Today I bring to you fellow otome lovers a review! It is not a game review (yet!) but it is a shopping service review. Being an import gamer (and a fujoshi haha) some online stores are inaccessible to us foreigners. It's a real drag but that is just the downside to the hobby. Luckily nowadays there are SO many options! There are a lot of sites that allow you to order various merchandise, games, and DVDs/Blu-rays! However sometimes Japanese websites have special editions that you can only get there. It's super annoying! Back in the day the only thing you could do was either go to Japan and hope you can find it... or contact an SS (shopping service) to do your bidding. Now we have options! There are fowarding services you can use where they provide you an address, your merch gets delivered to them and they send it to you! I decided to try out one of them (probably the most well-known one) from a friends recommendation; Tenso!
Tenso is a forwarding service located in Tokyo, Japan. It is probably the most well-known service because a lot of Japanese shops now use this service in order to have their foreign fans be able to order from them (such as clothing brands and otaku merchandise shops). However, there are still some shops that do not allow foreigners to shop there so this is where Tenso steps in and acts as the middle man.
I am a huge fan of the "gay swimming anime" Free!. I fell hard for the show and
Sign-up Process:
4/5 |
| First step into Tenso! |
It's a pretty straightforward process. You fill out your personal information and that's pretty much it! There are two reasons why I put 4 instead of 5 hearts.. One is the identification is a bit annoying. You have to scan and send into them either a photocopy of your ID or something that has your address and name on it in order to use their services. I get its to prevent issues but its a little annoying. You can shop while its being processed but they will not ship anything until the process is done. It's only a hassle if you need something ASAP really but still. Another thing that I actually got irritated with was that at the time they ONLY accepted credit card. If you have no credit card you are kind of S.O.L. in this matter. "Oh but I have a debit card that doubles as a credit card so I should be fine." Nope! I actually thought the same thing but I got rejected by it; twice! So I had to use my credit card instead. That also almost had a block on it as well because they charge you a $0.01 fee just to see if your card works or not. You will probably get some sort of fraud notification about it. I was pretty miffed because my card company called me during dinner time to ask me about it (go Hawaii and your shitty time difference). A couple of months ago (I think, don't quote me), they started to accept PayPal as a method of payment. Sweet right? Wrong. I wanted to change it to that but I couldn't. In order to change your payment method and your address (where you want your stuff shipped to), you have to have at least one successful transaction with them. This miffed me a bit because I didn't want to use my credit card to pay my remaining balance (I kind of spent too much money last month...) and wanted to use my PayPal. Unfortunately I couldn't do anything about it. After I finished my first transaction though I was able to change my payment method (and address if I wanted to). If you move before you use Tenso for the first time and have to change your address, you can't change it. I would like to assume you can email them and tell them the circumstance and they should be able to help you. I can't say from my experience but they seem really friendly so they should be able to help you out
Ordering Process:
5/5 |
| Sign-up sheet for KyoAni! |
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| Tenso's help page :) |
Warning: If you cannot read Japanese, please please use an online dictionary to help you with how to read certain characters. It makes life a lot easier. One good thing is at least they give examples as what to look for... and Tenso does give examples to follow as well if you cannot read Japanese. They also provide a link to this website http://www.sljfaq.org/cgi/e2k.cgi if you can't type or read katakana.
Anywho, after making your account its pretty simple; you just find your item, hit add to cart, and then go to check out! Super simple. From there you just follow the instructions. It usually asks you if the shipping address is right and what form of payment you are using. Most Japanese stores do not take PayPal.. So make sure you have a debit or credit card in tow. I ordered a preorder item so I had to wait for it. The item I wanted was slated to come out mid-February. It was seriously so painless! Just complete the order on Kyoani (or whatever site you want to order from) and that's it. They send you a confirmation email when the order is initially placed and they send another email when your item is going to be sent out (they also add how long it takes depending on where in Japan they are sending said item). They do send a couple of other emails just saying the charges went through and that the item you ordered is on preorder and blah blah.
Shipping:
5/5Shipping was smooth. Tenso actually just sends your package in the same box that it was sent in to them (at least for my package). Save them money and time really.
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| My package from Tenso/KyoAni! |
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| A Buyee flyer o: |
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| All that bubble wrap O.o |
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| My babies!!! |
Fees:
2/5I really liked ordering from Tenso but their shipping drove me nuts. They do recycle the box to ship to you that your items were shipped in originally. Also, they do have a nifty calculator on their site that breaks down the fee charges and the price of shipping. What really pissed me off though was that they advertise Registered SAL (which I generally use since SAL is actually pretty fast for Hawaii) but for my package it wasn't an option... They offered Unregistered SAL but I need tracking and signature confirmation because my neighbors steal packages. So I refreshed the page to see if it was an error or something but nope; all I had was EMS, Parcel Post (PFFFT to Hawaii? Yeah... right.), Air mail, and Unregistered SAL with no option to choose Registered SAL... Also the airmail had no tracking as well. So I just sucked it up and paid for the EMS (even though that cost more than what I paid for my items but eh it was worth it). The package arrived safe and sound so that's all that matters in the end really
On another note (unrelated to Tenso...)
Getting the package from my post office to me was a different can of worms all together. I don't see why my package took 5 freaking days to leave customs! It's just pins! Normally EMS from Japan to Hawaii takes only 3-4 days (that includes the wait time from customs). Not lately though... It took one day to leave Japan but my poor package got stuck in customs for 5 days! I... no. I asked my local post office why and even they were confused. So I reported it to them and they said they would pass it on to the customs office. Get your shit together Hawaii!
Overall Rating:
16/20I really loved this website! It is super easy to use and really painless. The only draw back I had was the shipping problem. Other than that, I highly recommend using Tenso! So if you see something you really want but live in a place not Japan, Tenso is the site to use!
Compared with shipping and service fee, Transbang is much cheaper and i got my thing almost right away after i notify them so i will never use others in the future. https://goo.gl/N1WgqD
ReplyDeleteTRANSBANG’S A SCAM! UNTRUSTRED AND LIAR THIEVES! FOR YOUR OWN GOOD USE TENSO JAPAN OR JP DELIVER INSTEAD!
ReplyDeleteFirst, they decided to RANDOMLY CHANGE the Customs declaration I SPECIFICALLY AND EXPRESSLY provided without even telling me beforehand - I found out by the Customs of my country ITSELF what they did -, which made my parcel be rejected by them and returned. I was needing it urgently and I paid much more to have it shipped via EMS, totally in vain. They did absolutely nothing about that and just preferred to stop answering my messages.
They use the AWFULEST system I’ve ever seen, HORRIBLY translated to English, CONFUSING AND TOTALLY INCONVENIENT, PURPOSELY SO YOU MAKE MORE MISTAKES AND THEY CAN GET MORE MONEY FROM YOU. Because they sent a WRONG payment request, I was obliged to pay AN EXTRA REPACKING FEE and they didn’t do anything about that either.
To top it off, I had to pay a fee for ADDITIONAL REINFORCEMENT which is an optional service that I didn’t request. After several messages and spending much of my energy and time INSISTING I DIDN’T REQUEST IT and they basically saying I was LYING, they then told me that it was another "mistake" and that yes, I was telling the truth?!
I’ve used Tenso JAPAN, Jp Deliver, MANY mail forwarders in the U.S. and in Europe for MANY years and never faced such dishonest behavior from any of them.
Be aware: they’ll try to get as much as money as possible from you! They’ll lie and say you requested services you didn’t and will then ignore your messages! DON’T USE THEIR SERVICES!