May 3, 2013

Shopping service review - Yokatta


Today for something different than a game review, and also different from an anime episode review - this is a service review!

First and foremost, even trying to be impartial here, this is a "venting-off post". I have extracted one tooth two days ago and it still hurts, while afterwards finding out one of the shipments from Yokatta came heavily damaged, I just have to put this through a post now, so excuse for the rageposting.

So back at Feb 20th 2013 I did ask Yokatta for some Ichiban Kuji goods from Banpresto's third Fate/Zero collection. The items were one Kiritsugu SD figure, one Assassin SD figure, one Kiritsugu & Saber poster and one Kirei & Assassin poster, all of the items from Yahoo!Auctions JP.

Photo Yokatta staff had sent me after recieving all the products
in their warehouse, before packing them for shipment overseas.
Everything can be seen in top condition.
Total cost for these four items was 8724 JPY - this includes item bid price, service fees, shipping inside Japan and shipping overseas. For such a charge, I was expecting all items to arrive safely, however, some of them didn't live my expectations...

Yokatta had divided my items in two shipments - one with both figures and another one with both posters. After agreeing the split, and most importantly, after paying the total cost including overseas shipping on March 11th, they sent another e-mail on March 20th, asking if they were allowed to dispose of one of the poster boxes so the shipping would not cost even more - this part of the negotiation is where frustration began, but I agreed anyway and asked them to keep both posters on the Kirei box.

Goods at hand. At this moment I had already checked both figures,
but didn't open the poster box yet... as if preparing for the heart attack...
So earlier this week, over two months after the first contact, the goods have arrived - the figures were nicely packed in a square cardboard box and came perfect, however, the Kirei poster box came only with a layer of bubblewrap and no external cardboard to protect it, so "lo and behold", it could only come damaged, as expected from a travel to the other side of the globe.

After opening the poster box came the major letdown - both posters were full of crevices and fissures in one of the sides - the one side which the box was damaged at.
These are only a small sample of the white crack damages in the posters.
This was my second time ordering from Yokatta, and I must say it will be the last one.
The first time (also in February, but one year ago) I had asked for 7 doujin titles, in which they charged a sightly absurd service+shipping fee, however, they came securely wrapped in both lots of Japanese newspaper and a layer of cardboard box outside, so I had a good impression of them at the moment.
However, this time finding one of the shipments came with a good packaging, while the other one didn't, I am in doubt of their handling now.
Although having asked for a partial refund (because, frankly, it's their fault they didn't gave both packages the same wrapping treatment), I am not positive of it, because in their terms it's clearly stated SAL shipping does not have insurance, even when offering tracking codes at an extra 500 JPY per shipment.

Surely gonna try another shopping service the next time I need goods from auctions - do you, dear reader, have any suggestions?


Useful Data

Utility time: 2 times, from Feb 2012 to May 2013.
Handling & packing: 5/10. Randomly wraps good or bad, depending on kinds of content.
Fees & shipping expenses: 6/10. Kinda abusive on shipping, but in the end you get your goods delivered.
Ease of use & communication: 7/10. Answers fast and in a somehow helpful manner.

I won't rate delivery time because it really depends on the various countries' postal services, so this is not a fault to be considered as dealer's.

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