Order was for 6 x Doxster books from BEEP ranging between 400-800 yen each and the Famicom Robot Gyro set from Suragaya at 15,600 yen.
The service fee I was quoted was 6,000 yen before additional postage and packing for 24,000 yen of goods. The 6,000 yen fee was after removing some money off the fee for the “two free item” offer. Can’t for the life of me figure out the math on that one.
Wasn’t happy with the bait and switch whatsoever.
I will say, before people start jumping down my throat on this (and subsequent) points, I think this service is extremely overpriced when there are 10 proxies I can find with a simple Google search that will do this for
literally free (0 yen).
I'm not sure that this was a bait and switch as much as it was a misunderstanding between both parties.
When I did the math here, I ended up with ~7000 yen total fees, which still didn't add up to 6000 yen, so I was just as confused as you on that front. lol. If you add the Famicom game that superget mentioned in a subsequent post,
now the fees seem to make sense (per the table), but the Famicom game wasn't mentioned at all in your post.
The problem is the wording on your original price list says just “item” on it and not "per item". I’m assuming most of us here thought you were meaning “order”. After all, many “orders” are just one “item”. Per item changes absolutely everything.
Most people would assume paying a 1000 yen service fee per ~500 yen item is a bit odd after all. Problem is, that’s what you actually meant with the pricing, and that is exactly where the disconnect happened.
I read "item", I assumed "1000 yen per item". Perhaps this was the "wrong" assumption for me to make, but I can only take what superget wrote at face value.
"item" does not mean "order", or "request", It means
item.
He rightly assumed that his service fee would fall into your 1501-5000 yen slot of 1500 yen.
Is it fair to conclude this was a "right" assumption to make? Because I don't think it was - superget's table clearly said
item.
I think charging by time for something like repackaging or other custom requests makes sense, but for one-off web ordering I think charging per item or order is the way to go. For example, I might spend 5 or 10 minutes submitting an order, then maybe another 5 or 10 dealing with it when it arrives... let's say 20m, or even 30m on the upside. Should I round up to the nearest hour? Charge for a half-hour? Or do I just tell people, "500 yen per item/order up to 10K yen" or something to make it easy?
Respectfully, I don't think it's fair to say superget "dropped the ball" here - there was a clear misunderstanding on sheep's side about what "item" meant. Could superget have done more to make it clear that item == item? Sure, but it's also a little unfair to blame superget for sheep's incorrect assumption.
OK. I see. You’re charging 1,000 yen to process a 472 yen pamphlet sized booklet. Yeah, no thanks. I figured ordering a small stack of them would be counted as an item or two or even based on total price. Unsure the processing required.
This is probably something that should've been clarified either in the thread or in the DM. If I was in any way confused or of the belief that he meant
per order, I would've asked to clarify.
I read item, I assumed item. At 1K yen
per item, I had
negative interest in using this service, but I already generally have very little use for such one-off proxy services when much more established and far cheaper alternatives exist. So perhaps I am an outlier here.
Anyways. Good luck @Miaomiao your service totally ain’t for me. The goal is peace of mind and to save some $ not spend some more.
I'm confused by the MiaoMiao mention here. Are we saying Superget is MiaoMiao's alt account?
Anyway, IMO, if saving money and peace of mind is the goal, you're better served using any number of alternative services. To be specific, not Buyee and Sendico, since their fees are comically high.
If anyone wants recommendations for affordable proxy services that offer special packaging options for sensitive items, shoot me a PM. Not looking to derail this thread discussing alternatives (though there is already a thread about proxies where I've shared much of this information).
I see, modern proxy companies are very cheap, but I could see your services having an advantage with an item that was notorious for being faked.
IMO, not as much as you'd think. Yahoo is basically the wild west; while some mechanisms exist to try to claw your money back, at the end of the day, you will generally get stuck holding the bag. Mercari is a different story though, you have far more leverage to force a return/refund.
My personal opinion is to refrain from purchasing items that are likely to be faked unless you can get someone to inspect it in person
before a purchase is made, OR the listing has sufficient evidence to demonstrate it isn't a fake. That said, fakes are reasonably uncommon and somewhat easy to spot. There are exceptions, of course, but, in general, I think this is something you don't need to be excessively concerned about.
