Anasazi37
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Everything posted by Anasazi37
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I'm not sure why I didn't make the connection--thanks for the reminder. I saw that post a few months ago and said "meh." Not a big fan of expensive subscription builds (especially since I don't live in Japan). I'll stick to my Plamax 1/20 kits. All we need is for Max Watanabe to make a retail version of the Strike battroid he recently kitbashed for an event and I'll have all three modes.
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Glad I'm not the only who feels that the kite symbol is way too large.
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Direct link to the site: http://www.hcj.jp/vf1/home.html
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I've had good experiences with them when ordering TWE items. Buyee is another option that MW members have talked about, and there are several more that all seem reasonable. Whichever proxy you go with, though, you should get your orders in early. Bandai enforces per-item purchasing limits. They might be higher for proxies than for individual customers, but there are limits. I've already had one order cancelled by FJ for that reason, but they were very professional about it. They explained why it happened and immediately refunded my payment. You should see all of the items you've requested to ship in the "Pay Shipping" section and once they're shipped they'll show up in the "Shipped" section, which is as close as they get to giving you a list of past orders. Their system is not as elegant as HLJ's, but at least the items don't completely disappear.
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Seems like they sent that message to everyone who ordered SSP sets from them, regardless of when the order was placed (mine was after P-Bandai started taking POs for the April batch)
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Thanks for the heads up, guys! I just checked my account and my set is ready to ship, too. Availability notices from them have been hit or miss for me over the past year.
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Mine went straight to the Junk Mail folder, so even my email provider is skeptical of their "highest and sincere regards"
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My hopes of obtaining TWE items directly were dashed right after setting up a Tenso forwarding address. Bandai put several countermeasures in place to thwart forwarding services: You have to provide your name in both Kanji and Hiragana You have to provide a valid domestic phone number (they won't accept the one provided by Tenso and other forwarding services) You have to provide valid domestic financial information (e.g., bank account, credit card, pre-loaded debit/gift card) The first one isn't too difficult, and the second one could potentially be arranged with some planning (buy a cell?), but the third is the hardest because of banking laws and procedures that require identity and residency verification. I'm sure that those laws and procedures exist for very good reasons and, based on a quick interwebz search, trying to set something up remotely looks to be challenging. So far they haven't blocked proxy buying services, but they do put a limit on purchase quantity. I found that out the hard way when I recently tried to get two Missile sets using FromJapan and my order was cancelled because FJ hit their ceiling. I think we're finding that the proxies move faster than AE and NY, and are a heck of a lot more transparent and professional, but there is still a delay (several hours to several days, depending on your time zone) because you have to tell them what you want, they have to send you a quote, then you have to pay, and only then do they attempt to make the purchase for you. Given how quickly the first release SSP sets sold out, I wonder how many people managed to snag them via proxies.
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Status update for anyone who ordered SSP sets from AE: I'm still waiting for an "item available for shipping" notification from them. They've confirmed twice that mine will ship this month, but I don't believe them. I'm beginning to think that they completely screwed up orders for the first release since it sold out so fast.
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There are three versions of it: Regular, SP, and Wings of Goodbye. The last one is a little darker green than the first two and both the SP and WoG versions have "nose art" but they are different. All three regularly show up on Mandarake, if you're patient. Looks like @sh9000 has the same one I do (WoG). Here is @jenius's full review: http://anymoon.com/blog/?p=4194
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Yikes. Well, worst case, I'll customize it. Maybe a Blue Roses 002 or a Minmay Guard Moon Act.
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Finally snagged a Hikaru 1S Strike today! It's usually up there on the more expensive side (¥17,000-19,000) with Roy's Strike, but Jungle had one for ¥13,200 in B condition, so I pounced on it. I've had good luck with their B-level stuff, so I'm willing to take the chance. The last B item I ordered was the Missile Effect Set and the description said it had been opened and displayed. Opened, yes. Displayed? Not likely, unless it was in the tray with the cover on it. Pieces looked brand new and all of the plastic bits were still on the sprues.
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Agreed. That's why I've switched to using proxies like FromJapan unless I have no other choice. They've always been honest with me about when they can and can't order an item for me. I don't like how AE is handling this situation.
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My AE order for the SSP set also shows that it's shipping in April, but I confirmed with them back in July that it would ship this month. Based on what I've been reading here, I sent them an email last night, asking to reconfirm, and they wrote back within a few hours and did so. I placed my order as soon as AE opened up their listing, which was technically the day before the official PO, and definitely before the second batch was announced, so that is probably why they're telling me that my set is coming soon. I'm still skeptical.
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One step closer to an actual kit. At least he's thinking about it now and playing around with some ideas.
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A very cruel error....
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Same here. Shows as available, lets you add to cart, but after logging in, it errors out saying stock not available.
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Friend of mine sent me this article today: https://www.smh.com.au/education/vce-authorities-apologise-for-phantom-robot-20121119-29lbl.html HMR Glaugs are showing up in the oddest places....
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I confirmed this with Tenso yesterday. I tried to register on P-Bandai so I could cut out the middlemen and they wouldn't accept the phone number provided with my Tenso address, so I contacted Tenso and asked for an alternate number. This was their response:
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Looks like 15 Nov at 4pm JST, so two weeks. They might have hit their limit sooner than that, but I'm not sure. Something to keep in mind for the future when ordering through proxies: even if the P-Bandai site says that orders are still being accepted for an item, weeks or months after the initial offering date, you might be out of luck if you don't pull the trigger within a few days.
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I know that there's always been a limit, but FJ either hit it a lot faster than usual or the limit has been lowered.
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Wanted to give everyone a heads up that if you were planning to order Missile Sets through the proxy service FromJapan, you won't be able to. I placed an order for two yesterday and they cancelled the order today, immediately refunding my payment, with this is as the reason: I'd never run into that problem before with them. Makes me wonder if proxies are caught up in Bandai's response to what happened with the first round of SSP sets, which sold out almost instantly. Maybe Bandai is taking the scalping situation more seriously than we thought? (HA!) Setting the limit low for individual customers would definitely slow down the people causing problems for the rest of us, but it won't stop them. I'm more surprised that FJ is viewed by Bandai as a single customer. You'd think they'd have a bunch of accounts set up on the P-Bandai site, one per employee, to deal with this situation.
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I'm wondering if no one caught it on the production quality control side because the first two releases were 101 and 111, so mirroring the numbers was perfectly fine.
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As a professionally-trained anthropologist, I agree with this assessment. What makes things even more complicated for us as collectors is when, in addition to this big difference between East and West, you have support staff from other parts of the world who bring their own perspectives and may or may not receive training on how to keep Western customers happy. With that said, how much responsibility do online stores have to keep us happy? I'd argue that if they are directly catering to Westerners, and make a big deal of it, the level of responsibility goes up. For example, HLJ and proxy services like FromJapan know exactly who their core customers are and make sure that they staff and train their support teams accordingly. For smaller operations and/or ones that only dabble in overseas sales, I think we have to set the bar much lower. With all of this said, stores in Japan that cancel existing pre-orders, providing some kind of lame excuse about lack of stock, and then turn around and sell units at marked up prices, are going against the established collectivist norms of behavior in multiple ways. Sadly, greed often overrides virtuousness. Short of finding a way to publicly name-and-shame them in their front yards, where it will actually have an impact because their reputations would be damaged, there's probably not much we can do. Knowing that stores are offering to buy back orders for more than retail, but allowing you to keep your order if you want to, is an encouraging sign.
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Mandarake had another one, unopened with damaged packaging (meaning little to no actual visible damage because of how they rigorously rate stuff), for ¥25,000. With average bidding prices at the same level, there's a good chance that this is as low as we're going to see it.
