1 & Only Amazon Japan Thread

[Rhodes]

I am in the US... bought an item from Amazon JP via their 2nd hand Marketplace.

Got the item, but the CD inside was NOT what it is suppose to be...

The item was for 810 yen... The CD case, booklet and Obi are all good... just the CD isnt correct :o Instead of a Kanon CD by Movic it had a Clannad CD inside it... Mabinogi KSLA-0011 in fact.

I'm probably gonna keep it but just wanted to know how much trouble/hassle it is to do returns since I am outside JP.

[Draneor]

Originally Posted by Rhodes

Instead of a Kanon CD by Movic it had a Clannad CD inside it... Mabinogi KSLA-0011 in fact.

You lucked out. That CD is hard to acquire since it was only sold as the bonus item to the original LE in 2004. As for the question of returns, I'm amazed you found a market place seller willing to ship overseas. Returning to Amazon.jp itself is easy if expensive (select return under account, print the form, and pay for postage back), but I'm not sure if you could return an item to a market place seller.

[something]

Originally Posted by Draneor

You lucked out. That CD is hard to acquire since it was only sold as the bonus item to the original LE in 2004.

And for 810 yen... I paid over 3000 yen on Yahoo Auctions for that and thought ti was a steal.

[something]

This topic has come up multiple times, most recently here and a few posts afterward and I wanted to continue the discussion in more detail, hence this thread. Note, lots of numbers most won't care about, feel free to skip past the dashes to the question.

To determine just what sort of discrepancy we mean, I went through every order confirmation/shipping email since I started buying from Amazon ~10 months ago. I compared what I was initially told an item would cost, and what it actually cost at dispatch.

All told 16 of 45 shipped items (36%) to date had an (InitialCost - ShippedCost) discrepancy, min ￥112, max ￥276, total ￥3159, about $35 right now. Which is not as bad as I would have guessed, but it helps that by pure coincidence I canceled/reordered some things after they came down in price, avoiding the charges.

This doesn't count what hasn't shipped yet, and since these charges run ~1.01% of my total Amazon spending, I can project another ￥1787 worth of charges on current preorders, putting me around $55. A laughable sum compared to what I'm spending, I know... but I wouldn't mind having it back anyway. It's just going to keep adding up after all. And hey, $55 is almost a whole extra disc.

Of course, the real discrepancy should actually be more than that, because ￥3159 is just closes the gap between initial price and shipped price and gets us back to baseline. It doesn't account for the fact that preorder price guarantee is supposed to make things cheaper than the initial price, whatever that would end up being. So ￥3159 becomes, what, ￥4k?

Might also explain a confusing situation with two Railgun discs, where preorder guarantee did save me ￥239 yen each. Nice and all, but it sounds like they must have dropped the price a decent bit and the amount saved should have been more. So make that 18 of 45 shipped items? 40% of my purchases getting hit with (small) incorrect charges is pretty bad.

--------

So basically - looking at Draneor here, but maybe others have contacted Amazon about this as well - what information, exactly, do you give Amazon when reporting this? And is it possible to determine not just what the gap is, but how much below initial cost the disc should have been? I know Draneor explained how he calculates it before... was it just the price on the invoice *.95, to reflect 5% sales tax in Japan?

For example: Hidamari Sketch x ☆☆☆, Vol. 4 was supposed to be ¥5,032, but I was charged ¥5,231, a discrepancy of ¥199. But it's really ¥261.55 (¥5,231 * .95 = ¥4,969.45), a 24% increase on what I thought the discrepancy was (that % seems to vary a lot though). Right?

I suppose the next step for me, then, is to email Amazon a list of those 16 (18?) discs I discovered, mention what I was told it's be and what it ended up being, and request the difference? Are they easygoing about it?

[Draneor]

This was their response to last email I sent back in May:

Thank you for contacting us at Amazon.co.jp.

I'm sorry about our price error. I have checked into your order and found out that after the price change by the Pre-Order Price Guarantee, the tax was added to your order.

Therefore, I have arrange to refund for consumption tax we added for your orders.Shortly after our refund procedure has been completed, you will receive an e-mail regarding your refund.

Order: *******************　
REFUND TOTAL:1284yen

Order: *******************　
REFUND TOTAL:811yen

In addition to our large selection, one of the benefits we try very hard to offer our customers is convenience, and we have not met your expectations in this case. Please accept our sincere apologies.

You don't need to list the amount they overcharged--just the order and the items where they inappropriately charged consumption tax (although you can). As for how to calculate it, here is an example:

Strike Witches BD Boxset
MRSP with tax: 36,750
Without tax: 35,000 (divide MSRP by 1.05)
Pre-order price: ￥25,725 (~26.5% off)
Price paid: 27,008 (~27.5%)
The Price I should have paid: $25,375

Note that Amazon's math is unfortunately a bit fuzzy. It may say 27% off, for example, but it's really 0.26674829931972789115646258503401% (using the current price for the Strike Witches BD boxset--if it was actually 27% off it should be 26,827.5 but they list 26,947). Anyway, the important thing to remember is to add tax times by 1.05 and to remove tax divide by 1.05. Amazon.jp will calculate the correct price for you--you just need to tell them which items to look at.

[something]

Originally Posted by Draneor

You don't need to list the amount they overcharged--just the order and the items where they inappropriately charged consumption tax (although you can). As for how to calculate it, here is an example:

Okay, so it's just recognizing which items were the ones that got overcharged that's the tricky part, since you have to remember to go check each item's order confirmation email when it ships out. Although I now have something in my spreadsheet tracking initial and shipped costs and will maintain it for future orders, so I'll be able to tell quickly.

Email sent. Thanks.

[hissatsu]

Yeah, just tell them every time and they'll fix it. It's what I do. Unfortunately they don't seem too concerned about fixing the bug.

[skygtr]

With my Naussica BR pre-order shipping out next week, I'll have to check this.

[WTK]

Thanks for the heads-up and tip. This whole ordering from Amazon Japan is still relatively new to me.

[something]

Amazon responded promptly, which is nice (not that I expect they'll actually fix the problem). Total refund for 18 items comes to ￥4096, or like $2.50 a disc.

I just need to keep my list up to date and keep track of what I've submitted a claim for already and what I haven't. Well, at least it seems to be pretty easy now that I've got the initial setup over with.