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unix and post-ironic anemoia, µsounds' starlit diary

🌔 Fri, Aug 11th, 2023

Thoughts on the disrespectful Suruga-ya.com (not suruga-ya.jp)

TL;DR
Do NOT buy from suruya-ga.com, order from suruga-ya.jp with a forwarding service of your choice.

Background

Established in 19481, Suruga-ya (駿河屋) is a Japanese used goods retailer specializing in physical media, electronics and collectibles in a similar vein to Book-Off, Mandarake and AmiAmi (pre-owned), they operate physical shops all throughout Japan and also offer domestic mail order through suruga-ya.jp, and most recently suruga-ya.com for international customers outside of Japan. Previously, you needed to employ the use of a proxy buying2 or forwarding service3 to get your Suruga-ya orders out of the country.

Thoughts

Most other places I buy Japanese stuff have been around long enough that they are well reviewed elsewhere, Suruga-ya’s global storefront is not.

Their international selection is but a small fraction of the domestic site’s and not worth your time. I highly recommend you use a forwarding service with suruya-ya.jp and avoid suruga-ya.com entirely.

As of Aug 1st, 2023, they increased the prices of all merchandise between 10-25% over the domestic (tax inclusive) price for seemingly no reason other than to price gouge foreigners. They do not offer small packet for small orders, or ocean shipping for very large orders, and will ship everything in oversized, voluminous boxes via DHL/EMS shipping that will almost invariably cost more to ship than your entire order total.

These are the same exact boxes that they use for domestic orders, they can get away with such large and wasteful packaging within Japan because Japan Post only charges for weight and not volume, their free domestic shipping on orders over ¥1,500 should clue you in on how cheap their domestic shipping costs really are, this all comes to bite you in the ass if you order internationally directly through them.

Storytime

Several years ago, Suruga-ya opened an international storefront to little fanfare and it was relatively unknown, even to foreign customers of suruga-ya.jp, on July 27th, 2023, they decided to hold a free shipping sale through August 10th. Their excuse was they were celebrating the introduction of new and pre-orderable merchandise in addition to pre-owned.

I should point out that they were giving away free INTERNATIONAL air shipping, your choice of DHL or EMS, setting them up to operate at a loss no matter how small or large your order.

So in no time at all, I ordered two 1/8 scale Hatsune Miku figures and 10 Nendoroids, among other things. By my estimates, an order of this size (¥59,000) would end up costing about ¥75,000 to ship via DHL to the United States.

You know the answer already. Nothing but backhanded, absolutely disrespectful behavior from start to finish.

I heard some people managed to receive their large orders because they chose PayPal at checkout instead of the credit card option, I didn’t get mine, the disappointment was immeasurable expected, I didn’t expect them to follow through with such a terrible business decision anyway. Still disrespectful, 0/10, would not order from without a forwarder ever again.

In any case, this will very likely never happen again, a shockingly good value proposition at the expense of the company incompetently running a promotion, it was fun while it lasted.

An actual shipping review?

I actually made two orders during the free shipping sale, the second was just stuff I forgot to add the first time, an ¥1,100 value, this was the only one that went through and will now be the subject of this “review”.

Remember how I said earlier that Suruya-ga likes to use oversized boxes because domestic shipments are charged by weight and not volume? Well they didn’t change a thing for international shipments, in the rest of the world, you’re paying for all that wasted empty packaging.

suruya-ga box

Except this one time, Suruya-ga paid for that, and they paid an estimated ¥30,000-45,000 to 3-day DHL ship me a 40x30x18cm, 1kg box containing only a interview and art asset memorabilia book for the Project Diva series of rhythm games and a BD of Hatsune Miku’s first ever live performance outside of Japan, her U.S. and L.A. debut from 2011!

some miku items

Their “padding” methods are optimized to save weight, they use stretch film wrapped around a base piece of cardboard sitting at the bottom of the box, they won’t jostle around in transit, but will absolutely not protect anything from the box being crushed, I still won’t complain here, the shipping was literally free. This is probably why they don’t do surface mail.

One thing to note, in spite of everything, their used conditions tend to be very good, hovering around AmiAmi pre-owned4 grade B, they cite that used items will not be sold if they if they cannot fulfill their original purpose, and if there is clear damage or missing parts, the listing will say so explicitly and include pictures of the damage, if they make a note, it’s equivalent to a spicy grade C, the DIY special.

They also use this as an excuse to never actually appraise the quality of items or respond to any messages asking about the quality of items, you just have to trust that you’re not going to receive a shattered CD jewel case or something, keep your expectations low and you will never be disappointed!

In conclusion

I haven’t actually checked as to whether their return or exchange policy is any good, not that it matters, I imagine it would not be at all cost-effective to ship stuff back at the prices you pay here. if you don’t enjoy the thrills and suspense of buying pre-owned goods sight unseen, there are other places to buy Japanese stuff!

So there’s really no lesson to be learned here, I’m greedy, Suruga-ya’s global storefront is run by assholes, I’m glad I cost them a bunch of money for no reason, and paradoxically, they’ve made a customer for life.

I’ll be buying from them again real soon, just not from the global storefront!

  1. Were they really operating as a retailer of used books, music and anime figures in 1948? idk, probably. ↩

  2. Proxy buying —

    A full service purchasing method that buys your merchandise on your behalf and then bills you for the final order amount plus fees, and shipping costs to your country.

    These get expensive quickly as they charge per item and are only recommended if using auction sites where you intend to snipe auctions and are too stupid to do it yourself. ↩

  3. Forwarding service —

    A much simpler service that charges a flat fee to redirect one or more packages you ordered yourself, they give you a domestic address to ship to, optionally repack your orders into one shipment to save on shipping costs and then bill you for shipping to your country.

    I recommend these because you can ship a quite large volume of things via surface mail (ocean shipping) for far less than air shipping methods. A shipment that would cost ¥70,000 via air shipping methods can cost under ¥14,000 via ocean shipping, an 80% savings!

    Is it worth the 1-2mo shipping times to Oceania, 3-4mo to the Americas, or 5-6mo to Europe? If you’re addicted to instant gratification and suffer from burnt-out dopamine receptors, then absolutely not, but that money could be used on more important things, like more miku figures and not shipping, that shit adds up quick. ↩

  4. AmiAmi pre-owned grades —

    A: New in box, has never been opened, or appears to have never been opened, also never inspected for manufacturing defects, buyer beware.

    B: Has been opened and inspected, and generally enjoyed or put on display, not damaged and includes all parts, may have dust or dirt.

    C: Has missing parts or actual conspicuous damage, indicated by the listing, you know what you’re getting into. ↩

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