1 & Only Amazon Japan Thread

[HitokiriShadow]

Originally Posted by something

Railgun was listed as ¥5,772 for me for 4 and 6 (bought 5 at CDJ for the external bonus). It shipped at ¥5,533, meaning I saved ¥239. You probably saw something similar.

But those were still hit by the bug. The only we saved anything is because the price must have dipped fairly considerably at some point, so much that even the application of sales tax couldn't erase the savings and we still came out positive. It was probably briefly 30% or something like that. So basically you may have saved ~¥200 but should have saved more than that. The reason I'm sure they were hit by the bug is because Amazon agreed with my claim and refunded me almost ¥300 each even though shipped cost was already ¥239 less than initial cost.


For the record, Railgun 7 and 8 have changed price since I ordered. I ordered at ¥5772 and ¥5770 respectively, but both if purchased today would be ¥5550. So I already know both will get hit with the bug for me.

Yeah, my copies of volumes 5 and 6 shipped for ¥5,533. That's also what Amazon.jp currently lists the prices for volume 7 and 8. However, I recorded a low price of ¥5,497 for volume 4 at one point, but was charged ¥5,533. But that's only an increase of 36 yen, not enough to just be the sales tax, so it must have dropped lower at some point. Ah, well, I guess I'll ask them to check volumes 5 and 6 when I e-mail them for the remaining items, unless they just do it for me this time.

[HitokiriShadow]

Originally Posted by something

Yeah, if they precharged there would be no such thing as a difference in initial cost and shipped cost, the basis of this thread.

And I wouldn't have been able to afford preording Bakemonogatari, Hayate 2nd season, Railgun, and Sasameki Koto if I had to have all all ~$1500 of it payed when I placed the order.

Precharging is pretty rare in general, really.

Though one store many of use does do something like it. CDJapan does a test charge to the card, putting a hold on it for a few days right after you make the order. So if you (danhawk or anyone else looking into importing stuff from Japan) order from CDJapan, make sure you have enough money in the account. I found out about that the hard way, back when I just started importing and only kept a few hundred dollars in my checking account, because I didn't have any need to keep more in it at the time. I made a deposit in the bank one day, a day or two after I made a CDJapan order, and discovered I only had a few dollars left in the account, when I knew I should have had about $200.

[danhawk]

Originally Posted by HitokiriShadow

And I wouldn't have been able to afford preording Bakemonogatari, Hayate 2nd season, Railgun, and Sasameki Koto if I had to have all all ~$1500 of it payed when I placed the order.

Though one store many of use does do something like it. CDJapan does a test charge to the card, putting a hold on it for a few days right after you make the order. So if you (danhawk or anyone else looking into importing stuff from Japan) order from CDJapan, make sure you have enough money in the account. I found out about that the hard way, back when I just started importing and only kept a few hundred dollars in my checking account, because I didn't have any need to keep more in it at the time. I made a deposit in the bank one day, a day or two after I made a CDJapan order, and discovered I only had a few dollars left in the account, when I knew I should have had about $200.

that why i wanted to make sure nothing quite like having 400 dollars taken of your account.

[something]

I'd had the Angel Beats! OST on order since May 24th, initially for 3,150円. On Friday morning I got an email saying that the new price is 3,675円 and that it had been automatically removed from my order. (Note, both prices with tax, so really 3,000円 and 3,500円 or so.)

Is this Amazon's standard response when the manufacturer changes the MSRP? That's somewhat irksome if so, but I have not run into this until now. Really, I'd rather they just keep the order and check with me to verify I'm okay with the new price. Sure the email would be in Japanese but at least I'd have a chance of figuring it out. But they didn't.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't just me, or just int'l orders. The day they canceled the item, the OST suddenly shot up to #1 on the anime/game music bestseller rankings. Even ahead of the second K-ON!! OP/ED CDs, which seems somewhat unlikely. It's since dropped below them, but what that tells me is that there was a whole lot of reordering going on from other people who had it canceled.

I gave up on trying to tweak my orders in hopes of fitting it back in somewhere (not gonna cancel and reorder other things just for this), and I'm just going to see if I can get it from CDJapan instead. Hopefully they can add it to an order I have there that ships soon - it'd actually be cheaper that way, so it'd work out for me.

[skygtr]

Got charged sales tax on my Naussica BR order. How exactly do I go about contacting them about since navigating a Japanese website isn't exactly my forte.

[Roujin0308]

something reports sending email to english-orders@amazon.co.jp .

[something]

Originally Posted by Roujin0308

something reports sending email to english-orders@amazon.co.jp .

Yeah, that gets quick replies for me. Even if you contact their normal customer service, it'll be english-orders that replies most (all?) of the time.

[HitokiriShadow]

I like to keep track of what I was charged for each BD I import, so I was annoyed at this situation in part because it was going to screw up tracking that. Thankfully, Amazon changes the information in your order details, so you can go back and see what the actual lowest price was for each item rather than just being informed of a lump sum refund (which is what I initially thought is all I had to go on). Which is nice if you are trying to keep track of the price you paid for each item like I am. Though the fluctuating exchange rates screw up tracking the exact US$ amount I paid for each.

Originally Posted by HitokiriShadow

Yeah, my copies of volumes 5 and 6 shipped for ¥5,533. That's also what Amazon.jp currently lists the prices for volume 7 and 8. However, I recorded a low price of ¥5,497 for volume 4 at one point, but was charged ¥5,533. But that's only an increase of 36 yen, not enough to just be the sales tax, so it must have dropped lower at some point. Ah, well, I guess I'll ask them to check volumes 5 and 6 when I e-mail them for the remaining items, unless they just do it for me this time.

I ended up getting a decent amount more refunded than I was expecting based on my initial calculations. It turns out they took care of fixing the prices and refunding me for volumes 5 and 6 as well, even though I didn't specify that I was overcharged for them.

[something]

Originally Posted by HitokiriShadow

I like to keep track of what I was charged for each BD I import, so I was annoyed at this situation in part because it was going to screw up tracking that. Thankfully, Amazon changes the information in your order details, so you can go back and see what the actual lowest price was for each item rather than just being informed of a lump sum refund (which is what I initially thought is all I had to go on). Which is nice if you are trying to keep track of the price you paid for each item like I am. Though the fluctuating exchange rates screw up tracking the exact US$ amount I paid for each.

Yeah, it's still pretty difficult. Too much tweaking needs to be done. I track three prices:
1) Yen, which gets screwy with the constantly shifting prices and any item cancellations (which affect S&H per item)
2) Dollars, initially calculated off #3 but later adjusted as best I can based on what actually charges to my credit card. Of course in multi-item shipments this gets complicated and I need to go calculate what item was what percentage of the yen price, then apply that to the dollar price and... well, meh.
3) Dollars, at today's exchange rate. I have a cell where I can just plop in the current rate and it'll calculate what the items would have cost if it shipped right now. Of course this is based on #1 which is tough to be exact with.

In the end I'm sure I always wind up off a little but probably doesn't add up to much either way so far. But as long as I can get close with #2 based on actual CC charges (made easier if items ship one at a time), the total spent should be pretty accurate.

What I should do is make another column and separate S&H cost in yen from item cost in yen. It'd be easier to modify. But I already have like 20 columns in my spreadsheet...

[HitokiriShadow]

Originally Posted by something

Yeah, it's still pretty difficult. Too much tweaking needs to be done. I track three prices:
1) Yen, which gets screwy with the constantly shifting prices and any item cancellations (which affect S&H per item)
2) Dollars, initially calculated off #3 but later adjusted as best I can based on what actually charges to my credit card. Of course in multi-item shipments this gets complicated and I need to go calculate what item was what percentage of the yen price, then apply that to the dollar price and... well, meh.
3) Dollars, at today's exchange rate. I have a cell where I can just plop in the current rate and it'll calculate what the items would have cost if it shipped right now. Of course this is based on #1 which is tough to be exact with.

In the end I'm sure I always wind up off a little but probably doesn't add up to much either way so far. But as long as I can get close with #2 based on actual CC charges (made easier if items ship one at a time), the total spent should be pretty accurate.

What I should do is make another column and separate S&H cost in yen from item cost in yen. It'd be easier to modify. But I already have like 20 columns in my spreadsheet...

I have a yen (item price) column, a yen (shipping based on the invoice when it ships) column, and one dollars column that combines them and uses the exchange rate listed on my credit card statement. I just ignore the conversion charge by my bank and I'd just as soon not see how much extra I've spend thanks to that. The yen item price isn't a problem, since I can just update it when it ships and then again when this situation comes up. The shipping one is the that can get tricky, when more than one item ships at a time and I'm trying to decide where fractions of a yen go. Shipping calculation is more of a problem for CDJapan orders, when I have to try to figure out how much of the shipping to apply to each group of items (I haven't yet used CDJapan for DVD/BD imports, but I still track the dollar amount I spend on CDs, manga, artbooks, etc., and I have manga/light novels and CDs/artbooks/other as separate lists, so I have situations like needing to figure out how much of the shipping charge goes to 5 manga and how much goes to 2 CDs and an artbook).

The dollar one only becomes a problem in this situation, when I'm dealing with multiple exchange rates. But in both the shipping situation and the dollar situation, the difference is negligible. For 200-300 yen, the exchange rate difference for the refund is going to throw it off by maybe 10 cents on the high end and the fraction of yen is going to be a difference of a penny, if that much, so its not a big deal. I have an idea of how I could deal with the refund at the different exchange rate [(original price x original exchange rate]-[refund amount x refund exchange rate]) , but for something that throws the entire series cost off by less than 50 cents, its just not worth it.