New Intermediary Service - Mukunoki JP

While browsing Livejournal, I discovered a new intermediary service that just started in August July, called Mukunoki JP (LJ community here). It's similar to SMJ in that it will buy from Japanese web shops and Yahoo Auctions for you, then ship the items to you while charging you a middleman fee. As of right now, the intermediary fee for this service is 20% of total cost. In addition to web shops and auctions, it can also join fan clubs on your behalf and forward fan club merchandises to you. Mukunoki charges a flat 10,000 yen per year fee that includes shipping but excludes the fan club due. The payment methods it accepts are PayPal, credit card, and international money order.

I have NOT used this service yet, but here's the conclusion I've reached based on the information provided by Mukunoki's website and LJ community.

Advantages:

1. Currency exchange rate / Mukunoki uses the standard currency exchange rate and doesn't do that "subtract 4" conversion that SMJ does.
2. Intermediary fee / The 20% intermediary charge can actually be cheaper than SMJ depending on the price of the item, since Mukunoki uses a percentage charge while SMJ uses a flat charge.
3. Shipment route / Mukunoki's shipment route is more direct. The item is sent from the original seller to Mukunoki, then Mukunoki sends the item to you. While with SMJ, the original seller sends the item to SMJ's Japan storage, then the item is sent to SMJ's US storage, then is finally shipped to you. You can request SMJ to not send the item to its US storage, but for North American buyers, this is useless. Of course, you have to pay for all of the shipping fees.
4. Service variety / Like I said, Mukunoki acts as a middleman for Japanese web shops, auctions, and fan clubs. SMJ is Yahoo Auctions only.
5. No deposit required / Mukunoki currently doesn't require a deposit like SMJ.
   

Limitations:

1. Payment options / Mukunoki accepts PayPal, credit card, and international money order. But if you use credit card or bank fund, you'll be charged an additional 3%.
2. Membership application / You must become a member in order to use Mukunoki's serivces. The membership is free, however, it may take a few days to process. So if you have an urgent auction item that ends in 3 days and you're not a member, there may not be enough time.
3. No fan club concert ticket through fan club service / If you use the fan club service, Mukunoki doesn't buy the fan club concert tickets for you.
4. Item quantity limitation / You can only buy at most 3 items through Mukunoki at a time.
5. No bidding on auctions ending soon / Mukunoki won't bid for you if the auction ends within 24 hours.
6. No real time bidding / Once Mukunoki receives your bidding request, it gives you a price estimate. Once you agree to the estimate, it'll begin bidding for you. This entire process is handled by a person, it's not automated or real time like SMJ. So, there might be a longer delay in placing your bid, which explains the previous point (no bidding on auctions ending soon).
   

I think this is pretty much all information I've uncovered about the service. I have no idea how reliabe Mukunoki is since they're so new. I recommend checking out their website and LJ community yourself to get a better perspective.