rich_f
Member
From: north carolina
Registered: 2007-07-12
Posts: 1708
http://global.rakuten.com/en/
Just wondering if anyone here has tried it yet, and if so, what are your impressions of the service.
It's hard to find out what the actual cost of having an item shipped *is.* I guess part of the problem stems from having 30,000-odd stores on the market, but it's kind of a mess in that regard. It's hard to know how many little fees I would get charged if I bought anything on there and had it shipped to the US. They also have a "Buy a bunch of stuff from a bunch of different stores and just use TENSO instead" service, but TENSO is expensive.
Also you have to check every store to figure out whether they will a) accept your foreign money or b) deliver to your far away land. Oof.
jebrogan
New member
From: New York
Registered: 2011-03-20
Posts: 1
If I remember correctly, if a store on Rakuten does ship overseas, they only offer EMS shipping to do so, at least currently. You can get a rough idea of how much the shipping will cost, using the chart here, but as a note you'll need to take into account packaging weight as well:
http://www.post.japanpost.jp/english/fee/intel/ems.html
Aside from shipping and the cost of the items themselves, you may be charged a relatively small handling fee, but it's pretty negligible. (182Y on a 3,638Y order for instance)
I've generally had a decent enough experience with Rakuten outside of the stores occasionally messaging me sometime later canceling the order without giving a reason,but that's more something to do with the individual shops than the service as whole, I'm sure.
As for checking each store individually, I believe there's a box you can check while searching that will filter out stores that won't ship to what you've set the country of your shipping address to. I'm not sure if this only appears if you've made an account or not though.
