Thread 11607330

Why are so many Japanese hobby sites against canceling preorders or give you a hassle if you do? American sites don't care. Is it a culture thing?

>>11607330 (OP)
They don't want to be potentially stuck with extra stock. It's reasonable. Don't place an order unless you're sure you want the item.

>>11607330 (OP)
>Is it a culture thing?
you are a retard

>>11607330 (OP)
The chances of cancelation has skyrocketed with the tariffs, jacked up shipping costs and handling fees. This is a defense from that. Ship or loose the money you paid for the item.

>>11607330 (OP)
Sounds like a scam.

>>11607330 (OP)
what site is that?
Regardless the answer is pretty clear when looking at consumer data, the reason American sites don't care is because Americans consume to an ungodly level compared to other nations so a Japanese hobby site gets fucked over way harder when an order is canceled more so when you consider >>11607358, most burger sites have several times the buyers waiting in the wings to spend their money on all the wrong things.

>>11607389
Japanese sites also offer below MSRP, while American sites are over MSRP, so they don't have the buffer to eat as many cancellations.

>>11607389
American sites still care too, even BBTS implemented a 10% money down on orders over $100 at some point over the last few years, because cancellations were so frequent, and they're probably the most lenient site.

>>11607353
lol, why does such a question piss you off?

tbf people cancel huge orders over absolutely bullshit reasons. I never saw their point until I saw people getting mad at them and they were trying to justify the weakest behavior that would clearly screw stores over, mass preordering anything interesting and pulling back later, preordering limited stuff and changing their minds, even just making spur of the moment orders and then cancelling because they hadn't budgeted for rent.

Preorders should be banned. You should have to have the item in your warehouse when you put it up for ordering. Preorders initially started because people were afraid at missing out due to quick sell outs. This left many customers angry. It was a more innocent time with retailers that actually responded to customers sometimes. So retailers believed creating preorders would solve this.

And for awhile it did...but then preorders started selling out immediately just like regular orders used to because stores did not stock enough of desirable items or wanted to make items seem rare and premium and induce FOMO, so all preorders did was turn into regular orders with delayed shipping.

There is functionally no reason they should make you order something months ahead of its release rather than just having you order at its release date.

I get why they do it, basically what >>11607334 said but to be fair, they most likely won't have trouble selling through most of their Figmas and SHFs and Snail Shells and whatnot. Random bullshit like acrylic stands I can see being a problem though.

>>11608062
Preorders selling out is so dumb. With how much time there is between preorder going live and product actually shipping, I'm sure that is enough time to gauge demand and increase the number of units to produce

>hey can you buy this for me
ok
>nevermind i dont want it anymore
what the fug

>>11607358
This has been a thing for ages. I had my Amiami account deactivated for cancelling one preorder in like 2019.

>>11607389
>sites that sell to Americans are afraid of being stuck with stock because Japanese don’t buy as much as Americans do
>once again, a site that sells to Americans, that if Americans supposedly buy so much

>>11608513
-they would just be able to sell to Americans

TLDR : Help Japan with your burger dollars and don't cancel your orders

J-Anon here.
Japan mostly has a "no return" policy.
You preorder it, it's a done deal.
No coldfeet, pussyfooting, buyer remorse.

You expressed interest in it, the retailer will get it for you. Profit margins are paper thin for these stores and the people working their only make ¥18-20man ($1300) a month.
Sadly, that's the national average after taxes in Japan.

Any stories you hear of people like IT guys, Youtubers making it big in Japan, those are just the outliers who got lucky with a nice paycheck. Everyone here makes shit pay and do it with a polite smile.

>>11607330 (OP)
Profit margins being thin is the main reason. Another reason is allocations and space. Sites like Amiami will sometimes have limited allocated stock for preorder. You get one of those pre-orders and cancel later on, they've now lost your sale and the business of other customers who have instead pre-ordered elsewhere. By the time you cancel it's also likely a significant amount of the market interested in the product has already purchased. Considering how many people will try to cancel their pre-order at the last minute because they're impulsive or because they found a slightly better price later on Amiami can be left 'holding the bag' so to speak. These stores also have highly limited warehouse space meaning products coming in need to be shipped quickly to buyers or they run out of space and logistics become expensive for them. I think Hobby Search got utterly raped by their own pre-order system last year with a huge amount of pre-order stock not being paid off or shipped out.

I've heard Chinese buyers are the absolute worst for this being both a huge market and utterly shamelessly fickle and picky. Westerners are apparently better but with tariffs and economic instability recently and pre-orders that drag on for literally years it's even harder for these stores to even break even. All it takes is for logistical costs to rise along with inflation and suddenly all the profit from a pre-order period 6 months ago evaporates.

>>11607924
In addition to consumers being retards there's also the explosion of resellers/scalpers/flippers have become a festering cancer. They'll use bots and do whatever they can to snap up products or pre-orders and then cancel en-masse if they cant monopolise the market or scalp the ever-loving shit out of the items if they can.

>>11608183
>With how much time there is between preorder going live and product actually shipping, I'm sure that is enough time to gauge demand and increase the number of units to produce
Well that's made to order like HasLabs, Boss Fight and 4H do all the time and it's about a year (well now longer thanks to tariff maddness) and many of those make it very hard to ever cancel your preorder because they are making it just for you. As noted here >>11607924
and >>11608560 they can't afford to risk you are a stable person with decent money that can make responsible decisions.

>>11608513
>>11608516
You are making a major error in assuming they have a sizable American customer base to off set the waffle burgers.

>>11608062
>but then preorders started selling out immediately just like regular orders used to because stores did not stock enough of desirable items or wanted to make items seem rare and premium and induce FOMO
This is the biggest reason I have a problem with'em. You don't know what the quality of the fig will be like until you either get it in your hands or wait for reviews, the latter being most affected by fomo culture if you didn't preorder right fucking now, otherwise your sol and have to deal with aftermarket jewry. In my experience it's annoying having preordered something that I thought I'd like, only for it to be mediocre and then having to resell it online at a slight fraction of the original cost just to get it out of my sight. It's basically a roundabout way to get a refund.

Is Japan still not shipping to the US btw?

>>11608521
The irony is the manufacturer gets huge margins of 100% profit or more since the toy actually costs very little to make.

>>11609881
While your number is way off, yes the manufacture is the winner.

All they have to do is get retail buyers on board for the product and the retailers do most of the heavy lifting.

In the case of Japan, everyone gets a sliver of the sales that the markup is huge which leads to minimal sales.
(Example : a Marvel Legends cost close to $50 at a Toys R Us store in Japan ($5 TRU markup, $10 shipping/tariffs markup, remainder for profit/cost.)

>>11607389
>what site is that?
1999/hobbysearch

>>11609872
Japan Post hasn't but other couriers that operate in Japan (DHL, ECMS, etc) have

>>11610019
Seems like probably they'll just stop mail to the US forever and this will just be the new normal. Once it lasts this long, things dont typically change.

See I wouldn't have such a problem with it if the quality of products was more consistent. Unfortunately it seems more and more figures recently are being rushed out the door with severe QC problems that $20 figures from a decade ago didn't have.

>>11608062
I agree with this sentiment. Retailers should basically refuse to stock preorders until the items are physically in hand and buyers can make educated choices. But of course they won't, because that would be sensible.

In any case, it won't matter to me in a year or two because I've basically been priced out of the hobby.

>>11609881
Manufacturers definitely need to be sent a message to stop making shitty products.

>>11608062
Pre-orders are for retailers to know how much they should buy from the manufacturer. For the manufacturer the combined number of orders they receive from retailers let's them know how much they can negotiate with factory for 'oh I need another 20,000more pcs "or "oh we got over 3000 more pcs than our agreement with the factory, but then the factory will only make more than our initial order qty if it's minimum 10,000pc additional or it fucks up the schedule with another client they make shit for, so now we need to make judgement call if making an extra 7000 pcs makes sense. Oh it' doesn't make sense, ok well I guess we can't make 3000 more, so we have to tell retailers ok sorry can't make enough"

>>11610348
2020/2021 postal service stop because of Covid back up lasted longer than this. it hasn't even been a year yet

>>11613974
Ban it. They should have to estimate without any help.