I’ve noticed sometimes when I use buyee and go to Meraci from the buyee page not all of the items show up. If I use Mecari directly I find items listed there that isn’t on buyee but when I click on the item it sometimes shows buy this item and takes me to buyee to purchase or it says “Sorry! This item is currently only available in Japan.” and if I click it takes me to buyee homepage.
If I wanted to purchase those items that says “Sorry! This item is currently only available in Japan.” Do I have to find a Japanese middleman if I want to purchase those items or is there a work around so I can purchase using buyee?
Not sure if this is the right place to ask or the mega thread?
From another efour user, I learned about Jsubculture.com. It’s another middleman service that works similarly to buyee and I’ve had great results with them.
I second J-Subculture and use them exclusively. Great service and great customer support. But yeah, its a middleman service similar to Buyee. But to answer your question, is it possible to check with Buyee if the seller of the item has been blacklisted? I say this because J-Subculture also has its own blacklist which flags sellers, so you see the item on Mercari but cannot buy it using J-Sub.
I use vvJapan to buy from Mercari where Buyee isn’t available or when I’m buying more expensive items. vvJapan use Wise for payment which has a lot cheaper currency conversion and processing fees than PayPal which is nice - they also consolidate packages for free.
Bought a 400 yen item with 500 yen in fees, no big deal since that was on the cart checkout page. Later on I find out there is a one time shipping charge of 1800 yen when it gets to their factory. I should have looked into this more before ordering from Mercari JP using buyee as a middle man. Passing this lesson onto others so you know what to expect for the final order total is. I am still ok with the 2700 yen total price tag for this card.
On buyee you unfortunately cant see the shipping cost you will be charged, you can however see that the seller will pay for shipping or that the buyer will pay for it. On mercari most sellers will pay for shipping, on yahoo it is the other way around. That should help with future purchases
Just a tip for anyone who wants to use mercari JP/yahoo auctions through a middleman. Prepare to buy multiple things or else the shipping charges will not make sense. If you can consolidate 30 listings which amount to $500 and get it shipped to the US for $30 then you’ll feel good. If you’re only wanting one listing of a $5 card though, getting it shipped to the US for $20 won’t make sense and you’ll probably be able to find the same card in the same condition on US ebay for cheaper.
Since no one explained this aspect, let me just add one detail here:
Buyes search function takes up to 3 days to have an item appear in their mirror of buye on their proxy site. So typically if you wait those items will in fact show, they just need time to register. This of course is always rough in the case of things that are high demand, but the options presented already for alternatives I can say are all good suggestions if wanting to get something more quickly.
