How do I bid on Japanese auctions? What are the costs?

a parcel from Japan arrived early this morning and it got me to thinking that somebody was asking about getting stuff sent from Japan from the yahoo auctions over there and how you went about doing it what the costs were and things I thought I'll make a quick video about - I say quick we'll see how long this takes the reason this reminded me is because this particular one didn't work out very well financially it cost me a lot more than I expected and that can happen so that's one of the things that you've got to be aware of when you do this you've got to expect the unexpected in a way there's pitfalls and perils but there's also benefits there's things that are available in Japan that you can't get anywhere else so that's why I end up buying some things from Japan I get things from all over the world of course but occasionally I'll buy the old thing from Japan from the Japanese auction websites now the way you go about doing this is you don't buy yourself through the Japanese auction it's the people selling things on there aren't expecting to send internationally and aren't expecting to deal with someone who just speaks English so you deal with an intermediary company the intermediary company is between you and the person selling the item so what's happening is they're bidding on the item for you and then the item is getting sent from the person in Japan to the intermediary who's also in Japan and then they repackage it and ship it off internationally to you this costs involved of course that company in the middle needs to make some money and those that's where the cost can add up but also of course you've got international shipping and things now I'm talking about this from a UK perspective depending upon the country in which you live the cost will be drastically different but I'll just give you the idea as to how much this particular item cost me from beginning to end and how long the whole process took now the intermediate company I use is one called Joss or easy Joh jau C II the only reason I use that is because I just say with awhile I picked I mean there are a few online I wrote some down here there's by ye the Zen market there's from Japan you know the few companies doing this obviously there's de mando there the idea is there then linked into auctions so you're looking through the jaws website Japanese auctions are coming up now can search for things and then at the bottom of the screen it will show a translation of the description of that item now if there's something that I see that I want to bid on or even buy because they have binaries I can just click on it and buy it and then pay for it afterwards I've got to have the money in the account it's it's quite awkward because you've got to be aware of how much you are expecting to pay for something and pre deposit that amount into the intermediaries account for example with this particular item it was a mini disc and CD combo unit that was only sold in Japan I saw it as a as a Buy Now and the bite Now price was I wrote this down here well in UK pounds converted it was 139 pounds 44 which was very reasonable I've seen similar items in the UK older versions of it go for sort of 250 pounds or something so this was a good price to start with but of course that's not where the price ends now I couldn't just click buy now because I didn't have the money in the account so I deposited I think sort of two hundred and fifty pounds in the account and then bid on the item now if you're bidding on an item that's an open auction and someone outbid you then at the end if you lose the money that you've bid just gets refunded back into your account in my case it was a byte now so I put the money in bought it there it took the money off my balance art then got a remaining balance which I was assuming would be enough to pay for the postage and things now the way it works after that the person in Japan who the intermediaries bought it from then packages it up and sent it to the intermediate now just like on an eBay auction they buy offer free postage and packing but in this case there was they were charging for postage and packing as well as a sentence of the person so I got the I cost the item hundred thirty nine pound forty four and then there was 12 pounds 47 that was a local delivery charges which it was just kind of courier so whatever there was also 13 pound 96 fee for the one auction then on top of that 2 pound 10 bank charges now the intermediate company they will send me an email to say that they've got the site and they've received it now if I bid on a number of different items multiple items I can have them all bundle up together the intermediary company they unpack the device because quite offer the packaging that someone sends things locally is pretty poor I can't carry a bag or something so they'll take it all out and they'll properly wrap it up with bubble pack and air bags and all sorts of stuff and then put it in a new box of course this is international air freight plus repackaging plus their packing materials all that so there's a there's a considerable cost goes in there but I was anticipating this 60 70 80 pounds it was 132 pounds 43 so I thought well the heck what why's that one cost so much and but of course the thing is I've already bought it at this point it's in their warehouse ready to ship to me I've got no option really other than to pay it I suppose I could say I'm not paying it and then they'd have an item and I'd the thing I had bought other lost money for obviously you'd pay for it get it shipped now when he got to the UK on top of the costs there was also got a letter throughout to pay customs which I could have it delivered so that was 30 pounds 20 customs there was 30 pounds 43 import v80 and there was a 12 pound clearance free that was all on one letter from parcel force so in total this mini disc player that costs 239 pound 44 in Japan costs 356 pounds to get to my door the dates on this just to give you an idea this was over Christmas so I won the auction so as we already say one isn't it I mean you just bought something but anyway 20th of December so you can see we get close to Christmas so they're gonna be it's gonna be weird timeframe on this but they did quite well so 23 December I won it they received the intermediate India pound the parcel from the send and on the 24th of December so before Christmas 26th of December they posted it to the UK 30th of December it got to customs in the UK and that's where there was a delay 8th of January I get the letter through saying yeah you've got a customs charge to pay it's at the local sorting officer and I paid that and got it delivered next day which is today 9th of January it's expensive but you know you're getting things that you can't get any other way sometimes now I have had people out because of course what I do I'll get people on patreon and things say oh I'll send your things from Japan don't worry about it I'll do for you which is great I mean and I would take advantage of that if it was a suitable thing but when it's dealing with one of these auctions and you get me something sent from Seoul on to someone else and on to you it's a bit of a hassle to put onto anyone and I do trust this company they've never let me down it's just it can get expensive um remember item for a hike and a standard-sized so we'll open that in a second I just want to get you the description of the item though because that is one of the disadvantages disadvantages are buying from the Japanese auctions that the thing is obviously in Japanese and the translation isn't quite perfect for example this one CD MD has confirmed the operation of playback on CDs synchronized recording headphone output is also no problem because I do not know answer there is there is an oversight in the short time of confirmation please bid only those who consent there are no accessories appearance there are scratches under by long-term use please confirm with a photograph because it is old audio equipment it is for users who are your wild maintenance there is understanding in used equipment so yeah get used to reading between the lines all these things say there's dirt from use of things they also say that is junk as well that's a phrases used a lot doesn't mean it doesn't work it's just a phrase that's are used for old items you're kind of on your own most of the time it's always a bit of a gamble even if you get the description people say oh how translate it for you it doesn't matter about the translation the original information isn't there it's basically somebody say yeah don't know it's kind of a whole thing good luck with it you know that's the information you're getting so there's a gamble as well there so not only does the thing cost a lot there's a gamble obviously not going to send this thing back so you you've got me prepare for all this you've got to be prepared for paying a good lump of money to get anything and then being prepared to lose it all if the thing is of no use whatsoever so that's what I've got in here and I'm gonna open it up I'm not gonna do a video about the thing inside at the moment but I just want to show you the packaging that they do here let me stand up move the camera around and we'll just have a look and we'll see what they've done from this particular company at least to ensure that this thing has got to me got something what piece hopefully anyway okay so this is the first one I've ever had with these blue parcel straps on I don't if they put those on and then they use this kind of medical grade tape which is really nice stuff I thought about getting some of this myself because it's it's good quality see-through waterproof but also easy sir alright so we've got these are air-cushion things so what happens is with this they've put it all red the thicker then it expands to fill the gap so take all those out and it's the same at the bottom the same stuff in a layer of it well that's it so let's put this over here alright so that is what was in that box so I pass the parcel is now this is car ball that's back with bubble pack as well so they're using very high quality pack of it cereals but of course some law that's painful okay so you can take that layer off we're getting closer now I'm being careful at this point so I'm not using the knife anymore because I want to make sure we don't scratch the player up obviously there are a few marks from its past but there you go so that's what eyeball it looked like it was in pretty much as new condition on the front anyway still got all its stickers on so I'll see if this works in a future video I'm not going to go through that there because thinks of bear in mind with Japanese equivalences a hundred volts so I'm always gonna have to use this through a step-down power transformer not something that everyone's prepared to do but this is a machine that was only available in Japan which is why I bought it now if you're wondering about the environmental impacts of this packaging material well it says it's made out of stuff that could be processed in municipal waste to energy facilities I don't know if I've got one of those but I'll take it to the tip I'll ask the chaps there because this won't fit them a bit I mean this will fit one full wila bin worth of stuff I mean there's always a balance with these things in there if somebody doesn't package something well you just wasted a lot of effort energy and whatever by getting the thing delivered and it's broken and then that's getting thrown away as e-waste now a lot of the things I bought in the past from Japan have been small items like say a personal minidisc player or cassettes or whatever it's just something small those are the ones that I tend to aim for because they don't cost too much to get delivered to the UK for example this is missing a remote control at the same time abour this I found someone selling the remote control in Japan I bought it and got that delivered it turned up a couple of days away for this one I think all in the thing cost me under 30 pounds including buy the thing and get anything delivered to the UK so it's not always ridiculously expensive it's just in this case it was so yeah there you go that's what buying something from Japan is like sometimes it works out sometimes it doesn't but it's always a gamble I haven't plugged this one in yet this might not work at that I'd be 300 pounds down the drain but we'll find that out in a future video but hopefully this has been helpful if somebody's thinking of buying anything from a Japan auction website it's it's easy enough to do but you've just got to be aware that can get quite expensive but that's it for the moment as always thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Techmoan

Views: 301,614

Rating: 4.9474659 out of 5

Keywords: Techmoan, 4K, Buying from Japan, yahoo auctions, Japan, japanese eBay, auctions, buy from Japan, intermediaries, bidding on Japanese auctions, importing, parcels, costs, cost of importing, Jauce, Buyee, Shipping, forwarding service, air freight, how to

Id: QrlgAvJI3WU

Length: 13min 43sec (823 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 16 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Massive-Gas]

Pretty interesting.

[u/Tiny_Pay]

Studied the market for a while and decided that BUYEE was better. They made custom request harder these days but lowered fees on high priced items recently. Bought TONS from them over the years. Nearly no issue.

[u/JasoNMas73R]

lol I had a notification for this video this morning while I packed my stuff for school, but the thumbnail really caught me off guard because it looks pretty funny :D