Dollfie Dream Fern (from Frieren at the funeral / Beyond Journeys end)

I find the online events very difficult due to the laggy website and huge demand so usually dolls are sold out in minutes before you can manage to get them through checkout. Will be difficult to get both (not impossible if ready at sale time) but wish you the best of luck! Just remember to be logged in, account up to date and have the website pages all open and ready. I'd open into a new tab as the pages keep crashing and save refreshing from the home page. 

I want to get Frieren, but President Trump the Orange Convicted Felon is ending De minimis (under $800 duty-free entry) for the USA on August 29, 2025.  I assume Volks Japan still uses DHL to ship DDs to the USA.  And it usually takes them a bit to ship things after an event, so there's little chance of her making it through customs by Aug. 28th.  If Volks would ship by EMS, it's likely that the USPS won't be prepared to start collecting the duties by then, so she'd be safe.  But Volks has never allowed a choice, if I remember correctly.  Unfortunately no one really knows how the duties will be implemented, so with DHL, those of us in the USA may face a 15% or $80 duty, plus formal customs entry fee, DHL convenience fee, + some other small fees that DHL likes to charge.  It's something anyone from the USA should think about before ordering from Volks Japan now.

1 hour ago, nanika said:

But Volks has never allowed a choice, if I remember correctly. 

According to people on the Super Dollfie discord, you are able to request EMS in the ‘order notes’ section of the order. It’s not something ive tried myself but will have to the next time I order something as while Volks thankfully ship dolls by EMS to Australia they started shipping regular clothing orders by DHL, and DHL doesn’t deliver to rural areas so I had to chase my last order to a depot in a weird location.

I've requested EMS during COVID when I wanted to dodge shipping via DHL. They were able to honor that. Took forever to come, but that's a different story.

I'm hoping my final Volks order I put in a few days ago will slip in before the deadline. I wouldn't chance anything later than this weekend and expect it to make it in time.

Re: DHL to USA with value over 800$ US

I dont think those restrictions have yet been lifted.

So the grim interpretation anything over 800$ in value wont be even handled if its headed to a private customer in the US via DHL.

I havent really followed this one, so could be outdated information, but worth checking before placing an order.

Edited August 14 by finnleo

When I(USA) ordered from Volks JP last month they asked if I'd prefer DHL or EMS due to potential shipping issues and I chose EMS. They shipped that order and another order I made EMS so I'm guessing they'll do that if you haven't made an order in a while. Such a shame though, I liked DHLs speed.

21 hours ago, finnleo said:

Re: DHL to USA with value over 800$ US

I dont think those restrictions have yet been lifted.

So the grim interpretation anything over 800$ in value wont be even handled if its headed to a private customer in the US via DHL.

I havent really followed this one, so could be outdated information, but worth checking before placing an order.

DHL actually ended up lifting the restriction pretty quickly on shipments over $800 value to individuals in the USA: https://www.dhl.com/us-en/home/important-information/2025/shipments-to-the-united-states-with-a-customs-value-exceeding-usd-800.html

Without De minimis (which the Trump administration said ends the morning of August 29th), DHL shipments valued US$800 and under will also require formal customs entry, which adds a minimum of a ~$32 fee, plus the actual duty, plus DHL's convenience fee, multi-line entry fee (when there's more than 5? items listed on the customs form), sometimes a "storage fee" (that you can usually call and get removed), and possibly a few others.

 

But thank you @Kiwi717 @chef_mai @Monty for the info about being able to request EMS.  Hopefully that will work out-- with the exchange rate, a single DD (Frieren 2.0) should be under the US$800 De minimis limit, and I'm counting on the US Postal Service to be understaffed and unprepared to levy any duties on under $800 packages.   And if the US Postal Service does charge duties, at least their processing fees are less than DHL.

 

To follow up on this, the order which I placed on Aug 12 arrived yesterday (Aug 18). One of the quickest orders I've received from Volks!

OTOH, EMS is taking a while. A package that shipped out on the 12th still hasn't reached customs yet as of the 20th. Usually, it would have delivered by now.

On 8/14/2025 at 1:22 AM, chef_mai said:

I've requested EMS during COVID when I wanted to dodge shipping via DHL. They were able to honor that. Took forever to come, but that's a different story.

I'm hoping my final Volks order I put in a few days ago will slip in before the deadline. I wouldn't chance anything later than this weekend and expect it to make it in time.

 

Edited August 23 by chef_mai

Just a heads up on an order I placed last year (part of the FF14 collab), my doll was shipped via DHL and though it was under the value and shipped before the ending of the minimum duty-free entry, DHL charged me anyway ($123 total). So if you can use EMS do so! I'll certainly be requesting it for any and all future orders.

With the help of my husband, we managed to snag both magical girls!!! 😍 

Of course they're going to ship after the import taxes go into place but we planned for that 😕 

Edited August 23 by Kiwi717

11 minutes ago, Kiwi717 said:

With the help of my husband, we managed to snag both magical girls!!! 😍 

Of course they're going to ship after the import taxes go into place but we planned for that 😕 

Congrats!  I got my order in for Frieren.  Now for those of us in the USA, we'll see how shipping goes... 

A lot of countries are now halting under $800US postal shipments to the USA starting this week, as they haven't been told what will be required for shipping.   This includes Korea, Austria, Czech Republic, Spain, Netherlands, France, UK(but it might be only a few days), Finland, and the list seems to keep growing.  And DHL is suspending the shipping where they hand-off packages to the USPS for final delivery.  Japan Post doesn't seem to know either, but they haven't announced any stoppage yet.

2 hours ago, Kiwi717 said:

With the help of my husband, we managed to snag both magical girls!!! 😍 

Of course they're going to ship after the import taxes go into place but we planned for that 😕 

Congratulations!!! I was able to get Frieren on the Volks sale earlier. I’m so glad I got her so I won’t have to order from Japan Auctions 😭 They both sold out eventually 

https://www.post.japanpost.jp/int/information/2025/0825_01_en.html

It happened.  Japan Post is suspending shipments  to the US that met the under $800 US De minimis duty-free entry, starting Aug. 27.

Edited Monday at 08:57 PM by nanika

On 8/25/2025 at 3:14 PM, nanika said:

https://www.post.japanpost.jp/int/information/2025/0825_01_en.html

It happened.  Japan Post is suspending shipments  to the US that met the under $800 US De minimis duty-free entry, starting Aug. 27.

Fffffff maybe I'll spring for DHL.....THE FEEEEEEES 😭 well, there goes my spending until this ends. 

 

EDIT: Someone on Reddit confirmed with Volks JP that they would be shipping to the US using DHL. Now this is second hand info but it makes sense. 

Edited Tuesday at 11:56 PM by Kiwi717
Added info

Congrats to all those who survived the click war! My wife and I kept getting timeouts with the payment processor, and lost out on Fern. We are going to try our luck again with the Volks US lottery. 

From recent experience, I got hit on import duty from DHL when my FFXIV twins came in. Even though they shipped separately, I was hit with import duty on one of the items. Individually, they should have fallen below the threshold for de minimis, but combined they wouldn't have. I have theories on what happened, but who knows... Even more odd was that I was only asked for one package and not both. A friend also got the notice, but hers was for the other doll (I had tarrif on Alphinaud, she had it on Alisae). 

That said, I realized that even with import duty, bringing them in from Volks Japan was still less than ordering directly from Volks US or Square Enix...

1 hour ago, asianed said:

timeouts with the payment processor

One way to bypass that is by using PayPal which as a method doesent seem to be affected by the excessive traffic, but that does have its own downsides.

 

On 8/27/2025 at 10:20 AM, finnleo said:

One way to bypass that is by using PayPal which as a method doesent seem to be affected by the excessive traffic, but that does have its own downsides.

 

In the past, I've had issues with PayPal. PayPal would process just fine, but the redirect back to Volks would time out and cause the transaction to fail. 

Damned either way. 😕

12 hours ago, asianed said:

In the past, I've had issues with PayPal. PayPal would process just fine, but the redirect back to Volks would time out and cause the transaction to fail. 

Damned either way. 😕

Yep, same here.  With the credit card payment processor, sometimes you get a service busy notice, but you can usually F5 it (refresh the page where your input is resubmitted) to get through those steps.  But it's when you get sent back to Volks after completing payment that the Volks server is too overloaded, so it doesn't receive the data from the payment processor, and you have to start the checkout process again.  So whether it's PayPal or credit card, the problem is Volks' server being too busy to receive the payment transaction data.  

 

Volks did reject my request for EMS, citing the notice of suspension of service to the US on Japan Post's website.  I'm not looking forward to DHL's fees...

 

20 hours ago, asianed said:

PayPal would process just fine, but the redirect back to Volks would time out and cause the transaction to fail.

mm, not going to deny that people's mileage might vary. My personal experience more recently just has been the default credit card processor being the bigger roadblock (lost out on frieren the first time with five-six maybe even more attempts that failed at the processor timing out - I even have the 3D verification to deal with from my bank), and paypal (pre logged in, with existing balance) being instantanious (aqua was just a click and done with similar levels of volks site sluggishness).

But, No way is perfect I guess, but having to choose the path of least resistance.

Edited 4 hours ago by finnleo

 

2 hours ago, finnleo said:

mm, not going to deny that people's mileage might vary. My personal experience more recently just has been the default credit card processor being the bigger roadblock (lost out on frieren the first time with five-six maybe even more attempts that failed at the processor timing out - I even have the 3D verification to deal with from my bank), and paypal (pre logged in, with existing balance) being instantanious (aqua was just a click and done with similar levels of volks site sluggishness).

But, No way is perfect I guess, but having to choose the path of least resistance.

I lost out on Frieren (and multiple other clickwars) with credit card and PayPal. PayPal *might* reduce reliance on one link in the chain, it's always that redirect back to Volks JP that is the biggest dice roll and the likeliest one to fail. 😕

In other news, Japan Post is suspending EMS shipping to the US until further notice. 

At least the private carriers have figured out how to collect US import taxes from package recipients in a relatively streamlined way (even if they charge a surcharge on top of the 15% US-gov't imposed tarrif). 

Edited 1 hour ago by asianed