Yahoo! Japan deputy services - Part 1

Today, I'll say semi-random stuff about Shopping Mall Japan (SMJ).

In my seemingly never-ending quest for soundtracks, I've enlisted the assistance of a few sources in Japan, including friends, Shopping Mall Japan, and Otaku-ya, which I'll describe next time.

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I did a lot of research before picking a deputy service. Well, as much research as I could do, considering that the only real sources I could find were semi-anonymous forum-posters, all of whom had their own ill-founded loyalties and arguments.

Ultimately, I decided to go with SMJ for a few items I needed to get, based primarily on service fees and customer service information (and payment methods, but I'll get into that a bit later).

However, despite all of my forum perusal, I overlooked a few details, the nature of the service in particular.

I was used to the 'product page -> shopping cart -> checkout' procedure and eBay's 'bid -> watch -> pay' methodology. SMJ employs a 'deposit -> deposit confirmation | bid -> watch | won notification | auction invoice -> payment | shipping to America | request for shipping from America -> shipping invoice -> shipping to you' system, which isn't nearly as complex as it looks, but it sure doesn't feel as natural; you're actually dealing with people behind a webform wall, so all the numbers you put into boxes are being processed by people... except the bidding itself, since that's automatic. Actually, maybe it is as complex as it looks.

So while the important stuff (bidding) is instantaneous, the other stuff, like placing a deposit (most conventional online payment methods are accepted, including PayPal) so you can bid, paying for the items you've won, and asking for the items to be shipped to you, involves human intervention, so delays can range from hours to days.

Anyway, getting back to what is fast becoming the nature of this blog, their customer service, web systems, and packaging are all decent.

The same, however, cannot be said about their documentation; I had to send three e-mails to their customer service staff before I actually understood the proper procedure for making a deposit. Apparently, you just send it to the PayPal address, which is mentioned in a completely different section ('payment help', rather than 'making a deposit'), along with your username, the one you created when you registered, not that there's any sort of validation, and in a matter of hours, it will magically be credited to your account. You'll recieve e-mail confirmation a little while after that, so don't plan on sniping anything.

Once my deposit was approved, bidding was easy. I just entered the ID number of the Yahoo! Japan auction I was interested in, entered my maximum bid, and filled out a confirmation form... which unintuitively happens to be inserted in the auction listing itself. It's easy to use, and I'm sure the person who wrote the HTML hooks thought it was clever, but it isn't obvious.

Their auction commission fees are a bit steep, but shipping is exact, so I can't really complain, and their batch shipping method really is cheaper than mailing items directly from Japan... but only if you have a lot of items or a few really big items, since the commission fees need to be offset.

I think I've kinda lost sight of where I wanted to go with this post, so I'll just mention two unexpected problems.
- When filling out the customs slip for shipping to Canada, they left the total blank, which caused Customs to open my package and assess it at more than it should have cost
- I live in Calgary, Alberta, not Calgary, Albert

Those points aside, it's a solid, reasonably well-managed deputy service with a fair number of followers and support staff who actually read their forums. Just don't use them for small orders.