Like many species collectors here, I’ve had trouble finding the Korean cards I’ve been on the hunt for here in the US. Harumio has been recommended here and there as a Korean proxy service, and there were several cards on Tcgbox I needed anyway, so I decided to place an order.
The following is based solely on my own experiences as a first-time customer.
Starting off strong, filling out the order form was easy and straightforward. Copy-paste the name of the item that you want, the url, and the price in won. Select your shipping method (only tracked shipping available), and then submit.
Day 1: I submitted my order on a Monday (important for later). Once submitted, I got a confirmation email that I would receive the invoice in about one business day, and this is where things start going downhill.
Day 4: With the lack of response four days later, I sent a follow-up email to ask about the invoice.
Day 9: Five days after that, I opened a ticket in their discord server about the invoice. We’re now at nine days with no response, after being told I would receive an invoice in about one business day.
About two hours after I opened the ticket, they sent a reply to my inquiry email apologizing for the delay and sending the invoice my way. Not a problem, I get it, sometimes things happen and orders slip through the cracks.
I pay the invoice and am sent a confirmation email, saying that their team would purchase the items as soon as they can. I’m also provided with a link to track my order.
Day 12: Three days later, I go to check my order status because I’m curious as to timing, and I’m met with the “item out of stock” label for every single card. I double-checked Tcgbox, and all cards were still available. Notably, I wasn’t sent an email or anything regarding these. I open another discord ticket.
The rep responded within 20 minutes, and I explained the situation. Apparently there was an issue with the links I copied leading to a defunct checkout page, so I resent the links, and they said they’d get back to me after escalating the situation.
Day 17: Five days later, I sent another response in the ticket thread asking for an update.
Day 19: Two days after that, so one week from opening the ticket originally, I received a response from the rep confirming that the items have been purchased with the new links. I thanked the rep and closed the ticket.
Day 26: One week after that, I remembered I placed a Harumio order and decided to take a look at how things were progressing. All of the items were now labeled “item on hand” and had a “request delivery” button under them. I requested delivery for each item, and each label changed to “ready to ship.” Again, I wasn’t emailed or otherwise notified that items had arrived, unlike every other proxy service I’ve used in the past. It’s a little annoying that I’m apparently just supposed to keep tabs on the order constantly, but whatever.
I requested delivery on a Saturday, so I expected them to take a few days to ship.
Day 34: One week later, the items still hadn’t shipped out, and I had no confirmation of when that would happen. I sent an email request the following Sunday (8 days after requesting shipping) before I forgot about it, not expecting a response until at least the following day.
Day 36: Two days later, I received a response that the items were currently in the shipping process, and I would receive a tracking number via email when they shipped. About 20 minutes after that, I was sent a shipping confirmation with my tracking number.
To be clear, I’m not upset at the length of time things took in general, as I’ve used proxies before and I’m not impatient, but the lack of any unprompted communication was jarring and felt unprofessional. At the time of writing, there’s no indication of timeline on the information page, and even just a “Hey, we’re getting a lot of orders so there might be a delay” literally anywhere would have been completely understandable. Instead, I had to watch my order like a hawk and report any issues myself, and then on top of that, I was still left in the dark for weeks at a time.
With any other proxy service I’ve used, I would have gotten an update every single step of the way. Order > Confirmation of order received (usually instant) > Item Purchased (or unable to be purchased) > Item sent to warehouse > Item ready for shipping > Shipped with tracking. Harumio’s service is missing key notifications that make the process so much smoother.
To their credit, the rep that I spoke to was very kind and helpful, but it feels like there’s a lot of disorganization going on behind the scenes.
After over two months since I originally placed my order, my cards did finally arrive safe and sound- huzzah! Going forward, I don’t think I’d recommend Harumio until they sort out whatever is going on with their order system.
Has anyone else had recent experiences with this proxy? How did you find it? I’m curious as to if my experience was an outlier or something that has become the norm.
