Buyee is great! Bought a lot of stuff through them. Electronics, clothes, blurays, even food lol (shio kombu is still not very common outside of Japan). Never had a problem!
The only downside if you buy electronics with
batteries: Buyee strictly enforces a maximum 2 batteries per package rule. So for example a Nintendo Switch would be shipped in 2 package because it has 3 batteries, 1 in the tablet, and 1 in each joycon. Have to plan around that when buying multiple electronics https://faq.buyee.jp/article/99?lang=en (look for items without battery, “unit only” etc)
T recently got my first proxy service shipment via Buyee, and I feel like the total price came out a good bit above what I was expecting, possibly to the point of it just being worth paying Japanese sellers inflated eBay prices for some things.
Buyee seem to love nickel and diming on package inspection fees and packing materials when consolidating (they're presumably already safely packed by the seller? just put it in a box for me), then supposedly have in some cases opened sealed items etc. Then even though they charged for the individual items on checkout, they seemed to bill for Japanese domestic shipping for everything only once you picked shipping for the final package? Very confusing and hard to keep track of.
I used them recently and I was half expecting to give them my money and never receive anything, but actually they were great and very helpful. No complaints at all.
Any tips for using it? Maybe I am trying to find the wrong things but every time I have tried to browse it confusing.
Should I be looking Amazon.jp and then buying on buyee?
You can use it with Amazon.jp but most of the time Amazon ships directly to everywhere,
no proxy needed
In fact you can use it with any japanese store that has a link to a product, the inquiry is free itself and Buyee reports back if they can buy it for you or not
Thank you for saying that because I was eyeing a lot of 12 Nintendo DSs
You can actually ask Buyee to discard the batteries after they inspected the items (you can
communicate with them while the order is in their warehouse) but they only do it if it’s easily
removable. Otherwise
you can end up in a situation
where given your example they will
give you 2 choices: 6 packages which will be very expensive or we cancel your whole order but at this point there are no returns
The PSP homebrew scene was a blast in a time where smartphones were just getting started. Lots of communities, typical console hacking cat and mouse games, and mysterious developers. Good times.
I’ve surely spent more time modding PSP than playing games. Zero regrets
I just wish I started getting into software earlier, at that time it felt something super hard for “A beautiful mind” people
I love my PSP but even with a new battery... it dies after 24hrs off ... not sure why.
I sell stuff on Mercari a lot and people buying through Buyee are great.
After buying several used goods in Japan, my impression is that junk simply means the seller does not want to hear complaints over old items, so they sell it at a lower price. I have bought many perfectly working items sold as such.
Of course buying old stuff requires some ability to do simple repairs. That’s part of the fun.
Contrast that with my personal experience of items from the UK (specifically the UK, my experience is different elsewhere) where “untested” almost always means “I tested it and I know it’s broken but I want to try to get a better price anyway”. Especially when testing would involve plugging it in with the adapter it comes with and seeing that it doesn’t light up, for example.
Every time I’ve bought something from Japan its condition is underreported. It’s always a pleasant surprise compared to US sellers that typically over promise when describing the condition. When I put things up for sale o try to do the same. I might get a little less, but hope that the buyer appreciates getting something nicer than expected.
Yup that's about the best case for buying from Japan. Also big is anime, high end fishing gear (reels and lures are perfect because they're so shippable) also golf clubs (length can be a shipping challenge). Also look into zenmarket.com for a proxy buyer / forwarder
It being a proxy buyer means they don't really support you with issues (at least from my experience using it once). I purchased a guitar for several hundred EUR (before shipping and taxes), and it was described as functional. It arrived relatively quickly and was extremely well packaged.
However, the seller either didn't know or hid an issue. Zenmarket provided 0 support. I think they just google-translated my message, forwarded it to the seller, the seller just said "item as-is, no partial refunds", and Zenmarket just closed the issue.
For the guitar nerds: the neck was back-bowed, and it was not really playable because several frets were already buzzing. Truss rod arrived completely loose, meaning fixing this would be difficult/expensive. Try to explain to a tired customer support person that it makes some kind of sound, but not the right kind.
No such things as a "Junk" PSP, as this article clearly shows!
Buyee is great! Bought a lot of stuff through them. Electronics, clothes, blurays, even food lol (shio kombu is still not very common outside of Japan). Never had a problem!
The only downside if you buy electronics with batteries: Buyee strictly enforces a maximum 2 batteries per package rule. So for example a Nintendo Switch would be shipped in 2 package because it has 3 batteries, 1 in the tablet, and 1 in each joycon. Have to plan around that when buying multiple electronics https://faq.buyee.jp/article/99?lang=en (look for items without battery, “unit only” etc)
T recently got my first proxy service shipment via Buyee, and I feel like the total price came out a good bit above what I was expecting, possibly to the point of it just being worth paying Japanese sellers inflated eBay prices for some things.
Buyee seem to love nickel and diming on package inspection fees and packing materials when consolidating (they're presumably already safely packed by the seller? just put it in a box for me), then supposedly have in some cases opened sealed items etc. Then even though they charged for the individual items on checkout, they seemed to bill for Japanese domestic shipping for everything only once you picked shipping for the final package? Very confusing and hard to keep track of.
I used them recently and I was half expecting to give them my money and never receive anything, but actually they were great and very helpful. No complaints at all.
Any tips for using it? Maybe I am trying to find the wrong things but every time I have tried to browse it confusing.
Should I be looking Amazon.jp and then buying on buyee?
Buyee is mostly used with Mercari https://jp.mercari.com/en
You can use it with Amazon.jp but most of the time Amazon ships directly to everywhere, no proxy needed
In fact you can use it with any japanese store that has a link to a product, the inquiry is free itself and Buyee reports back if they can buy it for you or not
If you use Discord then the Buyee server is very helpful https://discord.com/invite/YRg3DgkBpS
Thank you for saying that because I was eyeing a lot of 12 Nintendo DSs
You can actually ask Buyee to discard the batteries after they inspected the items (you can communicate with them while the order is in their warehouse) but they only do it if it’s easily removable. Otherwise you can end up in a situation where given your example they will give you 2 choices: 6 packages which will be very expensive or we cancel your whole order but at this point there are no returns
The PSP homebrew scene was a blast in a time where smartphones were just getting started. Lots of communities, typical console hacking cat and mouse games, and mysterious developers. Good times.
I’ve surely spent more time modding PSP than playing games. Zero regrets
I just wish I started getting into software earlier, at that time it felt something super hard for “A beautiful mind” people
I love my PSP but even with a new battery... it dies after 24hrs off ... not sure why.
I sell stuff on Mercari a lot and people buying through Buyee are great.
After buying several used goods in Japan, my impression is that junk simply means the seller does not want to hear complaints over old items, so they sell it at a lower price. I have bought many perfectly working items sold as such.
Of course buying old stuff requires some ability to do simple repairs. That’s part of the fun.
Contrast that with my personal experience of items from the UK (specifically the UK, my experience is different elsewhere) where “untested” almost always means “I tested it and I know it’s broken but I want to try to get a better price anyway”. Especially when testing would involve plugging it in with the adapter it comes with and seeing that it doesn’t light up, for example.
Every time I’ve bought something from Japan its condition is underreported. It’s always a pleasant surprise compared to US sellers that typically over promise when describing the condition. When I put things up for sale o try to do the same. I might get a little less, but hope that the buyer appreciates getting something nicer than expected.
Yup that's about the best case for buying from Japan. Also big is anime, high end fishing gear (reels and lures are perfect because they're so shippable) also golf clubs (length can be a shipping challenge). Also look into zenmarket.com for a proxy buyer / forwarder
It being a proxy buyer means they don't really support you with issues (at least from my experience using it once). I purchased a guitar for several hundred EUR (before shipping and taxes), and it was described as functional. It arrived relatively quickly and was extremely well packaged.
However, the seller either didn't know or hid an issue. Zenmarket provided 0 support. I think they just google-translated my message, forwarded it to the seller, the seller just said "item as-is, no partial refunds", and Zenmarket just closed the issue.
For the guitar nerds: the neck was back-bowed, and it was not really playable because several frets were already buzzing. Truss rod arrived completely loose, meaning fixing this would be difficult/expensive. Try to explain to a tired customer support person that it makes some kind of sound, but not the right kind.
No such things as a "Junk" PSP, as this article clearly shows!