Second Shipment Arrived

Just as I was amazed with the speed of how quickly the first shipment from amiami.com arrived last week, I am even more impressed this week with their 4 day inclusive turn around time to have my next shipment delivered.

As you can see from the photo above, it was mailed on 2010/02/22 and it arrived today. I was totally shocked that it arrived before I have time to think about where the package might be. A few things I really like about their service:

1. They are quite responsive. You would think a business with a somewhat old style website got be be pretty mediocre with what they do, but you can’t judge a book by its cover. Same lesson learned here. Not only are they fast in processing orders, they actually process it quickly, accurately and with a system that impresses me. Their system sends out emails that are not confusing (their English is very understandable) and payment instructions are very clear. I am particularly liking the fact that they use a modern date format (yyyy/mm/dd) on their label. That shows no ambiguity. I am so tired of seeing 03-04-2010 format. You can’t tell if it is March 4th or April 3rd and this date format is found on most products in grocery stores here unfortunately, and worse off, to indicate the expiry date of the product…
2. The box of gunpla came in pristine condition. How many times have you received products arrived damaged? Amiami packed the gunpla very well and there is no dent or scratches on the gunpla box. Funny thing that happened to me here in the past is that I ordered some parts to replace a motor with fan blade that broke after 1 year of usage. When the part arrived and I went to pick it up, it was damaged in transit already. Glad that is not happening with the order from Amiami.com!
3. Ultra fast processing time even during the Olympic Games. A lot of North American businesses use that as an excuse to tell customers that there will be delays of shipment because of the Olympic Games. I wonder how does Amiami does it so quickly from a different continent if that was universally true!? Amiami didn’t try to make excuses and in the contrary, exceeded my expectation.

Here is the box, looks very clean :)

Inside is well packaged.

And here it is.  Okay it is not very exciting to a lot of you as this is an older kit but I never bought one.  And I really like the Zeta series so it is exciting for me to get this at a good price.

As mentioned, the gunpla box is in pristine condition.  I sometimes don’t get this kind of box condition when I buy locally because they might have been handled by a lot of customers who are just browsing and touching in the store.

So how much did I save? Again, I think if I were to buy the same kit locally, I would have to pay double of what I paid Amiami. This is of course only possible while they have the 50% EMS shipping promotion. That is going to end in a couple of days and their stock is pretty empty with gunplas.

Oh, just for the record, these photos were taken with the Canon SD450 point and shoot. Damn that is a good little camera that keeps going!

Have you bought from any online stores located in Japan before? What is your experience?

Update: 2010/03/01 Amiami has extended their 50% off International Shipping for another month.  Happy shopping in March :)

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• Small Gunpla Shipment Arrived
• Amiami shipment