Hi everyone, I wanted to share a chrome extension I’ve been working on for some time now.
WTF is it?
The chrome extension does several things. First off, one of the biggest problems I see with people who are new and getting into buying on a restricted market like Japanese website is they instantly try to search english which will obviously yield very little results : )
The chrome extension lets you search for all pokemon, as well as different sets and useful terms for browsing japanese websites. It lets you quickly copy those search terms for your clipboard for quick pasting.
I manually update and curate the search terms, and hope to add more as we go. For now it does have all pokemon and around 100 unique terms that I’ve found helpful when browsing and buying.
The other problem I’ve tried to solve with the chrome extension is scamming on Yahoo Auctions Japan. If you’ve ever been scammed on YHJ before, you know how incredibly painful and annoying it can be as you’ve really got no buyer protection. Since we use middlemen to purchase from YHJ, it’s often a frustrating experience to not be able to leave bad feedback and mark sellers as scammers yourself (thanks generic buyee feedback)
I maintain a list of “known scammers” who have scammed in some way; deliberate card swapping, poor listing practices, selling open boxes, or charging insane rates for shipping costs. When you browse the page of a known seller, it will add a red banner at the top of the page warning you that they are a known scammer.
It has helped me several times not get scammed from scammers whom I’ve been scammed from myself. Please note this only works on Buyee right now.
For known good sellers, it will also add a green banner at the top saying the seller is a good seller. Please note that there is still always a chance you could get scammed by a good seller, this is not an endorsement to buy from that seller, just that other people have had good experience with the,
What permissions does it have?
The app was designed such that it does not have any intrusive permissions or collect data. It has the ability to view Buyee in order to show the banner, but if you feel uncomfortable with this you can simply turn it off in the “site access” screen, if you’re just looking for the copy/paste functionality for translations.
You can download the extension here: chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pokestonks/odkklpelmeeaihlncciegdmabpgejfgf
If you have any feedback please let me know! Or if you’d like some terms added, please drop me a note.
I’m hoping this can help everyone step up their game with buying from Japan!
thanks!