Just a warning out there to any of you who use Zenmarket’s real-time third-party bidding service for Yahoo Japan auctions.
In recent weeks, Zenmarket has failed to confirm that it has received items that sellers (including myself) have shipped to Zenmarket. This is a problem because Yahoo Japan holds payments in escrow until the buyer acknowledges having received the item.
Zenmarket is a big operation with dozens of Yahoo accounts, and so the number of negative feedbacks it has received during the past few weeks is difficult to determine. However, of the two accounts that regular buy from my auctions, they’ve amassed 55 negatives or neutrals (which is a polite Japanese way of leaving negative feedback).
After repeatedly trying to reach Zenmarket about the delivery status of an item I shipped more than two weeks ago (and was delivered a couple of days later), I finally received a reply earlier. I was told that they have been overwhelmed with the number of deliveries they have been receiving, and need some time to “sort it out.” Four days later, and I’m still waiting for them to “sort it out.”
While some delays during the coronavirus shutdown are to be expected and tolerated, Zenmarket seems to be wearing out the excuse.
Why should this matter to you? Well, if you’re a Zenmarket customer:
You might be facing the same long delay in having your purchases shipped to you as the seller is in having Zenmarket confirm its receipt of the item.
The seller might block Zenmarket from any future transactions, which means Zenmarket customers won’t have access to as many items on Yahoo Japan.
The seller might not get paid if Zenmarket fails to acknowledge receiving the item.
Most high-volume Japanese sellers probably know that Zenmarket is a bidding service for overseas buyers. Many of these sellers already are reluctant to sell to overseas buyers. Zenmarket’s eBay-like behavior could lead to even more animosity, making it even harder for overseas buyers to access Yahoo Japan auctions.
If you are as dissatisfied or concerned about Zenmarket as I am, I’d recommend looking at another real-time third-party bidding service such as Buyee. A quick review of several of their accounts during the past month show extremely low (and sometimes zero) negative or neutral feedbacks.
I haven’t had a confirmation that zenmarket got something i ordered in weeks. I stopped buying off of it for now because I’m not sure what the hell is going on. That said, buyee is a RIPOFF when it comes to their fees/shipping compared to zenmarket.
Thanks for sharing your experience. Did Zenmarket inform you last month that for the time being Japan Post is not shipping to the United States (or most other countries in the world)?
As for Buyee’s shipping fees, I had no idea they were so unfavorable. I can only speak as a seller, and Buyee has always great about paying immediately and letting me know the moment they receive a package.
Zenmarket drove me nuts. They spammed that they weren’t shipping stuff awhile back due to covid-19, so i didn’t bother with them at all and didn’t log in for weeks waiting for them to say their service was operational again. Then they emailed me some message that they were gonna remove my credit line because of outstanding debt, which was like under $100. So I log in to pay/yell at them via customer service (they apologize and restore my credit line). After that incident, I forgot about them for awhile and suddenly I get an email telling me I need to hurry up and pay for a parcel (from the stuff I purchased prior to covid and the email about japan postal shutting down).
I was like “shit i didn’t know you guys were shipping again”. So I paid for that and started ordering a bunch more cards. Awhile later, they emailed me again saying that shipping via japan postal service is cancelled due to covid 19… so I was like why the fuck are you emailing me then about needing to purchase packaging? They apologize, refund me and I then pay for some more expensive DHL bullshit. I guess they don’t want to hold my cards until japan’s postal service is back up?
Needless to say, I have a package shipped via dhl that I haven’t received yet, and another 20-30 cards ordered over the last month that have not even arrived in storage.
I’ve switched primarily to a middle man again for now. But buyee is something I will never return to. Buyee charges way higher fees and shipping than zenmarket. I felt ripped off when I first started buying stuff from japan, and I swore I would never use them again.
Wow. Really sorry to hear it. I’m trying to block Zenmarket from bidding on any more of my auctions. Problem is, they use so many stealth accounts, it’s hard to keep track.
@chrisbalestra, That’s crazy that none of your packages have arrived at Zenmarket! I’ve ordered 25-30 items from YJ over the past 5-6 weeks and all of them arrived within a few days. They’re currently in the “Packing in Process” stage. Hope you get yours sorted out soon!
@japanime, I’m curious if you can share your YJ username? (Feel free to DM if you’d prefer.) I’m just wondering if I’ve bought any cards from you.
For higher value items buyee actually ends up a LOT cheaper than zenmarket does. Since Buyee charges flat fees, while zenmarket charges the 3.5% on the money you put into your zen account. So the higher the value of the item you’re buying on zen, the higher the amount of fees while buyees fees stay the same.
Spend 10k yen on either site: Buyee has 300 base purchase fee + 200 yen payment fee, the plan you choose is optional and i’ve always put this at zero and it works fine. Since we’re just looking at one item I’m not considering package consolidation. Buyee: 500 yen fee for one 10k item. Zen has 3.5% fee before you’ve even bought the item, so your 10k gets 350 yen fees. So up to that point, zen still cheaper. NOW if you buy a more expensive items of like let’s say 500k yen. Buyee: still only 500 yen fee (the plan fees are still optional), and zen still has 3.5% fees, wich for 500k yen is 17500 yen. Even if you were to take buyee’s package consolidation fee of 1000 yen into account, it is STILL a lot cheaper than zen will ever be.
Now ofcourse for people in europe or other countries that have to worry about import costs, zen allows you to fraud your way out of paying those.BUT saying buyee is a ripoff is inaccurate. The more expensive the item, the higher fees are on zen due to them using percentages over buyee’s flat fees.
Edit: forgot to mention that all these zen fees are BEFORE you’ve even purchased your item, I’ve not even included the 300 yen buy fee in that XD
Depending on where you live, you might be waiting quite a bit longer. For the past couple of months, Japan Post hasn’t accepted EMS parcels destined for the majority of the world’s nations. There are some exceptions, but not many.
@stephneechan if you’re not looking to buy immediately, transfer wise will shave down those 3.5% fees down to 1% or less if you don’t mind waiting for the transfer to go through.
My Mysterious Pearl was just arriving at ZenMarket when this post was made. It took more than a week since purchase to show that they received it… could be related to the seller being slow shipping or them processing, no real way to tell. After they had it I believe it took them 5ish days to package it and another 2 days to ship it out. Then, of course, DHL got it to me in world record time. I don’t buy cards from Japan in this format regularly but given expected pandemic-related restrictions it didn’t feel super slow at all. I feel like my experience may be somewhat of an outlier because EnlightenedBulbasaur’s SNAP card was stuck there around the same time for 20+ days.
They took 13 days from the day i clicked to create my package after they had received the item, just to get my order PACKED, while buyee always gets things packed and shipped in a day even during corona.
From my experience using both, zenmarket’s main “plus” is that they allow their customers to fraud their way out of paying customs fees by means of letting the customer decide what value to put on the package, whereas buyee does things by the book and puts the real price paid on all packages.
