How To - Get Something Through Yahoo Auctions/From Japan

[sqidd]

I see a couple things I want to bid on/get on Yahoo auctions. I haven't done this before and looking for advice. If I understand it correctly this is how it works:

-Place bid through From Japan? I alreday have an account from pre ordering the VF-0D PF.

-If I win the bid am I assuming it gets shipped to From Japan?

-From Japan will hold it in the "warehouse" for how long? I want to get multiple things shipped together DHL to amortize the cost.

-When I'm ready to ship I let them know and just have them ship it?

 

What am I missing? What measures do I need to protect myself? Anything goofy about the bidding process?

Thanks!

[Anasazi37]

5 minutes ago, sqidd said:

I see a couple things I want to bid on/get on Yahoo auctions. I haven't done this before and looking for advice. If I understand it correctly this is how it works:

-Place bid through From Japan? I alreday have an account from pre ordering the VF-0D PF.

-If I win the bid am I assuming it gets shipped to From Japan?

-From Japan will hold it in the "warehouse" for how long? I want to get multiple things shipped together DHL to amortize the cost.

-When I'm ready to ship I let them know and just have them ship it?

 

What am I missing? What measures do I need to protect myself? Anything goofy about the bidding process?

Thanks!

I've ordered a few things from YJ through FJ. Super simple. Yes, it gets shipped them like any other item. If tax is not included in the auction, they will add it. I think they will hold items for 45 days. Works a lot like HLJ's Private Warehouse. One thing to note is that if you use their protection plan, non-trackable shipping options won't be available. More instructions here: https://www.fromjapan.co.jp/member/order/ship.

Edited April 22, 2020 by Anasazi37

[jenius]

One thing to watch out for is that the costs can be a little surprising... particularly when you get hit with tax you weren't expecting. There's your bid amount, there may be tax, there's domestic shipping, there's a wire fee, there's a plan fee, then there's a shipping fee to you. None individually are super high but if you win a few auctions those various charges can add up and you can quickly swing from feeling like you got a great deal on some stuff to realizing you paid a very similar price to what Mandarake or similar business would charge. That's not to say you can't also grab a great deal too. 

Also, regarding grouping things for a DHL shipment, you are at their whim for this, even if they let you house items for a while. Last time I tried to ship something using FromJapan I got an error that the box was too big and I had to split up my shipment. Honestly, I didn't even think it was that much stuff, was rather surprised I had to break it up.

[sqidd]

28 minutes ago, Anasazi37 said:

I've ordered a few things from YJ through FJ. Super simple. Yes, it gets shipped them like any other item. If tax is not included in the auction, they will add it. I think they will hold items for 45 days. Works a lot like HLJ's Private Warehouse. One thing to note is that if you use their protection plan, non-trackable shipping options won't be available. More instructions here: https://www.fromjapan.co.jp/member/order/ship.

 

11 minutes ago, jenius said:

One thing to watch out for is that the costs can be a little surprising... particularly when you get hit with tax you weren't expecting. There's your bid amount, there may be tax, there's domestic shipping, there's a wire fee, there's a plan fee, then there's a shipping fee to you. None individually are super high but if you win a few auctions those various charges can add up and you can quickly swing from feeling like you got a great deal on some stuff to realizing you paid a very similar price to what Mandarake or similar business would charge. That's not to say you can't also grab a great deal too. 

Also, regarding grouping things for a DHL shipment, you are at their whim for this, even if they let you house items for a while. Last time I tried to ship something using FromJapan I got an error that the box was too big and I had to split up my shipment. Honestly, I didn't even think it was that much stuff, was rather surprised I had to break it up.

Thank you thank you.

 

[Anasazi37]

49 minutes ago, jenius said:

One thing to watch out for is that the costs can be a little surprising... particularly when you get hit with tax you weren't expecting. There's your bid amount, there may be tax, there's domestic shipping, there's a wire fee, there's a plan fee, then there's a shipping fee to you. None individually are super high but if you win a few auctions those various charges can add up and you can quickly swing from feeling like you got a great deal on some stuff to realizing you paid a very similar price to what Mandarake or similar business would charge. That's not to say you can't also grab a great deal too. 

Also, regarding grouping things for a DHL shipment, you are at their whim for this, even if they let you house items for a while. Last time I tried to ship something using FromJapan I got an error that the box was too big and I had to split up my shipment. Honestly, I didn't even think it was that much stuff, was rather surprised I had to break it up.

Tenso is another service where you have to watch out for small costs adding up. There's a per-item handling charge and another consolidation charge if you want to ship several items in one box. On top of that, their actual shipping prices are inflated, so they are probably skimming off the top. I put up with it for certain items that I can only ship to an address in Japan. Mostly for stuff I find on AJ.

[sqidd]

Forget it, I found it. It's back a page.

 

Edited April 22, 2020 by sqidd

[Vertex]

As been mentioned those small fees do add up - death by paper cuts. On the bright side FJ does offer a discount on EMS/FedEx once your total purchase has reach a certain amount. I think its 3% once you've purchased 40k in goods, 5% once you've done 100k (which is not hard to do in this hobby). It's not much but it should offset some of the fees.  Buyee (aka Tenso) will charge a package consolidation fee (I think its 1000 yen) where FJ doesn't. For domestic delivery on something like one Yamato 1/48 I've seen costs around 1.5k 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 23, 2020 by Vertex

[eXis10z]

Deleted.

Edited April 23, 2020 by eXis10z

[MKT]

Without getting into whichever proxy you use & different fee structures, whether Buyee, From Japan, Zenmarket etc, there are normally 3 things I watch out for on Yahoo Japan Auctions itself:

1. Whether if seller is an individual or corporation. For corporations, there is a 10% local consumption tax on top of the bid price.

2. Whether if the seller details out the local shipping costs. Most reputable ones do, so do note where the proxy warehouse is located to know how much is the local shipping. At same time, a fair number of sellers do not list out the local shipping costs; perhaps just mentioning the local courier service name. This is where it can get slightly tricky because there are cases of sellers who charge an obviously exorbitant shipping fee independent of the actual shipping fee, perhaps wanting to make up for a low auction closing price, and there is nothing the proxy can do about it. In these auctions where shipping fee structure are not thoroughly specified, then I would pay more attention to the next item:

3. The sellers' rating. I read somewhere before in these forums that sellers' ratings work a bit differently in YJA, in that the seller can actually delete negative comments by buyers, which is quite a big deal. But it appears that most sellers in Japan have better sense of ingrained integrity than the rest of the world, ie eBay, so at end of day the ratings in YJA are more trustable compared to eBay.

These above guidelines  have served me quite well on the occasional items bought off YJA over the past 2-3 years.. 

 

[Vertex]

3 hours ago, MKT said:

Without getting into whichever proxy you use & different fee structures, whether Buyee, From Japan, Zenmarket etc, there are normally 3 things I watch out for on Yahoo Japan Auctions itself:

1. Whether if seller is an individual or corporation. For corporations, there is a 10% local consumption tax on top of the bid price.

2. Whether if the seller details out the local shipping costs. Most reputable ones do, so do note where the proxy warehouse is located to know how much is the local shipping. At same time, a fair number of sellers do not list out the local shipping costs; perhaps just mentioning the local courier service name. This is where it can get slightly tricky because there are cases of sellers who charge an obviously exorbitant shipping fee independent of the actual shipping fee, perhaps wanting to make up for a low auction closing price, and there is nothing the proxy can do about it. In these auctions where shipping fee structure are not thoroughly specified, then I would pay more attention to the next item:

3. The sellers' rating. I read somewhere before in these forums that sellers' ratings work a bit differently in YJA, in that the seller can actually delete negative comments by buyers, which is quite a big deal. But it appears that most sellers in Japan have better sense of ingrained integrity than the rest of the world, ie eBay, so at end of day the ratings in YJA are more trustable compared to eBay.

These above guidelines  have served me quite well on the occasional items bought off YJA over the past 2-3 years.. 

 

 

Good advice there. Personally unless the shipping charge is indicated either in the listing or description itself its a deal breaker for me and I wont bid.  I know of at least one reputable vendor/chain that just puts the info in the description - "Dometisic shipping flat rate: 810 yen" or something to that effect.

 

 

Edited April 23, 2020 by Vertex

[sqidd]

7 hours ago, MKT said:

Without getting into whichever proxy you use & different fee structures, whether Buyee, From Japan, Zenmarket etc, there are normally 3 things I watch out for on Yahoo Japan Auctions itself:

1. Whether if seller is an individual or corporation. For corporations, there is a 10% local consumption tax on top of the bid price.

2. Whether if the seller details out the local shipping costs. Most reputable ones do, so do note where the proxy warehouse is located to know how much is the local shipping. At same time, a fair number of sellers do not list out the local shipping costs; perhaps just mentioning the local courier service name. This is where it can get slightly tricky because there are cases of sellers who charge an obviously exorbitant shipping fee independent of the actual shipping fee, perhaps wanting to make up for a low auction closing price, and there is nothing the proxy can do about it. In these auctions where shipping fee structure are not thoroughly specified, then I would pay more attention to the next item:

3. The sellers' rating. I read somewhere before in these forums that sellers' ratings work a bit differently in YJA, in that the seller can actually delete negative comments by buyers, which is quite a big deal. But it appears that most sellers in Japan have better sense of ingrained integrity than the rest of the world, ie eBay, so at end of day the ratings in YJA are more trustable compared to eBay.

These above guidelines  have served me quite well on the occasional items bought off YJA over the past 2-3 years.. 

 

Thank you.

[Anasazi37]

7 hours ago, MKT said:

Without getting into whichever proxy you use & different fee structures, whether Buyee, From Japan, Zenmarket etc, there are normally 3 things I watch out for on Yahoo Japan Auctions itself:

1. Whether if seller is an individual or corporation. For corporations, there is a 10% local consumption tax on top of the bid price.

2. Whether if the seller details out the local shipping costs. Most reputable ones do, so do note where the proxy warehouse is located to know how much is the local shipping. At same time, a fair number of sellers do not list out the local shipping costs; perhaps just mentioning the local courier service name. This is where it can get slightly tricky because there are cases of sellers who charge an obviously exorbitant shipping fee independent of the actual shipping fee, perhaps wanting to make up for a low auction closing price, and there is nothing the proxy can do about it. In these auctions where shipping fee structure are not thoroughly specified, then I would pay more attention to the next item:

3. The sellers' rating. I read somewhere before in these forums that sellers' ratings work a bit differently in YJA, in that the seller can actually delete negative comments by buyers, which is quite a big deal. But it appears that most sellers in Japan have better sense of ingrained integrity than the rest of the world, ie eBay, so at end of day the ratings in YJA are more trustable compared to eBay.

These above guidelines  have served me quite well on the occasional items bought off YJA over the past 2-3 years.. 

 

Definitely good advice. Thank you!

[Numbninja]

On 4/23/2020 at 7:33 AM, MKT said:

Without getting into whichever proxy you use & different fee structures, whether Buyee, From Japan, Zenmarket etc, there are normally 3 things I watch out for on Yahoo Japan Auctions itself:

1. Whether if seller is an individual or corporation. For corporations, there is a 10% local consumption tax on top of the bid price.

2. Whether if the seller details out the local shipping costs. Most reputable ones do, so do note where the proxy warehouse is located to know how much is the local shipping. At same time, a fair number of sellers do not list out the local shipping costs; perhaps just mentioning the local courier service name. This is where it can get slightly tricky because there are cases of sellers who charge an obviously exorbitant shipping fee independent of the actual shipping fee, perhaps wanting to make up for a low auction closing price, and there is nothing the proxy can do about it. In these auctions where shipping fee structure are not thoroughly specified, then I would pay more attention to the next item:

3. The sellers' rating. I read somewhere before in these forums that sellers' ratings work a bit differently in YJA, in that the seller can actually delete negative comments by buyers, which is quite a big deal. But it appears that most sellers in Japan have better sense of ingrained integrity than the rest of the world, ie eBay, so at end of day the ratings in YJA are more trustable compared to eBay.

These above guidelines  have served me quite well on the occasional items bought off YJA over the past 2-3 years.. 

 

I'm interested in a item YJ but i did not see anywhere on the page the local shipping cost...it did have taxes included just below the buy out price.

help please:)

[tekering]

2 hours ago, Numbninja said:

I'm interested in a item YJ but i did not see anywhere on the page the local shipping cost...

The domestic shipping cost often depends on the relative distance between seller and buyer, as well as what specific service is requested by the buyer.  Shipping is commonly calculated after the auction is concluded.

[F360]

3 hours ago, Numbninja said:

I'm interested in a item YJ but i did not see anywhere on the page the local shipping cost...it did have taxes included just below the buy out price.

help please:)

without the size and weight of what you are trying to get or from who..................... you can estimate it to be 700 yen to 2000 yen domestic shipping. 

[Numbninja]

2 hours ago, tekering said:

The domestic shipping cost often depends on the relative distance between seller and buyer, as well as what specific service is requested by the buyer.  Shipping is commonly calculated after the auction is concluded.

Thank you Tekring....from what i read in thread it seems some sellers included shipping cost to proxy warehouse, but i didn't factor additional service cost.

1 hour ago, F360 said:

without the size and weight of what you are trying to get or from who..................... you can estimate it to be 700 yen to 2000 yen domestic shipping. 

2000y domestic shipping...jeez.....this can add up real quick and this is after the bid lol.

Thank You F360

[F360]

1 minute ago, Numbninja said:

Thank you Tekring....from what i read in thread it seems some sellers included shipping cost to proxy warehouse, but i didn't factor additional service cost.

2000y domestic shipping...jeez.....this can add up real quick and this is after the bid lol.

Thank You F360

The domestic shipping for a DX chogokin VF-31a from Yahoo auction was 1,671 Yen on 2019-03-06 , but that was before the pandemic  

[tekering]

The pandemic has yet to affect domestic shipping rates or services in Japan.  It's only the dearth of international flights that have made it impossible to ship anything out of the country.  

[sqidd]

4 hours ago, tekering said:

The pandemic has yet to affect domestic shipping rates or services in Japan.  It's only the dearth of international flights that have made it impossible to ship anything out of the country.  

I was hoping to visit japan this year. Bummer.

[eXis10z]

Does FJ include consolidation fee? Buyee does to combine 2 or more items for shipping.

[chyll2]

25 minutes ago, eXis10z said:

Does FJ include consolidation fee? Buyee does to combine 2 or more items for shipping.

irc, it has a similar system with HLJ, items arrive at warehouse, each item can be stored a set XX of days. You customized from your warehouse which you want to be shipped together (and the price you want it to be declared, which is useful for some countries that is not US for example).

[crackpot]

Truth be told as much as I love FJ, I'm perplexed as how they're still in business. They're charging a flat fee of either 300 or 700 Yen only. When you buy or bid on items, the amount you pay doesn't account for Paypal fees (if that's the method used) that is supposed to be charged on the recipient when you send the deposit or payment. Actually, unless there are hidden costs tacked on the international shipping price, I see that they're charging the actual cost of everything (item amount, applicable transfer fees, domestic shipping, and international shipping). If everybody is buying high priced items, the fees deducted by paypal will definitely add up. 

[betocc]

Is FromJapan the best proxy service? I have been using DeJapan and it works Ok for me.

[Sanity is Optional]

14 hours ago, eXis10z said:

Does FJ include consolidation fee? Buyee does to combine 2 or more items for shipping.

Nope. You have to pay a service charge for each individual order, but there is no fee for sticking them in the same box for shipping. 45day timeframe on holding things, and when time's up they will trash rather than auto-ship so be warned.

[spacemanoeuvres]

3 hours ago, betocc said:

Is FromJapan the best proxy service? I have been using DeJapan and it works Ok for me.

I primarily used FJ for the last few years, but I have been using DeJapan lately as FJ keeps crapping out for web exclusives.  FJ don't seem to have too many accounts setup for TWE items and a lot of people seem to have started using them over the last year or so.

[eXis10z]

12 hours ago, Sanity is Optional said:

Nope. You have to pay a service charge for each individual order, but there is no fee for sticking them in the same box for shipping. 45day timeframe on holding things, and when time's up they will trash rather than auto-ship so be warned.

Buyee charges service charge for individual order as well, then 500 yen to consolidate 2 orders for shipping together or 1000yen for 3 or more.

[Sanity is Optional]

1 hour ago, eXis10z said:

Buyee charges service charge for individual order as well, then 500 yen to consolidate 2 orders for shipping together or 1000yen for 3 or more.

Buyee and Tenso are the same company.

There’s a reason my Goto these days is From Japan.

[sqidd]

2 hours ago, Sanity is Optional said:

Buyee and Tenso are the same company.

There’s a reason my Goto these days is From Japan.

But, they can not combine items at Buyee and Tenso together. Apparently they're two different locations. I just ran into this.

[sqidd]

A heads up. If you don't purchase the protective packaging through Buyee it may ship like this. I don't know if that is how the seller sent it or what. Maybe they just forwarded the original packaging???

I purchased the protective packaging last time. It was safe enough to re-enter the atmosphere.

 

[spacemanoeuvres]

Yikes. I haven’t used buyee for years. They charge so many fees. That may have improved, I have not looked at their service for a little while. 

[ShadowerV2]

Zenmarket works quite well for me. 

Used it alot. Good service. Good packing. 

https://zenmarket.jp

 

[Sanity is Optional]

Worth noting: ZenMarket charges you a percentage.

[Anasazi37]

15 hours ago, sqidd said:

A heads up. If you don't purchase the protective packaging through Buyee it may ship like this. I don't know if that is how the seller sent it or what. Maybe they just forwarded the original packaging???

I purchased the protective packaging last time. It was safe enough to re-enter the atmosphere.

 

Wow, that's only marginally better than what some members have experienced with third party sellers on AJ, where boxes are tossed into bags with no protection. I'm betting they pulled the item out of whatever box it came in domestically and just slapped the shipping labels on it. That's scary. Tenso always repacks if they don't directly re-use the domestic box and I assumed Buyee did the same, but I guess not. With that said, I did notice when requesting DHL shipping through Tenso that there's an option to use protective packaging. I've clicked yes every time, even though I thought it was weird that they would ask, because of course they're going to use that kind of packaging, right? Maybe this is what would happen if I clicked no.

[Bobby]

12 hours ago, Sanity is Optional said:

Worth noting: ZenMarket charges you a percentage.

Could you explain or where does it say that? Thx

[sqidd]

11 minutes ago, Bobby said:

Could you explain or where does it say that? Thx

Link