Tenso? Thank you.
nekosasu | August 31, 2009 | 3:17 pm
My shoe in your face, faggot!
Just woke up with a headache, and after reading a couple of mails, I just felt like ranting here.
Due to my current Ar Tonelico addiction, I went to amazon.jp and wanted to order the Ar Tonelico 1&2 mangas + some doujin anthologies, the whole about 5000 Yen. Shipping+charges would have been approximately the same amount, which I thought was already pretty horrendous, and one item was even a marketplace item so I couldn’t have it shipped to Luxembourg anyway.
Then I remembered what someone suggested to me once, which was to use the Tenso service, some kind of revolutionary (sic) thing that would give you a Japanese address which would upon receipt and payment forward your orders to your own address, and apparently would make you save shipping fees and charges immensely. Well, I checked the rates and they were pretty much the same as amazon’s, but the difference was that marketplace items would be shipped there, too. So I thought to myself, chansu!
Chansu my ass. My orders arrived today at my Tenso address, and unlike the 2 packages amazon said it would be, there were 3 packages. And what does Tenso do? It calculates shipping costs and charges for the three packages SEPARATELY, which ends up being something short of 9700 fucking Yen! And if the three packages were bundled/joined, I’d be paying only about 5500 Yen or so. More than 4000 Yen saved! The reason I wanted to use Tenso was to SAVE money, not pay twice as much. COMMON SENSE, right? Sent them a mail already with this complaint, blissfully ignoring the small note somewhere in the FAQs that they “do not currently provide a service to bundle multiple parcels together“.
I’m pretty sure they’ll reply with the same answer, and I am pretty sure that this was the first and last time they’ll see me there, too. Just why didn’t I go with Rinkya? They would have bundled the packages allright, and come cheaper than this pile of false advertisement. Of course, the one to blame is myself, because I naively took that page at face value. Gosh, I hate such unnecessary expenses, especially with my expensive UK studies which start next month…
If you can, avoid Tenso.
In any case, disregard my snarky comments on this service. I hope they will provide this bundling service officially in the future, to avoid stuff like this. I’m sure they’d gain more (positive) popularity like that, too.
Well, *OR* just keep in mind that they don’t bundle multiple packages together, and only use it when you’re sure things will ship together (or if you’re willing to pay the shipping for each). I’ve had a bunch of stuff forwarded through them, but they’re just a “slap an EMS sticker on the box” service — hence why they charge less in fees. Granted you’re ticked off, but there is no “false advertisement” here; they clearly say they don’t re-pack packages. They’re just one tool in an importer’s arsenal that people can use if/when it makes sense. For normal Amazon orders, and such, I think it works just fine…
Updated post with a note. They do not officially bundle package contents, but will still do it upon customer request. :D
Hmmm, this service is interesting. Mail proxy, basically. I always thought there should be like, privatized mail proxy service, where there is no way for anyone (read anyone) to find out who a package was shipped to… crazy :) (of course, other than seeing who comes to pick packages up).
Still, this Tenso is a cool concept.
[...] finally got my Ar Tonelico manga, you know, the one that was shipped (late) with ominous Tenso. As you can see in the image above, it’s Ar Tonelico ~arpeggio~ 1-3, Ar Tonelico II 1-3, and [...]
These days they -do- offer the merging of multiple parcels into one as a service per default. Oddly enough their FAQ still says they don’t but the option is there as clear as day! Go to your “my parcels” list. When you go to the page that deals with the payment and the forwarding of the parcels to your own address you can check boxes next to each parcel to “consolidate” them into one. Great! That could save you some money right there. I’ve also found that their EMS shipping rates are a sight cheaper than Amazon’s S&H rates. Two books (ringing in at Y1200) would have cost me Y4000 at Amazon, while Tenso charges me a less insane Y2000.
I agree, but that information is quite important, yet it’s pretty much hidden on the page, behind all the “cheaper shipping” messages. Like a company using small print to hide additional service costs. I’m sure a lot people have run into that trap. That’s why I call bullshit.
At least for Europe, the difference with amazon’s rates were 0, if not more expensive. The only thing that would have been okay to ship with Tenso would have been the marketplace item which could not be sent internationally. In either case, it absolutely didn’t make sense to have the whole stuff sent to Tenso. Lesson learnt.
Well, to be honest, I think the usual assumption based on the way it’s explained on their site would be “ship them 3 boxes, they ship you 3 boxes”, but you assumed they would group them because you’ve dealt with other services that do it differently. I agree that it’s “buyer beware”, but I don’t think it was “buried in the fineprint” either. You just didn’t understand the services they offered; whether their explanations were unclear is open for debate, I suppose.
Anyway, clearly the main use for Tenso would be in cases where the merchant doesn’t ship internationally, such as the marketplace, or Amazon’s game/toy inventory (or items sold by game publishers that are misclassified as games, like Key soundtracks and so on). In most cases, Amazon’s rates would otherwise actually work out to be a bit cheaper than EMS, except if you were ordering a large quantity of light items (since Amazon’s shipping rates are by quantity, and EMS is by weight). So, you are right that you wouldn’t want to have items go through them if they could otherwise be shipped directly to you. All the stuff they highlight on the site are cases where merchants won’t ship overseas. So that’s probably the main use. Like I said, it’s just one tool in the arsenal; certainly not the be-all-and-end-all.
Yep, it is, especially for stuff that the seller won’t send internationally (amazon.co.jp Marketplace, Yahoo! Auctions Japan, Japanese webshops). Usually I would have gone with Rinkya, but let’s say I wanted to give Tenso a try.
In terms of versatility, it’s slightly inferior to Rinkya because it doesn’t serve as a bidding help/platform for auction sites like Y!AJ. However, the proxy service is a lot easier to use: you sign up, you immediately get a personal Tenso address, and you’re good to go (while Rinkya requires a long and tedious identification process). And they ship anytime in the week (unlike Rinkya who ships only twice a week, IIRC). Haven’t had the time to compare commission and other fees, though, but I guess both should be at the same range.
As I said, my only gripe with Tenso was that they didn’t seem to be able to join packages, thus forcing me to pay shipping+commission on the separate items and almost doubling the price tag. Now that I know that they can upon request (by providing the registered package numbers from the items page (they only do that on Wednesdays though)), it’s good. Once they provide an official option, it will be perfect. But it’s as said in the comments above, proxies only make sense if it can’t be helped!