FromJapan vs Tenso

Update

After recent incidents, I can no longer recommend the Japanese shopping/proxy service FromJapan. For parcel forwarding, I will continue to use Tenso, and will be on the lookout for another shopping service.

Having used FromJapan since 2011, I feel that their services have slowly deteriorated to the point where they're no longer worth my time/money. IMO, this company is getting too greedy where they are charging for every little thing. Checking your items? ¥150 each. Repacking? That's ¥2000! Extra secure/extra lightweight packing? Yep, you got it, more hidden fees.

A few reasons why I've decided to leave FromJapan behind:
  • It takes at least 1 business day for the order to be placed, by which time sought after items/special offers are likely to have already sold out. Despite their increased fees, their service has gone downhill.
  • There are stores that refuse to ship to proxy services such as FromJapan and, instead of blocking those stores, FJ will still accept the order, then cancel/refund it after a day. This is annoying as it ties up your funds until the refund has been cleared.
  • FromJapan ONLY pays retailers with bank transfer, and there is a fee to do so for each store. Of course, these fees are passed on to the customer.
  • Their 5% "system usage" fee bugged me from day 1. If there's a service fee, just say so; don't disguise it as a "system usage" fee when no other shopping proxies did/do this. Credit card processing fees are nowhere near 5%, and even PayPal's currency conversion fee is only 3.4%.
  • They often charge an unnecessary "new box" fee of ¥500, instead of using the shipping box provided by the store(s). This isn't much, but it really does add up over time and there's nothing you can do about it.
  • For unknown reasons, items over ¥6,000 cannot be shipped via small packet and can only go EMS. This measly limit includes the ¥200 service fee - I once purchased a memory card for around ¥5,900 but ended up being ¥6,000+ due to the service fee. I then had to send this tiny item via EMS *sigh*.
  • Small items (such as jewellery) are packed in gigantic boxes - for a tiny pendant (16mm in size) that comes in a pouch, there is NO need whatsoever for a 30cm x 20cm x 15cm shipping box. In addition, the only shipping method available was FedEx, which charges by dimensional weight if it is greater than the actual weight, so the shipping for this pendant was ¥4,000+ which is absolute BS. I wouldn't be surprised if they received a larger cut from FedEx than EMS...
  • My initial query as to why they'd used a giant box was ignored, and it took multiple attempts to find out why. Their final answer was more or less "please kindly understand, our staff always use the smallest available box". A 30cm x 20cm box is the smallest that you can get hold of? Yeah, right.
  • When there are no issues, great. However, if you do have a problem, you are faced with "please kindly understand... <yada yada>" which means, in a nutshell, that they have your money, and there's nothing you can do about it.

1 comment

  1. I'm curious if you have found something other than Tenso? I have been using Tenso for two years and have liked it for its convenience, as Tenso gives its customers a forwarding address to use, so this eliminates the problem of an item being sold out while waiting for the middleman to order as I make the order myself and can earn the store points myself. I did find Tenso's fee on the high side but since it's so convenient I still use it quite often.

    But recently Tenso changed to a new payment system that charges currency in your credit card's issuing country's currency (for example USD instead of JPY). This sucks for me because my credit card doesn't charge currency exchange fee so when Tenso does the currency exchange on my behalf (bleh), they add 2.5% or more, whatever their website determines the exchange rate should be. When I e-mail them about it, they even had the balls to tell me that by offering their customers the convenience of paying in their home currency they could potentially sustain financial damage. I asked them if they can add JPY to my billing currency (so they they won't "lose money" as they claim since I can pay in the exact JPY amount) and they just kept saying how they are sorry they can't bill me in JPY (when their old payment system had been billing me in JPY) anymore and it had to be based on the credit card I have registered on their system... even when I pay with Paypal instead it still bills me in their Tenso-inflated USD not JPY.

    I'm getting really ticked off by Tenso's new change and their customer service's inadequate responses, so if you know of any forwarding company that also gives you an address to place your own order like Tenso does, and preferably bills in JPY, please let me know, I would love to hear about it =) Thanks for reading!

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