What do you like best and worst about your import store?

[allinfong]

Website?
Price?
Ordering?
Customer Service?
Shipping?

Personally I hate a ugly website. If a seller wants to sell something I would prefer the website to look nice. Just text looks FUNKY...Bad pictures make everything seem uglier also.

Price matters for me, but it depends on what I want to order. If its a quality LIKE NEW game then I am willing to pay more. If its just a game to play I would care less as long as its cheap.

Ever run into a snag trying to order? The seller doesnt want to take paypal, check, money order or international shipping? Yah! I ran into that too. It pisses me off especially after I spend 20 minutes looking through the site just to have it reject my order. Now that sucks.

Have any horror stories about e-mailing a seller just to have them e-mail back a nasty message or not e-mail you at all? I hate sellers like that. I would never order from people like that. Care to share some cool stories?

My most hated thing about stores are hidden costs and international shipping. It just bothers me that sometimes the shipping costs more than the game itself. At that rate its better not to order from them at all.



Have a like or dislike for some stores? Please share...

My first was with e-gameuniverse on ebay. Those tards charged me priority shipping just to send my cardboard carton boxed games in a envelope. Needless to say that all the new games got crushed to death.

I avoided Hit-japan and Yamatoku for the last few years because they are too expensive on shipping.

My latest horror was with neostore. If the guy does not know how to ship orders he should not be taking orders. He also charged me $31 shipping for a package that was delivered for $3.20. Needless to say I was a little mad.


I had a lot of good deals from ebay sellers though. Too bad they were selling stuff from their basement and not from a store.

[CasualCoreGamer]

Most times I order imports, it's through domestic online stores which i'll leave unnamed for my sake. Just in case nobody knows yet, Wolfgames is going out of business and most titles are 50% off. I'm mentioning that because I already got what I wanted from there. I've never encountered any problems other than a title or two not being in stock. I've ordered from asian sites as well and the my only complaint is regarding the shipping ($$$) although Lik Sang is decent enough (Hit Japan's good too) and the key is to buy games a few titles at a time, which will cushion the shipping charge shock. My only real complaint is that I've never seen any Japanese PS1 consoles available on any of these sites, yet I see the games all the time. I mean, there's got to be millions of ignored PS1s in Japan and none are being offered? Someone please tell me I'm overlooking/missing something (and not Ebay).

[DiabloNeonX]

My favorite import store here in the D.C. metro area has a moderate selection and decent prices. They still charge too much for the Dragon Ball Z SNES games, but that's my only gripe.

They even know me by name there, I used to be such a regular.

[Mayhem]

Most Eastern shippers (such as Hit-Japan) use EMS because it's trackable. Trackable so that they know it's got to me and I don't rip them off. That's why it's a bit more expensive because the starting rate for it is fairly high but then increases slowly as the weight goes up.

So if I'm ordering anything like that, I always try to go for multiple items at once.

No complaints about Hit-Japan myself. Or PlayAsia, LikSang, Yes Asia, CD Japan or JapanPA.

[allinfong]

My favorite import store here in the D.C. metro area has a moderate selection and decent prices. They still charge too much for the Dragon Ball Z SNES games, but that's my only gripe.

They even know me by name there, I used to be such a regular.

So price is your main attraction?




Most Eastern shippers (such as Hit-Japan) use EMS because it's trackable. Trackable so that they know it's got to me and I don't rip them off. That's why it's a bit more expensive because the starting rate for it is fairly high but then increases slowly as the weight goes up.

So if I'm ordering anything like that, I always try to go for multiple items at once.

No complaints about Hit-Japan myself. Or PlayAsia, LikSang, Yes Asia, CD Japan or JapanPA.

I think the shipping problem will be resolved if there was someone in the US importing large quantites of desirable JP games. That would really brighten up my day.

I checked the Japan Post shipping chart. They tell you the exact weight and prices. For EMS I dont see any savings with bulk orders. I added the prices and weighed certain items. He Hit and Yamato seem to overcharge for all of their items on shipping. I know for a fact that a Neo Geo does not weigh $80. Its more like $68. Thats really sneaky, but people dont know.

[Iron Draggon]

I usually order from Import Games Japan or Yamatoku, but it doesn't really matter to me as long as they have what I want. So I've ordered from a ton of importers that I can't even remember now. I won't ever order from The Games Master again though. Their communication was horrible, their shipping took forever, and when the game finally did arrive it was hardly in as much of mint condition as they said it was. I wouldn't recommend them to anyone.

[Lady Jaye]

I've ordered twice from Play-Asia and the shipping fees are really, really reasonable, much more so than with many American online stores. I've yet to receive my second order (Daigasso Band Bros for the DS), but it oughta arrive within the next few days. As for the price of the game, it seemed a bit steep at first, but when I verified on amazon Japan the game's price, it was actually about the same.

And the Katamari Damacy soundtrack I got there was much cheaper than on Amazon Japan, even though it was a legit copy.

[FurinkanianFrood]

My favorite import store here in the D.C. metro area has a moderate selection and decent prices. They still charge too much for the Dragon Ball Z SNES games, but that's my only gripe.

They even know me by name there, I used to be such a regular.


A decent import store in the DC area? Where? I've looked for a decent one for a looooong time......



I think the shipping problem will be resolved if there was someone in the US importing large quantites of desirable JP games. That would really brighten up my day.


I usually buy 3 to 8 at a time for that reason..... If one or two are expensive I tack on some of the more decent inexpensive stuff.

I get most stuff from a few JP based ebay stores. The games end up being much cheaper even with the shipping if you look carefully for the better priced items. Sometimes wating can save $50 or more on some games.....

I used to get stuff from Wolfgames but Matt couldn't afford to run it anymore....... Everything is on clearance with no new stock......

[Arthur-Otaku]

All import stores are funny for me, due the ridiculuos high prices, I will never give my money for them

There's a seller on ebay called hit-japan that sometimes offer import stuff for decent prices (only him)

Get import directly from yahoo auctions, there's no another better method in this world, there you pay for import stuff the same price of american stuff

[Lord Contaminous]

That reminds me to ask, does gamechoiceclub.com give a quote on the final price of something with the shipping included?

[Arthur-Otaku]

That reminds me to ask, does gamechoiceclub.com give a quote on the final price of something with the shipping included?

Gamechoiceclub was the supplier of an US game store called playthegames, an horrible game store that died (thanks god)

I do not recommend buy anything in gamechoiceclub, probably is horrible like playthegames. This store looks like an fake for me and do the same thing of dead playthegames, always shows "non-real photos" and always don't show the accurate condition of games and systems. The prices are horrible too like playthegames

[Arthur-Otaku]

Have a like or dislike for some stores? Please share...

My first was with e-gameuniverse on ebay. Those tards charged me priority shipping just to send my cardboard carton boxed games in a envelope. Needless to say that all the new games got crushed to death.

I avoided Hit-japan and Yamatoku for the last few years because they are too expensive on shipping.

My latest horror was with neostore. If the guy does not know how to ship orders he should not be taking orders. He also charged me $31 shipping for a package that was delivered for $3.20. Needless to say I was a little mad.


I had a lot of good deals from ebay sellers though. Too bad they were selling stuff from their basement and not from a store.

You claim about shipping, 90% of ebay sellers always charge incorrect shipping costs to international buyers. Yes, UK and US sellers do it too, I'm from Brazil and they always charge 8 to 15 dollars when the correct cost is 4 or 5 dollars, or you accept this crap or you will never buy on ebay because all sellers do it

In comparision, japanese sellers gave the better accurate shipping cost and charge only 2 or 3 dollars above of correct cost, much better than US and UK sellers that sometimes charge 10 dollars above correct shipping

Yamatoku and Hit-japan doesn't charge so high shipping costs, they give an almost accurate shipping cost, shipping from japan is really high. An japanese seller called rabitds always charges "crazy" shipping costs, when I bought one game from him I proved with official price chart of japanese mail that the shipping cost was very wrong

We need to be more smart with these sellers and check the correct cost before buy

[Cthulhu]

I usually use domestic web-based import stores. NCS is my favorite by far. I've done business with them for years and I've never ended up unsatisfied or screwed. They only deal with new (and new-er) releases, however. Play-Asia was good too, but I only ordered from them once. Tronixweb was good for a few things, but I have no idea if they're in business anymore.

For the used stuff, ebay is about the only way to go. I've had generally good results with stuff on ebay, but I haven't bought anything off it in years. *knock on wood* ^^;

[Fuyukaze]

The biggest things I look for in an import store are....
1.Price
2.Selection
3.Customer Service
4.S&H

A store needs to have prices that are worth buying games from. All to often I find places that sell games for the exact same price as everyone else. If the only difference between 2 places is their S&H, I go with the cheaper. Selection is great to me because I tend to want more then just the newest systems.

[PC-Famicom64]

Has someone fome hear bin to Japan Game Stock yet ? :/

[Lord Contaminous]

I have. Great place.

I got my Super Famicom system from there.

Still steep shipping on consoles though for EMS.

[PC-Famicom64]

I have. Great place.

I got my Super Famicom system from there.

Still steep shipping on consoles though for EMS.Thanks for The Tip about Japan Game Stock . ^_^