Ami Ami

By: quadrain | December 19, 2009 on 12:38 pm | Category: Activity | No Comments

Aside from HobbyLink Japan and Hobby Search, a friend told me about Ami Ami. Like the other HLJ and Hobby Search, Ami Ami sells all sorts of products from figures, model kits, magazines, etc.

The site is pretty new to the international community (out of Japan) because of their recent English support and international shipping. One thing I didn’t like about ordering from the site is that they don’t use some form or automatic payment system but rather they use PayPal to receive payment from international customers. It would be nice to finish the ordering process at the end up checkout of the site.

So onward:

-Main site. Make sure you register for account first (towards the top left of the page)

-Items of the site are also a bit straight forward. It’s nice to know that they also put on their inventory amount too.

-After clicking “Add to Cart” this comes up (like any other normal merchandise site)

-Check out page. Note: Read the bottom of the page if you want to do SAL Registered. This is cheaper than EMS but slower in shipping. The price of shipping will not be shown until you get the second email from AmiAmi.

-Address and Contact verification

-Payment Selection. Of course, those who live outside of Japan PayPal is the only method.

-After all of that, this is the final page for order on AmiAmi. From there you have to pay via PayPal.

-So here’s the email that was sent to me. The final price of shipping and the item is included in the price (I chose EMS).

There was probably a glitch on PayPal because I did not see any option to pay with my credit card, even though it was on file. The drop down menu at the review portion only showed the checking account. Not quite happy about it because of the extra six days I have to wait until the money clears. One advantage of using the eCheck method is the amount of money one will save with currency conversion fee $0.40 vs $3.60 through PayPal. Truthfully if I did have the option, I’d pay the extra just to have my item a week earlier.