End of an Era
Sat 2010/11/27 06:21 JST
Tried to do a checkout this morning, but anyone who wanted to buy discounted figures off of AmiAmi's Japanese site will be greeted with the following..
..Prep those C-Notes people, no discounts for us non-Nipponians. >:(
Seemed appropriate enough..
"price gouging"? Even without sales, Amiami is pretty much the cheapest place to buy figures.
Seconded. I did some price checks all over the Internetz (at least for the well known figure sites), and Amiami has the cheapest prices as long as the exchange rate is stable, and no one gets the idea of doing 50% off/free shipping.
They do take out figures out of the English site every now and then tho, as explained in a post somewhere here before. Like how they took out the Nagato Yuki Nendo off recently. :\
Are you saying even if the Nagato Yuki Nendo isn't on sale, you can't find it on the English site?
:checks: You're right.
I think that's has more to do with it being sold out then them not listing it. Amiami usually doesn't keep an item listing up once it's gone. If you try searching through the Japanese site you can't find it either.
What's the reason for that? Do you know? That's kind of weird...
*bang*
Kind of vague answer Amiami gave there... but I guess that's what companies do. But if it is to instead support "local" distributors, that's kind of... mean, I guess. Most American anime stores have somewhat ridiculous prices, and even if they didn't, shipping from the U.S. isn't great. (well, at least for me. if you live in the u.s., I'm sure it's pretty cheap. XD)
Can't blame companies if they complain when their sales reached the peak and leveled off from there. That's just what they do I guess. ^^;
About the prices tho, it kinda depends. Looking at discounted prices + SAL shipping on 1/144 Gundam kits, it's more or less what local stores offer before taxes. Figures are a different case tho, as local sells them for roughly around SRP + SAL shipping before taxes. So I guess for the majority of the figure.fm community, it is mean. D:
If most the comic stores weren't are run by elitist pricks and Diamond Distributors, I'd go local.
It was a good run i guess.
HLJ did a FREE shipment campaign once. and they provide cheaper EMS shipment.
That what I pointed out actually. ^^;
oops, sorry. i read "and Amiami has the cheapest prices as long as the exchange rate is stable", "no one gets the idea of doing 50% off/free shipping" as 2 different sentences.
Not with the current exchange rate, but still better than HLJ.
It's either go through AmiAmi with their discounted items now, or pay the up-marked American/asking prices at cons later on. (hence the "gouging" tag.)
I have no hate against AmiAmi (they've had nothing but excellent service), but it seems the manufacturers have caught on.
This sucks. I kind of wish I never knew about the sales in the first place then. Well, our video games, food, and gas are cheaper over here. Take that, Japan.
And DVDs/BluRays lol
; ; and I saw a few good ones on there that I wanna get my mitts on..... *sigh*
Once again, it's all because of Good Smile Company's official overseas distributors who hate AmiAmi selling GSC figures too cheap internationally. AmiAmi is kinda weak against this kind of pressure simply because they have no official rights or license to sell GSC products to overseas at this moment.
Huh? But I still see the nendoroids at amiami... ._.;
I only don´t see the ones that is out of stock like the BRS nendoroid... ._.;
No, they are not supposed to sell ANY GSC products to overseas.
You can still order what's listed in their English site and they'll accept your order, but under the table.
There are typical Japanese "honne and tatemae" business deals going on between GSC and AmiAmi.
If AmiAmi sells GSC's certain items too cheap to overseas, GSC has to apply pressure on AmiAmi in order to appease their overseas distributors.
Ugh... =_=;
But I see they have some stuff GSC that is exclusive from them... ._.;
Or no?...
This was just recently posted, so it probably still works:
http://www.figure.fm/post/en/19416/Did+anyone+get+Saber+on+sale+at+Amiami.html
Scroll down to knetye's first comment in the post.
I read that, but trying to check out through the Japanese site doesn't work any longer, at least not without a proxy I think.
i managed to check out with a BRS.
just click on add to cart on the Japanese site, then jump over to the english site and its still in the cart.
Yeah, I was trying to get the Saber Excalibur on the Japanese page, but there is no "add to cart" button. I thought Amiami got smart and redirected any foreign IP addresses. People say the reason there is no button is because Saber is sold out.
Just managed to order Nendoroid Lucchini this way <3 Strangely, the trick won't work in IE, but it will work in Firefox.
Wont be ordering anything from GSC anymore because of this nonsense. Plenty of other quality figure makers like Alter to choose from anyways.
lol because they not give discount. GSC is still the best and always be the best. If look 89% of figure they are GSC. Just because not give a discount not going to buy from them any more. Main reason is people be buying them at discount and then selling them for way over price making money of GSC dont be surprise if all figures company start doing this soon