large boxes and then they cover the space with a couple tons of packing peanuts XD But they're very nice and they answer my emails quickly.

If you want something from a store you might be able to use Jshoppers. You buy the item yourself using an assigned Japanese address, the item is sent to the Japanese address, and then they immediately ship it to you. No fees, either! But you can only send items by EMS, unfortunately.

[theultimatebrucelee]

Thanks guys, for sharing your exp. for cel related items I have used SMJ often since their proxy fee is reletively low, that and their packaging easily takes care of those.

for more fragile stuff I have used SMJ in the past as well, I can say the result is--acceptable. there have been items that are damaged, but that is certainly USPS's fault as their packing was not bad but two trips with USPS certainly increases the risk significantly. but I was wondering about other members exp with them.

I generally used m-world service for my most important items but their fees are quite high...with their paypal fee charge added in it could be as high as around 25% even on expensive items. their package is the best though, for the couple of years using them I only once had problem so far with them and thats most likely due to the suspicious package size I get sometimes lol

[ReiTheJelly]

...for more fragile stuff I have used SMJ in the past as well, I can say the result is--acceptable. there have been items that are damaged, but that is certainly USPS's fault as their packing was not bad but two trips with USPS certainly increases the risk significantly. but I was wondering about other members exp with them.

I used Celga from approximately 2002-2003 (not entirely certain, as it was a very short period of time). I stopped because it was a huge pain to e-mail them for every transaction.

From about 2003-2010, I had an account with SMJ. Over the years, I had numerous book-keeping issues with that company. But the straw the finally pushed me to never use them again was when, after years of inactivity on my account, I finally tried to use my account - only to find it was closed. When I asked why, Nick claimed I owed him quite a bit of money. However, when I asked what for...he couldn't tell me because he didn't know. Seriously?! Who doesn't keep an exact record, especially if someone owes you money?!! And from all my e-mail correspondence (thank you gmail and your archive system!), I could find no record of this unpaid bill. All I could find were copies of invoices, which I proved I'd promptly paid after searching my Paypal account history. I had zero e-mails from SMJ claiming I owed them any additional money. I screen-capped all of this and sent it to Nick as proof that I didn't owe him anything. I will never again do business with a company as poorly run as his appears to be.

TL;DR - I had a very weird/bad experience with SMJ and will never use them again.

I've used Rinkya for about 7 years now, and while their fees are on the higher side, all of my items have been well-packed and I've never experienced a significant accounting error with them.

I've been using Japonica Market and Treasure Japan for the past year, or so. I don't particularly like the e-mail aspect of JM, so I'm willing to pay the higher fees for the semi-automated website TJ uses. I've ordered a number of fragile items and Treasure-Japan has always been very careful in packing them for international shipment.

[theultimatebrucelee]

that is certainly some bizarre exp there-_-"

its always nice to have proven reliable proxies around, and even more tempting when its about saving money lol I'll be sure to give TJ's highly praised service a try one of these days.

[Animechaos]

Rei, I still got the emails as well and happy to forward them, and looking over them again everything was cleared up easily and in your favor.

Basicaly you owed $xxx.xx amount overdue from over 2 years prior. Since we already wrote the account off from 2 years of inactivity and no replies we didn't keep the info other than the total amount from the write off. Also in the course of our emails, where you wanted to reactivate the account, I stated that I'll just clear out the account so you don't owe anything. Basically I paid for it myself to clear it up for you and reopen the account.

TL;DR - I had a very weird/bad experience with SMJ and will never use them again.

Nothing weird about it and don't know how it's a bad experiance. I paid the bill, which was free money, and a clean account to start fresh with purely out of trust. It's a little heartbreaking to me to find out when I go those extra miles, do something I doubt any other deputy would consider, just to be berated on a forum for doing it.

Sorry folks, normally I wouldn't make a post like this but that comment just crushed me on a personal level.