Ami Ami review?

Is Ami Ami a reliable place to buy from? Their payment process is a little odd to me, like it won't tell me how much shipping is to the US until they send me an invoice. What experience have you had with them, would you recommend them, and if you are based in the US, how much was shipping? Thanks!

I've been buying from them for about 7 years, and they're great as long as you know what to expect.

They do shipping like that because they charge you, more or less, what it actually costs them to ship your item(s) so they box it up first and weigh it before notifying you. If it's an in-stock item this takes a couple of days probably; if it's a preorder it's not until the item comes out.

For a typical scale figure that's 1/8 or 1/7, shipping by registered SAL (the cheapest option) would be about 1500-2000 yen, usually towards the higher end of that. If the figure comes in a box that is too large for that particular shipping type where you have to use SAL parcel or EMS, cost is around twice that, more like 4000 yen. The large 1/4 figures like the FREEing bunnygirls or Luka or Miku have to be shipped that way and can be quite heavy so may cost 6000-8000 yen or more to ship. A small light figure like a figma shipping would be about 500 yen--probably, I've only gotten like 3 figures like this. You can get a game shipped for about 1000 yen.

To be clear, if you're the impatient type and want everything as quickly as possible and thus insist on EMS, you will be paying a lot for shipping.

They're mainly who I deal with and usually have the lowest prices, by a bit, but Hobby Search is also good. I order from them too, and sometimes if I wait too long for a preorder they'll still have something available when Amiami doesn't. Also, be aware that for preorder figures, if it is popular and selling well, Amiami may raise the price over the preorder period. Hobby Search does not do this so sometimes late in the preorder period before a figure comes out, the price will be cheaper at HS because Amiami has raised theirs. Hobby Search will also ship all figures unregistered SAL, which is slightly cheaper (200 or 400 yen less, I forget which) but doesn't have a tracking number. Amiami will only offer that on figures up to a certain value, 7000 yen I think it is; I might be off slightly in the amount.

Both stores pack very well, so your figure (and its box) will arrive undamaged.

Hobby Link Japan is good too but I haven't dealt with them much, and they don't use as large boxes or pack as well in my experience.

If you are looking for older figures, anything on Amiami preowned rated A/B (Item: A Box:B) is effectively new. It's a sealed box with "box damage" which to those of us outside of Japan will be some minor crease that you probably don't even notice. I've gotten newly-released items with worse boxes than pre-owned, just because many figure boxes are rather flimsy. Mandarake RULERS OF TIME™ are also really good for older preowned figures.

Just be aware of one store policy nearly all of these shops have--once you agree to buy something, you are committed to it. If you don't pay after getting the request with the total, they do not like it and they may ban your account; this isn't a secret as it's in their FAQs. So ordering an item, finding out the shipping is too much for what you wanted to pay and not paying, isn't really a valid thing to do in their view.

cfx summed it up.  Amiami is my go to for figures and anime merch.  Shipping is acceptable, I tend to have my items shipped out as monthly shipments.  My last order, with Flare deluxe 2B, 2 Figmas, SH Figuarts Boba Fett, 2 keyrings and 3 little acrylic stands was 7020 yen for EMS shipping.  2B probably would've been around 5000 yen for shipping on her own. 

That's a good point. I've generally never bought enough to get multiple items shipped at once so I have very limited expeience with that. But I know that you are doing that with scale figures, what works out cheapest can be a guess; two figures shipped together EMS will certainly be cheaper than two figures shipped separately via EMS, but may or may not be cheaper than two shipped separately RSAL.

Random example: back in 2014 I ordered two scale figures together, and SAL Parcel shipping was 5000 yen; if I recall EMS was just a little more. If I had ordered those separately and had them both shipped RSAL, it would've likely been under 4000 yen total. But that's hard to guess, and rates have also gone up since then, and different services may not have gone up the same amounts.

On MFC someone did indeed say shipping to the US for Flare's 2B DX version, alone, was 5000 yen. Her size and/or weight exceeds limits for RSAL.

I put the rest in a spoiler tag as it's a tangent and some of my usual long-winded babbling:

Spoiler

One other random point about the size limits, and this may be different now than it was a few years ago; I haven't bought many figures recently. Very seldom, I would get a figure from Amiami that the figure box would've been within SAL Small Packet size limits, but Amiami couldn't ship it that way, because they didn't have a small enough box that the figure would fit in because of odd dimensions. I've gottten packages from Mandarake in the past where they recut one of their standard boxes for this purpose. The downside to that is that tends to end up with a flimsier box and that's the one and only time I've ever received a figure where the figure box got quite damaged in shipping, though the figure itself was fine. Whether all Mandarake shops will do that or only certain ones, and whether they still do it, I don't know. I also seem to recall that Amiami has added some extra box sizes to deal with this.

 

Edited October 21, 2019 by cfx

1 hour ago, cfx said:

For a typical scale figure that's 1/8 or 1/7, shipping by registered SAL (the cheapest option) would be about 1500-2000 yen, usually towards the higher end of that. If the figure comes in a box that is too large for that particular shipping type where you have to use SAL parcel or EMS, cost is around twice that, more like 4000 yen. The large 1/4 figures like the FREEing bunnygirls or Luka or Miku have to be shipped that way and can be quite heavy so may cost 6000-8000 yen or more to ship. A small light figure like a figma shipping would be about 500 yen--probably, I've only gotten like 3 figures like this. You can get a game shipped for about 1000 yen.

 

Thank you so much for your response, I understand how it works a lot better now!😊 

41 minutes ago, Galvatim said:

cfx summed it up.  Amiami is my go to for figures and anime merch.  Shipping is acceptable, I tend to have my items shipped out as monthly shipments.  My last order, with Flare deluxe 2B, 2 Figmas, SH Figuarts Boba Fett, 2 keyrings and 3 little acrylic stands was 7020 yen for EMS shipping.  2B probably would've been around 5000 yen for shipping on her own. 

I was wondering what that meant when I was trying to check out! So you can save up a couple orders so they can be shipped together, so you don't have to pay for each individual item to be shipped?

I buy from AmiAmi, Hobby Search and Mandarake pretty frequently using both registered SAL and EMS shipping options, and I haven't had any problems with them. I have in the past bought from Hobby Link Japan - once was an order for an in-stock figure and that went fine, but the other order - a pre-order - had an issue where they had obviously taken more preorders than they had products for, and the item was instantly out of stock once the release date came around. I cancelled the order a few weeks later after it was still waiting for a restock, and bought elsewhere; I wouldn't plan on preordering from them again after that, but instock items would probably be fine.

AmiAmi lets you combine orders for shipping as long as all the items in each order have the same month listed for release. So say if you have 2 orders for items both releasing in December, then you could combine them for shipping. This is very useful for smaller items since it reduces the overall shipping costs, and in my case, means fewer parcels to get customs fee charges on! I think Hobby Search also offers a similar option for combining orders, and Hobby Link Japan has a 'Private Warehouse' feature where you can store paid-for items for up to 60days and then ship them all together (I haven't tried it out yet)

I don't think I've ever dealt with a Japanese seller better than Amiami. I've been buying from them for about 3 years, and I have not had any complaints. I live in Europe, AmiAmi allow me to select from different shipping options (and prices!), most of them are traced.

I've adopted all my Azone dolls from them, through pre-order. They also offer pre-owned items that are as good as new (bought many ). And, as someone also said, they let you combine orders, that is very very helpful to reduce customs and shipping costs.

Edited November 1, 2019 by nati

Amiami is top tier for me. The only thing is that delivery might cost a bit more due to the heavy duty boxes and amount of paper packaging they use.

For most countries in the world and for OP, Amiami is one of the best online retailers for anime merch there is. However, even though I've been loyal to amiami ever since I started buying anime figures (so 10, 12 years??)...unfortunately I have to finally cut ties with them as I suppose most Australian collectors did when they started charging us an extra 10% to our orders, as though the exchange rate wasnt painful enough. They also recently started doing this for New Zealand. So for anyone in those two countries, I would recommend Hobbysearch instead. As of now they dont do the tax. Which sucks because I find amiami far easier to browse, so I usually end up browsing them for new merch anyway but not buying. 

edit: Both sites charge the tax now, so disregard this :c

Edited April 1, 2020 by Monty

I used to use Amiami for everything but in the last year or so I've noticed they are no longer the cheapest place to get stuff and they do things sometimes like forcing EMS shipping for things that don't really need EMS. I think Hobby Search is better now, even if their website is a little bit uglier. My complaints are all very minor, they are very reliable in general.

Edited February 4, 2020 by sky

My only complaint on Amiami is the current English-language website is garbage in my opinion. I liked the old site much better and it loaded faster for me. Weirdly, the Japanese site is still the old design. I believe it was @finnleo that mentioned here in another thread that the Japan site did change initially as well but was then changed back. Wish they had done that for the English site.

I still look for things I want there, but I find I don't just browse it looking for things like I did on the old site.

Edit: I hadn't looked at the Japan site in some time. Listing pages still look like the old US site, but product pages are all screwed up for me now. Maybe that's an issue on my end though it didn't used to be like that.

Edited February 4, 2020 by cfx

I think everyone's pretty much summed up anything I could say, but I will add that I'm also a US buyer and have been using amiami for years and they're my #1 site for orders. Being able to order and then pay when it's ready to ship is great for planning my saving so I don't break the bank. They allow all sorts of shipping methods that fit your time/budget too. I usually use EMS, but occasionally I use the DHL shipping option for if I need something to arrive fast (like before leaving for a long trip). DHL is expensive but their service is incredible. I've received an amiami package 36 hours after it shipped with DHL. 

Amiami has also recently added in an order cancellation request system, which was previously impossible, but they do state clearly to please not abuse the system because it can limit your account.

Hope this helps!

1 hour ago, whisski said:

DHL is expensive but their service is incredible. I've received an amiami package 36 hours after it shipped with DHL. 

That reminds me of something I would like to mention as well. Before paying the high cost to use DHL for the first time, look into how DHL is handled where you live. DHL doesn't deliver directly to all locations in the US. I live in the middle of nowhere, and in my case they don't deliver to me. What happens in that case is a package shipped by DHL is sent to a warehouse they have somewhere in the US (there may be one or more than one; I do not know this), and then the package is relabeled and shipped to you via USPS, Priority Mail I think but I don't for sure remember that detail. DHL, at least in my case, was not fast at this particular thing, as the item sat in their warehouse for ~2 weeks it appeared based on postmarks and tracking information.

I had never used the service but Amazon Japan often ships via them and that's where I experienced this. It was a scale figure, and the shipping box was also ripped open and heavily damaged when I received it, but this may have happened via either DHL or USPS and perhaps just my random luck.

Anyway, the TL;DR point is that DHL may or may not be fast in a way to justify what it costs. For me it was much slower than EMS and about like SAL.

Edited February 10, 2020 by cfx

26 minutes ago, cfx said:

Anyway, the TL;DR point is that DHL may or may not be fast in a way to justify what it costs. For me it was much slower than EMS and about like SAL.

That is a good point! For the sake of clarification I do live in a highly metropolitan area (Northern VA/DC area) and based on your experiences that definitely helps delivery time.

11 hours ago, whisski said:

That is a good point! For the sake of clarification I do live in a highly metropolitan area (Northern VA/DC area) and based on your experiences that definitely helps delivery time.

Interesting. I actually just ordered some figures from Mandarake and ended up using DHL because it wasn't any more expensive for the particular order. My two boxes arrived within two days of shipping, and I was able to request that they be placed inside a plastic tote box on my porch to keep them from getting wet. They did listen to this request, which turned out to be a good thing since it dumped snow the day they came. I was working at the time, so I'm not sure if they were actually brought by a DHL driver or if they were handed off to UPS or something. I live in a smallish more rural city in the mountains in Western PA, so there's no DHL locations nearby or anything. 

On 2/4/2020 at 10:54 PM, Monty said:

For most countries in the world and for OP, Amiami is one of the best online retailers for anime merch there is. However, even though I've been loyal to amiami ever since I started buying anime figures (so 10, 12 years??)...unfortunately I have to finally cut ties with them as I suppose most Australian collectors did when they started charging us an extra 10% to our orders, as though the exchange rate wasnt painful enough. They also recently started doing this for New Zealand. So for anyone in those two countries, I would recommend Hobbysearch instead. As of now they dont do the tax. Which sucks because I find amiami far easier to browse, so I usually end up browsing them for new merch anyway but not buying. 

 

I just needed to say that I got charged for my recent order with Hobbysearch which included the 10% GST, which was kind of a rude shock, so because I don't want to mislead anybody scratch what I said here - they'll both do it. I don't know if this was a recent change or not. And it looks like HLJ does it too. Our exchange rate took another dive so I really don't see myself buying anything online for a while because of things like this. I really, really hope Volks doesn't start charging it too.

Does anyone know if EMS shipping is available again on orders to the US?  If so, are items moving through the process in a reasonable amount of time?