Hey guys, 2 questions:

1.) When items are out of stock online,

Is there any inexpensive Japan-based shopping service that takes a want list you submit to them and they go out, looking for the items on the list at various retailers?

2.) Anyone ever buy from these 2 retailers? Are they even still in operation? How do you tell if they are trustworthy?

AASHOP-PZONE - Pre-Order (PVC Figures Plush, Banpresto One Piece Dragonball Gloomy bear and more)

Nobletoy.com.hk

Just wondering. They have some items that interest me, but I've never heard of them.

You mean like this? http://figinstock.com/

Does that cost anything or is it just a free program that detects when something you've specified is restocked/stocked?

Does it detect by specific product or search result/entire toy line?

Say for example I want to know when masterpiece Soundwave is in stock vs. whenever they restock SHmonsterarts or anything that comes up under the search "Godzilla"?

I have no idea actually, I've never tried.

I've only used FigInStock for Mandarake and AmiAmi.
For Mandarake, it takes a search string and performs the search and notifies you of new results.

For AmiAmi you give it the url of a specific product and it notifies you when the stock status changes.

That's what it is. You create a free account, add the product pages of the items you want, and they'll email you when they come back in stock.

They also do a Mandarake search term alert, so if you're looking for something specific you just add the search term and they'll send you an email if one comes in stock there.

I had a question about Big Bad Toy Store.

Can someone please, in very easy terms, explain to me how Pile of Loot works? I've reread how they explained it on their own site atleast nine times now, and it still makes no sense to me what-so-ever.

Help would be appreciated.

You order stuff. As it comes in stock, they put it in a box for you. They don't ship the box until you tell them to.
That's pretty much it.

This, and I'd add that they charge you for shipping for the first item that comes in stock(usually around $8), then every item after that they add a little extra for shipping(like ~$1). So you can get a TON of stuff shipped for like $16.

Oh. Well why the hell don't they just explain like that on the website?

Thanks guys.