Hello Everyone,
I have some questions about buying from japan:
Can’t really answer 1, because I’ve never used Zenmarket, only Buyee and Noppin. From those two, Noppin is currently closed until the end of the year due to the pandemic, and also more expensive in terms of fees. But between Buyee and Zenmarket I dunno.
As for 2, I’m not from the US, but from the answers of all similar questions I’ve seen here on the thread there is no such thing as import fees if you live in the US (lucky bastards… 
).
In my country it’s only the price. If I buy a 10 kg package costing less than 22 euros I won’t have to pay any import fees. But I once had to pay roughly 375 USD import fees on a single 2k card weighing a couple of grams… Not sure if the same applies to every country, though. But again, as I mentioned in 2, I don’t think people from the US have to pay any import fees for packages a.f.a.i.k.
Greetz,
Quuador
@quuador,is correct about the import taxes. I’m from the US and order from Japan quite often and no import taxes, which is great. I still am yet to try using Buyee or Zenmarket, but plan to use Buyee soon.
Just to chime in, I use two different middleman services depending on the situation.
Neokyo: If I want to buy from Mercari or Fril and pay the lowest fee, $2.30 per item.
Zenmarket: If I’m paying with crypto on Yahoo Auctions since they’re the only ones I know of that accept crypto.
I’ve had a great experience with both
@videsh This post from a previous thread has a nice summary of the fee differences between Buyee and Zenmarket. TLDR: for lots of small purchases, Zen is probably cheaper. For high value purchases, Buyee is the winner. Personally I use both, depending on what I’m buying.
Does anyone have a ball park estimate or generally accepted consensus on what % premium over the native cost you can expect when using any sort of middle man service?
And is the advantage of using guys like Buyee or wtv that you can pay in your currency to them who then use the local payment methods, ship to their sorting facility and then remain out to you?
I guess what I’m trying to ask is, let’s say you either have a physical middle man there, an address or “PO Box” style service that just forwards any mail/parcel received, you sign up either using a VPN (if the site(s) IP banned/restricted because of geolocation, you have an actual Japanese address, once you circumvent all of these challenges, is there the final problem that you need to have a Japanese CC / method of accepted payment there. In other words you non-Japanese credit card / PP account won’t allow you to finalize the transaction?
@thedude1990,helped me earlier this month and his advice as spot on. One company he recommended is Sendico. I ordered a PW Green binder through them and had no issues. Fee was about 500 Yen which isn’t too much + shipping.