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.

YesAsia

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...

Rating: Fantastic

Play-Asia

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.

Rating: Good

J-XYZ

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.

Rating: Tolerable

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.

Wanted: Limited Edition Albums

Why the heck doesn't eBay have more SID music available? I know it's a long shot to get the Renai limited edition album, but why can't SOMEBODY carry it?! Okay, so this was a 2004 release, and yes, only 10,000 were issued. But... I still wish someone somewhere sells it online. Bloody hell.

I know that Gail of Himitsu is also collecting SID music. I wonder if she has had any luck getting Renai limited edition. A 2-year-old release with only 10,000 copies floating around. The odds are stacked against us.

Speaking of out of print items, I'm also trying to get my hands on Kagrra,'s san limited editon album. There's only one place I know of that still sells it. However, the total price for it eventually comes down to $44. And needless to say, I'm totally not happy about this. I'm currently waging an internal battle with myself over whether I should spend so much on just an album. On one hand, there are only a few copies left on the market. On the other hand, $44 is a lot, way too much in my opinion, even if it's "divine music" (Kagrra, = 神楽 = divine music).

Paying only 1/2 price for a regular edition/reissue versus overpaying for a limited edition/first press, it's too hard to decide (oh, why do I have to be such a hardcore fangirl?). Had I not cared about the limited edition issue, I'd just get the albums for $5-$20 on eBay. Of course, there's also the risk of unknowingly getting pirated copies. Let's think about it, how in the world is it possible to sell a legitimate Japanese import disc for only $5? Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. This may also explain why there aren't brand new limited albums on eBay. The bonus materials make it harder to duplicate the discs and raise the cost. I guess you can't have your cake and eat it too.

Oh, such torment.