Online TF shopping - where is the best place to spend your bucks?

[kurdt_the_goat]

My biggest problem with RK is the inconsistency of service. NEVER EVER place an order with in in stock items and pre-order items... They often mess up orders and sometimes don't reimburse postage, despite their mess up.

I do hate the way the main page of an item says Available now, but the item is actually a pre-order. That's what I hate the most. PLus they don't have a postage calculator so you can't see how much the postage is until after they email you.

They do have a postage calculator... you add to cart and proceed to the last step before confirming and it'll tell you... actually i've never had an email from them about postage either, so i don't know what you're smoking there

[GoktimusPrime]

AmiAmi is a very good place to buy Takara figures but also popular, you have to be quick, I'm currently waiting for MP Swave to be instock but I doubt I'll get it in time, like Am Breakdown which I had to purchased on eBay since I missed it on Amiami but otherwise I highly recommend it.

Gah! I thought you meant MP Swerve* and got myself all excited until I realised you meant Soundwave. (>O<) But yeah, I usually pre-order stuff if I shop online, get earlybird discounts. Sometimes you see shelfwarmers going on sale.

(*cos in Japanese "a" approximates the same as "er" so I thought it might have been a mistransliteration)

I had a look at HLJ.com. Not bad for Japanese exclusive figures (or if I wanted statuettes of anime girls, not sure the wife would approve though ).

Heh. I use HLJ to preorder Japanese toys like reissues (currently have Encore Fortress Maximus on preorder from them).

Sadly they taught Indonesian instead of Japanese in high school, so amiami is indecipherable to me

Amiami is also available in Bahasa Inggeris dude. I wouldn't recommend online stores here that were exclusively non-English. I also sometimes us Amazon Japan, but I wouldn't openly recommend it as it's entirely in Japanese and you need a Japanese shipping address. But Amiami is also available in English.

http://www.amiami.jp/　<---their regular address
http://www.amiami.com/ <---their mirror site in English

HLJ is entirely in English as it's run by a Canadian dude and they exclusively service overseas collectors... which may explain why they're a bit more expensive than Amiami who are able to service collectors in and out of Japan. By expensive I mean that HLJ usually charges RRP whereas Amiami often offer discounts below RRP -- but both sites offer discounts with pre-orders. Almost all my online shopping is done through pre-orders. I can probably count the number of times I've purchased something online that wasn't a preorder on one hand.

[Kazza]

I hawk ebay looking for fair listings everyday, alternatively i would buy from RK and ehobbybaseshop.

[griffin]

Best sources for me, in approximate order - Ehobbybaseshop (nothing to do with Ehobby), Amazon US, Hasbro US (through a shipping agent), BBTS, Ebay.
Those 5 sites account for about 70% of my toys in the last year.... compared to 5.5% I bought in Australian stores. (and 24% is from US and SG retail stores bought in person)

(I never use RK now, because of bad service and being unreliable.)

[Paulbot]

Mandarake came up in the awards as a favourite online store but I'd not heard of it before. I checked out their site and they have some items I want, but it's not apparent how you work out postage? There's a page of postage estimates based on weight, but the indivdual items' pages don't tell you their weight. It looks like you have to order and pay and then they give you a postage quote. Bit reluctant to try this without hearing from others first.

[Tober]

Mandarake came up in the awards as a favourite online store but I'd not heard of it before. I checked out their site and they have some items I want, but it's not apparent how you work out postage? There's a page of postage estimates based on weight, but the indivdual items' pages don't tell you their weight. It looks like you have to order and pay and then they give you a postage quote. Bit reluctant to try this without hearing from others first.

Mandrake are a second-hand store. A lot of their stock in in unopened condition, otherwise MIB. I've bought from them many times with no problems. Once you place an order they send you the postage cost and whether you want to go with SAL or EMS. If you don't like the shipping charge you can cancel.

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I'm a big fan of anime-export.com and 1999.co.jp/eng/ (Hobbysearch). Their pre-order prices can sometimes be better than amiami.com (whose English storefront is amiami.com, as opposed to their Japanese storefront amiami.jp )

[crankcase76]

I personally have found TFsource to be reasonably priced as i check between the 3, BBTS,RK,TFsource. I find that the packaged items i receive to be done extremely well. and as a last resort i will check on eBay. I have pre-orders with TFsource but use the pay later system which if the price goes down i am charged at that price.I have also used BBTS and they are not that bad either. when it comes to online ordering postage is sometimes expensive, but when we get figures that are not available to us here in OZ it seems to be the advantage of this system.

[i_amtrunks]

Mandarake came up in the awards as a favourite online store but I'd not heard of it before. I checked out their site and they have some items I want, but it's not apparent how you work out postage? There's a page of postage estimates based on weight, but the indivdual items' pages don't tell you their weight. It looks like you have to order and pay and then they give you a postage quote. Bit reluctant to try this without hearing from others first.

Tober got everything 100% correct concerning Madarake.

I've used them a couple of times, mostly for Dragonball figures. They have great customer service and do their best to answer any questions in english. The one thing to look out for is they are a collection of shops, so ship different items from different stores, meaning if you get two items from two different stores, you'll have to pay two lots of shipping.

Shipping has always been fairly reasonable, I think it normally ends up about $15 for most bulkier items. They sometimes also charge a 500 yen handling fee.

[BigTransformerTrev]

Well, the original reason I started this thread was in part to see if Robot Kingdom was any good, and judging by the fact it won the poll I guess I have my answer. Currently have a big POL & Preorder going with BBTS but might have to move my online shopping in the future - thanks guys

Just one minor extra whinge about ebay - has anyone noticed how many of these sellers try and sucker you in with the postage? For instance, I was looking at a G1 Windsweeper tonight - he was $28.77 - which isn't cheap but isn't stupidly expensive. Then I noticed down below it the seller was trying to charge nearly $40 for the postage on this tiny toy! Dodgy buggers! I paid less than double that for the postage on my G1 Fort Max from the same country!

[Paulbot]

Mandrake are a second-hand store. A lot of their stock in in unopened condition, otherwise MIB. I've bought from them many times with no problems. Once you place an order they send you the postage cost and whether you want to go with SAL or EMS. If you don't like the shipping charge you can cancel.

I've used them a couple of times, mostly for Dragonball figures. They have great customer service and do their best to answer any questions in english. The one thing to look out for is they are a collection of shops, so ship different items from different stores, meaning if you get two items from two different stores, you'll have to pay two lots of shipping.

Shipping has always been fairly reasonable, I think it normally ends up about $15 for most bulkier items. They sometimes also charge a 500 yen handling fee.

Thanks for that information guys. I'm going to give them a try.