[Kiwami]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kurona

Hey so I'm new to the Figuarts collecting business and I've never pre-ordered one before, but Seihou OOO has very much taken my interest since I can't express enough how much I love OOO. For when pre-orders go up, can anyone with experience tell me how they generally go? When payments are, how much you need to pay up front, what's shipping like, how long does stuff take, anything to watch out for etc? Just wanna know what I'm getting into, thanks!

Well first of all you should decide which website you want to use for buying your figures. Depending on where you live, local retailers might offer these figures, but they will also charge a considerable markup to make a profit. You can avoid that by importing your figures yourself.

There are online retailers who allow you to do exactly that, the ones I use most for retail items are AmiAmi and HobbyLinkJapan. Differences between the two are many but boil down to:

-HLJ is a tiny bit more expensive, but offers a "warehouse" where you can store an item for 60 days and thus combine shipments over a month. Their customer service is good, I had a broken figure once and they replaced it no problem. They allow you to cancel pre-orders at your own terms, but will eventually remind you to not overdo it before banning your account. As long as you don’t go too heavy on the cancellations you'll be fine though. The one thing to note: HLJ has the bad reputation of "overselling" pre-orders, which means selling more orders then they can eventually fulfill when they get the stock. I don’t know how relevant this problem is, I buy form them for like 5 years now and it never happened once. You will meet people around here who had that problem and are rightfully pissed about it though.

-AmiAmi is generally cheaper, doesn't offer a warehouse but you can group up orders by month. I have no experience with their customer service at all. They do not allow you to cancel pre-orders, you have two write them a mail and ask. They may do it, they may not and ban you. Again, as long as you're not overdoing it you should be fine. Anyways, if you're pre-ordering something from AmiAmi you're guaranteed to get it. People tend to stick more to them because of that. If you want an item secured, pre-orders are safe here.

Both charge you when the item comes out, not upon pre-ordering. Both allow you to choose the shipment method of your choice. They ask upon pre-order, but it can be changed later. AmiAmi for example gives you the option once you pay the item, with prices for each shipping method listed.

Payment options vary, both allow PayPal and that's what I'm using. Credit cards might work too, but I never used one in my life.

Which shipping method is the best might depend on where you live. I usually take a registered airmail option. It's not the fastest, but doesn't cost too much and it does have tracking which I find important. There's a really cheap option to ship via a boat, I don't recommend that. It’s cheap but it can take about a month before your package reaches you. Airmail usually takes a week or two, more expensive option allow for shipment within a week.

Be wary of custom charges. Also depending on where you live, custom offices might charge import fees. The US of A doesn’t have them but in Europe for example you pay fees on import items. It’s another convoluted matter entirely but make sure to inform yourself how your country handles these things.

Those are the basics, now the interesting parts: Pre-ordering. Sadly, that's the most stressful part of this hobby. Popular items tend to sell out fast. Like, within minutes. You have to be on your guard and ready to pre-order as soon as the items go up. HLJ does this without warning so you have to figure out the time yourself, AmiAmi lists the items before pre-orders go live and add the time when it happens on the site. Tamashii pre-orders usually happen all at once on the first weekday of each month. OOO will probably go up April 1st. I'll confirm it once Tamashii does that.

But, April 1st in Japan. Time zones are a bitch. For US citizens that means it'll be the night before, for Germans like me it's in the morning. That's the key to your success: Prepare for the pre-order, be ready (and logged in) when they go live, pre-order immediately. And be ready to face server crashing. AmiAmi especially still has not figured out that their server farm can't handle the heat. Instead they added a disclaimer on the pages of said items. "Be prepared for our servers to crash, sorry ". Good one.

But, don’t get too nervous. I've never, ever, missed out on a pre-order. Kiva got the closest, but I stayed on the page and refreshed and eventually he was available again. AmiAmi tends to close pre-orders temporarily on the day they go live to open them again later. So even though the experience isn't the best sometimes, I always came out successful and so will you. If everything fails, there are other retailers besides AmiAmi and HLJ and we will help you find another way to get your OOO.

So, that's a lot to take in, but really, you do it once and then you figured it out. It's not rocket science. So, do the following: Create an account on AmiAmi or HLJ, whichever you prefer (or both), get your payment option ready, inform yourself about custom fees in your country, and most important: Tell us in which country you live so fellow members can tell you when you need to set up your alarm.

Hope that helps, sorry for the wall of text, I hope it all goes well for you. Bake yourself a cake in advance and loudly sing "Happy Birthday" once your pre-order is locked in for the bonus OOO experience