VAMPS International - L'Arc~en~Ciel International

I only go one place now for anything JRock: japan-discoveries.com

As far as I know there's no weird customs stuff...the shipping seems to be a lot cheaper than the other sites, too, from my experience. The other AWESOME thing about them is that if there is something you want that you can't find, they will find out if it's available and track it down for you. VAMPS Vol 14 was totally sold out, listed as out of print on all the other sites. One email to them and within 12 hours I get an email from one of their representatives "This is out of print but we know where to find it. We will send you an email when we have it." Another day passes. Another email. "We found it. There are only two copies so please buy it right away if you want it...here is the link." It was pretty reasonably priced too for something that's out of print....they also have super rare items like I remember seeing this k.a.z. kewpie phone strap that they were selling at one of the past halloween lives...they also sell signature guitar picks....old tour goods....they found freakin' Monthly Vamps Vol. 13 for me! The only reason I didn't buy it was because they only found one and the price was somewhere near $400...but for a rare package with all the crap included in it, I couldn't say I was too surprised.

Anyways I love them lol

harumi, thanks for that. I didn't realize japan-discoveries would find items on request.

I'm really glad they work well for you and that you haven't had extra customs charges, shopping with them. They do really have some cool, hard-to-find items, on there. My only reservation about them is that their prices seem outlandish.

For example, I'm very avid to get a certain VAMPS pamphlet from them, but they're charging so much for it, they don't even want to tell you, on the website; it says you need to inquire about the price. Well, I did, and the 36-page, pamphlet that originally cost $18, they want over $80 for it, before shipping. Did I mention it's 36 pages?

I appreciate the recommendation, though!

(05-09-2011, 10:30 PM)harumi Wrote: [ -> ]I only go one place now for anything JRock: japan-discoveries.com

As far as I know there's no weird customs stuff...the shipping seems to be a lot cheaper than the other sites, too, from my experience. The other AWESOME thing about them is that if there is something you want that you can't find, they will find out if it's available and track it down for you. VAMPS Vol 14 was totally sold out, listed as out of print on all the other sites. One email to them and within 12 hours I get an email from one of their representatives "This is out of print but we know where to find it. We will send you an email when we have it." Another day passes. Another email. "We found it. There are only two copies so please buy it right away if you want it...here is the link." It was pretty reasonably priced too for something that's out of print....they also have super rare items like I remember seeing this k.a.z. kewpie phone strap that they were selling at one of the past halloween lives...they also sell signature guitar picks....old tour goods....they found freakin' Monthly Vamps Vol. 13 for me! The only reason I didn't buy it was because they only found one and the price was somewhere near $400...but for a rare package with all the crap included in it, I couldn't say I was too surprised.

Anyways I love them lol

I've used cdjapan for years without any surprises and also have used yesasia and hmv in the past.

My only beef is what my credit card company charges for the conversion fee from yen to dollar. It does not matter what the actual value of the yen to the dollar is, that is not what they use. I have figured out that they must use a high fixed price no matter what. (My local Japanese store does the same.... 1 yen = $1.60.) So my purchases always end up more than what I am expecting.

As for shipping, my feeling is that you get what you pay for. I personally only use EMS even though it is expensive. I would have lost a sold-out expensive L'arc item in the past after the US Postal Postal Service tore off the shipping label in transit from San Francisco to San Diego. Since it had been sent EMS with full tracking information, they were more committed to finding it. Plus they had an unrelenting woman on the phone who was not going away........

Cath, thanks for that info. I'm glad to hear you haven't had additional fees with the mainstream online sources. I wonder if it has anything to do with shipping via EMS. Has anyone had their orders delivered to the U.S. via FedEx? If so, did you have customs or other extra fees?

That's a good tip to look out for the conversion fee. I would have thought that charging a higher conversion rate like that across the board would result in a fee that was too high a percentage to be legal for the bank to charge. So far, I've only been charged surprise conversion fees twice, and both times they were less than a couple of dollars, but I haven't used the bigger Japanese sellers such as cdjapan, yesasia, hmv, or shopping services and Japanese auctions, yet.

(05-10-2011, 06:44 AM)cathb Wrote: [ -> ]I've used cdjapan for years without any surprises and also have used yesasia and hmv in the past.

My only beef is what my credit card company charges for the conversion fee from yen to dollar. It does not matter what the actual value of the yen to the dollar is, that is not what they use. I have figured out that they must use a high fixed price no matter what. (My local Japanese store does the same.... 1 yen = $1.60.) So my purchases always end up more than what I am expecting.

As for shipping, my feeling is that you get what you pay for. I personally only use EMS even though it is expensive. I would have lost a sold-out expensive L'arc item in the past after the US Postal Postal Service tore off the shipping label in transit from San Francisco to San Diego. Since it had been sent EMS with full tracking information, they were more committed to finding it. Plus they had an unrelenting woman on the phone who was not going away........

I hear you, about using insured mail. Don't get me started about the problems of just getting something delivered into my hands, in the condition it was supposed to be. I just finished finally replacing yet another damaged collectible.

EMS is fab, but the cost is insane, as you know (often more than the cost of the items), and the shipment unfortunately still has to pass through the hostile manglings of our postal service.

When there is some coverage besides through shipping, like PayPal or ebay or the seller agreeing to cover things that arrive not as described, sometimes I've used less expensive Japanese shipping, and made it registered for just a few more dollars, so we've got tracking.

"Plus they had an unrelenting woman on the phone who was not going away........"
Right on, for an unrelenting woman who's on your side.

I've ordered many many items from Japan and never had a problem. I mainly use hmv or if it's an item I can't get through an online store I use a service like celga. Never had any problems with customs.

Shipping is very expensive though, especially EMS. I paid $70 for shipping on the beast in the world photo book box set plus $90 for the actual book ^^;

i started with YesAsia, as it was easiest and had the so-c alled free shipping option. ok until i didn't get my 1st press KISS cd until 11 days after release. but that is ok with old items, like singles especially if you aren't looking for a COLLECTION but just want the real item to lhold and listen to. ^ ^ it can still come out cheaper sometimes.

switched to CDJapan. i pay with either a debit card(visa logo) or paypal. and had always used EMS because i had a bad experience or two buying from individuals in other Asian countries besides Japan. didn't have the option of ems, did manage tracking on one that took two months. the postal service, ours, had mislaid part of the items sent in separate packages and wouldn't even start looking until Singapore mail started asking questions at 8 weeks overdue.[they have a rule about waiting 8 weeks on international shipping before tracking stuff down. my local post office tried 3 times to find the goods during that time, but they were never logged into the system until ttwo days before they appeared at my door. ] eventually got the goods, in good shape too. but learned a BIG lesson. use online retail, auctions like ebay or yahoo or somebody i know and can bug, otherwise no deals.

as for dealing with CDJapan, no customs fees- actually, i've never paid a "customs" fee or had anything really held in customs more than a day or two on anything i've bought from Asia. i have recently tried the Fed Ex option with them. used it on TWENITY Box and FLA2, as it came out cheaper than with EMS or buying it from HMV with membership reductions. as example, twenity box: shipping for that box was 2290jpy, around 27usd then. bank charge for conversion of $ to yen was $2.11. those are the little charges Cath was referring to. almost always $1-3.00. VAMPS BITW + Mekuri's shipping was almost $38.00 [3100jpy] by fed ex, it was a considerably larger pkg. FLA2 shipping fed ex was 1800jpy, about 22 bucks. just to give an idea compared to the price Tracy paid for BITW.

have only ever used ems with hmv. only problems i have had with them are 1)the best deals require multi-buy, but it is handy to thrrow in an inexpensive older item to get those sometimes. 2) sometimes they keep an item listed after they can no longer get it. happened with SMILE Tour photobook and some mags. and magazines, you really have to want them because shipping costs as much as 3 x their cost. most magazines are less than 10 -15 bucks on their own.

i've used celga a couple of times, but onby to get something i couldn't find any longer (VAMPS 2010 Mekuri calendar for one, reasonable considering it was sold out). i got MV 13 preorder through Mukunoki JP. great except it took us forever to agree NOT to take the goods out of the box he received them in [the one that looked like a Marshall amp] and to just cover it with any old cardboard and send it!! [he eventually used a toilet paper carton (had a cute cuddly bear on it) he cut to fit and left a note to the post man to please be gentle! hahaha } lol, that one cost me a BUNDLE. though, to be fair, FLA2 cost a wee bit more. this is why we are poor.

i still usually go ems on most things just for the safety, security and peace of mind. even ebay if it's a special item or i want it fast. time does play a part. cheaper in most shipping means slower. fed ex is just as fast as ems in my limited experience and they send an email and call with a message when they ship out. only took 2 days to get here in NC. most ems takes 2-3 days. UPS, on the other hand, took 14 days to get my 2007 L'Anniversary calendar to me from YesAsia. you get what you pay for when it comes to shipping services i think.

sorry to be so long, but i've used a lot of different methods to get my Hyde fix over the years. ^ ^

Wow...I always go for the cheapest shipping method (whether it be from Yesasia, CDJapan, Japan Discoveries, etc) and I have never had a problem ever. I've been using Yesasia the longest. I think Japan Discoveries is a good option for preorders (they had the best price on the mekuri calendar and photobook that I saw) but when you're getting into rare, difficult to find items then you do seem to get into more money.

I don't understand why the shipping costs so much. The last couple months I've had to ship a couple things from here to Japan for a friend and it didn't seem unreasonable for shipping internationally...but put the shoe on the other foot...for example, I love to buy manga but I will only read it in the original Japanese so my only option is online...if I want to buy a set of manga, the shipping fees usually end up being more or less equal to the cost of the books themselves...ridiculous. I lived in Japan for 4 years, but I really don't know much about mailing stuff back and forth internationally...(we had military addresses there so anything our families sent to us from the states and vice versa was still considered domestic) but I wish there was some kind of media mail option like we have in the states...

You know, in the back of my mind I kind of wonder if that shipping money really and truly is going to shipping or if some of it isn't just more profit for them....it just seems beyond exorbitant sometimes...

(05-11-2011, 01:24 AM)harumi Wrote: [ -> ]Wow...I always go for the cheapest shipping method (whether it be from Yesasia, CDJapan, Japan Discoveries, etc) and I have never had a problem ever. I've been using Yesasia the longest. I think Japan Discoveries is a good option for preorders (they had the best price on the mekuri calendar and photobook that I saw) but when you're getting into rare, difficult to find items then you do seem to get into more money.

I don't understand why the shipping costs so much. The last couple months I've had to ship a couple things from here to Japan for a friend and it didn't seem unreasonable for shipping internationally...but put the shoe on the other foot...for example, I love to buy manga but I will only read it in the original Japanese so my only option is online...if I want to buy a set of manga, the shipping fees usually end up being more or less equal to the cost of the books themselves...ridiculous. I lived in Japan for 4 years, but I really don't know much about mailing stuff back and forth internationally...(we had military addresses there so anything our families sent to us from the states and vice versa was still considered domestic) but I wish there was some kind of media mail option like we have in the states...

You know, in the back of my mind I kind of wonder if that shipping money really and truly is going to shipping or if some of it isn't just more profit for them....it just seems beyond exorbitant sometimes...

Many places used to call it shipping & handling, but I don't see that listed much any more. Part of the fee used to be for packing it up.

I knew what to expect when I got the L'Anniversary DVD set and the VAMPS calendar at the same time. And the invoice from cdjapan showed exactly what I said I was going to be charged. However, my creadit card statement had the "foreign transaction fee" of over $20 tacked on. Since this varies according to what you buy, I never know how much I am getting soaked for there.

But yeah....pricey shipping. I was thrilled one time to find the old complete, unopened box L'arc set on auction and I snagged it for $80. I literally stole it. Shipping price.......$150. I about died when I saw that bill.

(05-11-2011, 07:14 AM)cathb Wrote: [ -> ]

(05-11-2011, 01:24 AM)harumi Wrote: [ -> ]Wow...I always go for the cheapest shipping method (whether it be from Yesasia, CDJapan, Japan Discoveries, etc) and I have never had a problem ever. I've been using Yesasia the longest. I think Japan Discoveries is a good option for preorders (they had the best price on the mekuri calendar and photobook that I saw) but when you're getting into rare, difficult to find items then you do seem to get into more money.

I don't understand why the shipping costs so much. The last couple months I've had to ship a couple things from here to Japan for a friend and it didn't seem unreasonable for shipping internationally...but put the shoe on the other foot...for example, I love to buy manga but I will only read it in the original Japanese so my only option is online...if I want to buy a set of manga, the shipping fees usually end up being more or less equal to the cost of the books themselves...ridiculous. I lived in Japan for 4 years, but I really don't know much about mailing stuff back and forth internationally...(we had military addresses there so anything our families sent to us from the states and vice versa was still considered domestic) but I wish there was some kind of media mail option like we have in the states...

You know, in the back of my mind I kind of wonder if that shipping money really and truly is going to shipping or if some of it isn't just more profit for them....it just seems beyond exorbitant sometimes...

Many places used to call it shipping & handling, but I don't see that listed much any more. Part of the fee used to be for packing it up.

I knew what to expect when I got the L'Anniversary DVD set and the VAMPS calendar at the same time. And the invoice from cdjapan showed exactly what I said I was going to be charged. However, my creadit card statement had the "foreign transaction fee" of over $20 tacked on. Since this varies according to what you buy, I never know how much I am getting soaked for there.

But yeah....pricey shipping. I was thrilled one time to find the old complete, unopened box L'arc set on auction and I snagged it for $80. I literally stole it. Shipping price.......$150. I about died when I saw that bill.

i think the credit card companies charge more for transaction fees than if you use bank debit or paypal connected back to bank rather than to a credit card. i got rid of all of my cards for years until recently and after using it on HMV because my bank somehow can't get the concept of "yen" as being legit all of a sudden, i'll stick with some other retailer and get cheaper transaction fees. as i said, never more than 4 bucks tops so far. obviously that could change at any moment. lol

but yeah, i think we all tend to "shop around" for the best deals. at these prices, you HAVE to.