Service Review: YesAsia / Play-Asia / J-XYZ
When it comes to shopping for Japanese music, I use YesAsia, Play-Asia, and J-XYZ. Why these 3 services? Because these accept PayPal as payment. Due to my credit card having a really high limit, I avoid using it for online shopping whenever possible. Due to this limitation, sites like CD Japan, HMV, and Amazon.jp aren't included.
Below, I detail my experiences using the 3 services mentioned above. The reviews vary in length and detail because I haven't used some services as much as others.
This is probably the biggest and most popular shopping site for Asian media out there. It is the primary service I use because of the huge selection and reasonable prices. In addition, taking advantage of their Super Saver shipping method (read: discounted shipping, even though they call it "free shipping") really saves me a lot of bucks over time. I receive my items in about a week (I live in the United States).
However, what I like the most about this site is the customer service. Due to bad luck and carelessness on my part, I had to e-mail YesAsia customer service quite a few times about various issues surrounding my orders. Their consistent prompt responses really win me over. They've always gotten back to me within a few hours and usually get my problems resolved in about 2 days.
Because I follow a lot of Japanese indie bands, I sometimes find that YesAsia doesn't have certain future releases online when pre-order periods begin. When I e-mailed customer service and requested for the items though, YesAsia always got back to me in a day or two and made my requested items available.
When one of my recent purchases got delayed for 2 weeks due to the items getting held-up in US Customs, YesAsia actually upgraded my shipping for free to speed up the domestic transport and gave me a coupon as apology even though this wasn't even their fault ($5 off on order above $30, I used it to pre-order D's Tafel Anatomie limited edition album). Now that's good customer service.
Though, there are two things that other people often complain about when it comes to YesAsia. First, if you pre-order Japanese music merchandises before a certain date, freebie goods often accompany your items. However, YesAsia actually takes those freebies off your items and sell those separately, despite the fact that bonus goods are marked not for re-sale. It's one more channel for YesAsia to make money, but this bugs a lot of people. Though, I personally don't care.
Second, when your orders are canceled or payments are refunded for whatever reason, the refund takes the form of store credit. Since I order from YesAsia so often, this usually isn't a problem. The principle of it turns some people off though.
Despite the issue with a few of their practices, I've had really good experiences with YesAsia so far. So, I give it...
I use Play-Asia as backup when certain releases aren't available at YesAsia. Its Japanese music goods are usually a bit more expensive than YesAsia and it doesn't offer free shipping. However, Play-Asia offers more shipping options in that you can actually choose the packaging. I always pay a few dollars more for a boxed Airmail packaging, instead of the traditional envelop packaging just to ensure my purchases arrive safely.
With every single one of my orders so far, Play-Asia has sent a coupon. $5 off on orders above $50, not bad.
When Play-Asia wasn't able to source one of my items after a month, they agreed to cancel my order and give me a refund. At first I wasn't happy that they offered store credit and e-mailed them back insisting that I prefer direct PayPal refund. They gave a PayPal refund the very next day. This incident was the only time I contacted Play-Asia's customer service and consisted of 3 e-mail exchanges. I got very prompt replies and my problem was resolved in about 3 days. Very nice.
One thing I don't like about Play-Asia is that they don't seem to update their product listing when items go out of stock permanently due to the fact that they're not longer being printed. This can be misleading and is what caused the incident I described above.
Also, Play-Asia takes longer time to ship items out. There's usually a week delay after you make the payment. So, it takes about 2.5 weeks for items to reach me on average.
J-XYZ is my very last resort when neither YesAsia nor Play-Asia has what I want. It specializes in band goods not carried by the other shopping sites because they offer tour goods (T-shirts, pamphlets, wristbands, guitar picks, etc.), posters, photo books, flyers, magazines, in addition to good old music CDs. This is the place I can usually count on for still carrying out of print CDs.
Price-wise, however, J-XYZ is often more expensive than YesAsia and Play-Asia (but not excessively so). Because most of their goods are of the rare-to-find variety, I'm perfectly willing to pay a premium for them.
J-XYZ's online shopping interface isn't very advanced. Much of the transaction is handled by a real person instead of automatically by the computer system like other sites and you can't check your order status. Once your order's submitted, it takes a few days for a confirmation e-mail to arrive detailing payment. Once you pay, it again takes a while for them to inform you that your item's been shipped. The site will register your parcel unless you specifically request them not to do so.
Basically, I'm not a big fan of J-XYZ's customer service because it really takes its sweet time to get back to you on everything. When I bought alice nine.'s Zekkeishoku limited edition album from them. It took them 3 days to confirm my order. Then after hearing nothing for a week, I e-mailed them asking about the order status and was informed the CD was shipped out about 5 days before. Geez, would it have killed them to e-mail me when the item was first shipped? Then, almost a week later, I got another e-mail telling me the CD was shipped and apologizing for not keeping me up to date. What the... do they not keep track of their e-mails? Anyway, it took me about 2.5 weeks to receive the album, but the lack of communication was frustrating. -_-;
Based on my one shopping experience, if it hadn't been the fact that J-XYZ carries out of print CDs, I'd never shop there. I just ordered another item from them because I can't find it anywhere else. The confirmation e-mail, this time, came in a few hours instead of 3 days, and the shipping notification e-mail arrived within a day, maybe there's hope for J-XYZ after all.
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