buyer's guide

:: Proxy Bidding Services, for Newbies

Originally published on Zenin Princess, a now-retired goods blog.

If you're like me and everyone else not living in Japan, you don't live in Japan and therefore, find it extremely difficult to bid on anything at Yahoo!Japan Auctions. (Most sellers will not ship outside Japan, and won't take payments other than direct bank transfers, from a Japanese bank account.) There's also the issue of getting a Y!J bidding ID, which requires both fluency in Japanese and a credit card. (That, at least, can be foreign; any VISA or MC will do.)

You're left with trying to find a willing:

• family member (who may or may not care, ship promptly, or follow instructions)
• friend (who may or may not have time, want to deal with the hassle, or remember to bid)
• proxy service (whom you pay to care, remember to bid, follow instructions and ship promptly.)

Needless to say, those of us that reside outside Nippon generally use proxy bidding services (also called deputy services.) Depending on the service, you may need to deposit money with them in advance of your winning the auction, you still need enough Japanese to search and find the thing you want, and their premiums are nothing to sneeze at. However, lacking willing friends and family, this may be your only option. Live with it and choose your bids carefully.

A quick Google search yielded the following services. If I've missed one you'd like to review, please contact me or leave a comment below!

Edit: Shadow suggests searching the EGL LiveJournal community, as they frequently review shopping/proxy services. (This post, for example, has a lot of good and bad experiences with many of the services listed below.)

Celga

Pros: Lower fees than some, ability to have your own Y!J bidding handle (you bid, they do the rest), quick response time and accurate bidding. The Gold Account (personal Y!J handle) is what I use, and I really couldn't wish for a different system, as I can control my own bidding, maximums and re-bidding. Even without a Gold account, email response time for bids is generally pretty fast, and I've only rarely run into the "second-in-line" issue (see Cons.)

Cons: First-come, first-served bidding system — If you bid on something that has already been bid on by another Celga user, your bid is "second-in-line", and is only valid if your bid exceeds the first bidder. If you want to up your existing bid, you may be put "in line" if someone else has bid after you. It's hard at times to tell if the winning bidder (Celga's handle) is you or... not you. Also, the Celga shipping dept. has a habit of shipping your items without you requesting it, which has led (in my personal experience) to panicked scrambles to catch the postman, as they ship only via EMS. (This really sucks if you happen to be out of town, as unclaimed EMS shipments get sent back after six days.) I have an unrequested Celga shipment sitting across from me today, as a matter of fact.

Shadow says:

I've only used Celga also, but I like them. I do a lot of troublesome orders which include having them directly call stores to check to see if something is in stock, or having them reserve items. They haven't charged me anything extra for it, and they've been kind to me throughout the process! (Celga also has an EGL-only website too now, which is total love.

Rinkya

Fees seem quite a bit higher than Celga. Alison says:

Rinkya is okay, but I don't know what I can say about it because it's the only thing I've ever used.

It's pretty easy to use, it bids for you and it's pretty straightforward. The fees can be pretty bad, though. Last time I was perusing rinkya I remember thinking I'd need to add about $40 to the actual high bid because of the fees and the shipping (depending on what type of item it is and how big). D:

Shopping Mall Japan

Recommended by Jackie, who says:

Pros: It's probably pretty cheap. You get an account, and you can make real-time bids using their system.

Cons: Downside is that you have to make a deposit and can only bid a maximum amount across all auctions. That's not really bad, but their system is kind of buggy when it comes to keeping track of how much you've bid, like, it sometimes won't recognize that you were outbid and it'll still say that amount you bid goes towards your total maximum. I don't know if they fixed that though.

Overall, I like their system, and it's cheap.

Yukino says:

So far, I've only used Shopping Mall Japan but I think they are pretty good. Compared to the others, their fees are slightly less expensive but I'm quite satisfied with their service.

Real-time bids are a plus and their system provides a rough auto-translation of the auction pages too, if memory serves me right, which is helpful to users who are not versed in the Japanese language. So far, I haven't met with any difficulties using SMJ, so I can't really talk about any cons.

Crescent Shop

Recommended by Icera, who says:

The best service I've heard (from my crazy Japan auctioning fanatic friends) is crescent-shop.com because of the real time bid. An automated real-time bidding system. My friends use it a lot and don't have any problems.

Hobby Shop K

(No information on this one.) Fees are flat-rate, but turn-around time looks questionable? (If you've had experience with this proxy, good or bad, please contact me!)

CelMart Deputy Service

(No information on this one.) Fees look slightly cheaper than Celga, although my concerns are raised by this statement:

I am doing the deputy service to buy Japanese new or used manga, anime cels, figures, doll, books, watch and other goods at Japanese web shops and to bid yahoo Japan instead of overseas clients. I do not deal with the fragile goods!!

Um, define "fragile"..? (If you've had experience with this proxy, good or bad, please contact me!)

PhotoGuide Japan iStore

(No information on this one.) One con I see right away is having to submit your auction, bid and shipping method, and wait for a price quote from them before getting to bid. No idea what the turn-around time is, there. (If you've had experience with this proxy, good or bad, please contact me!)

Ooh!Japan

(No information on this one.) This from a (possibly spam) comment on my blog:

Ooh!Japan offers a shopping service which buy Japanese products and ship them for all who live in oversea. You can get any Japanese products through this service without coming to Japan.

Ooh!Japan provides not only the shopping service, but also full information about Japanese culture and its lifestyle.

(If you've had experience with this proxy, good or bad, please contact me!)

FromJapan

This popped up on Google AdSense. [shrug] (If you've had experience with this proxy, good or bad, please contact me!)

Japaweed

Haven't heard much on this one, but it looks cheap. (If you've had experience with this proxy, good or bad, please contact me!)

Abidko

Jazl says:

I normally use Abidko as my authorized agent as they provide really customized service.

Give them my budget, and they work out things for me... What's more, they even blog about themselves and thus i think they are really giving personalized service

Which one should I choose?

Ultimately, your choice of proxy service is just that: your choice. Personally, I use Celga because I can control my bidding, their response time is great, and my items are so carefully packed that it's often pleasurable (and challenging!) to dissect my shipments. The fees are a bit more, but it's worth it to me for the service, the freedom and the care in packing my treasures.