Celga vs. Rinkya

How come nobody uses the celga gold account? That's the best. I have my own username and I bid on anything I want anytime I want and this convenience costs me $3.00 a month.
I buy cels on YJ maybe twice a year and I still think it's worth it.

I used the Celga Gold service so much I was actually at "Platinum" status from shortly after they offered those accounts until about six months ago.

My observations about Celga:
1. They use Quickbooks to offer invoices online, and you can pay directly through a link in the e-mail sent to you. However, they reset their QB invoice numbers every year or so, which seems odd to me. I've been using QB for five+ years now for my wife's business, and I find it much easier to let the invoices number automatically, since resetting makes it much more difficult to track customer history.

2. Their customer service has improved greatly in the past few years, but still lags behind most other deputy services. My last dispute with them took me four extra months to resolve because they would send me out an automated message saying I was another month overdue, but would not respond to my queries as to my total balance. I could not use their QB system to get my balance due because my old invoice numbers were no longer valid. So I wound up paying quite a bit in late fees because I couldn't find out how much I actually owed them!

On the plus side - I beleive Celga is the most prompt shipper I have ever dealt with in Japan. Their shipments took about 3-4 business days to reach me from my shipping request, no matter how large they were.

I personally use Shopping Mall Japan currently, mostly because of past great experience with Nick from the Anime Chaos days.

i just started using Shopping Mall Japan and I am terribly pleased about their services. They will answer any question you have and even send a copy of your invoice if you never received it.

in addition, they automatically ship your cels to America after the auction is paid for--if you opt to store your items in the US. Shipping to your home will take up to a week----but it is worth it. I like how they make sure they get the item you purchased and you don't have to worry about cels not arriving at warehouses in Japan using Rinkya services.

I haven't personally purchased anything since August using SMJ or Rinkya services though; so, I don't think anything has changed with either of them. Any new artwork you've seen in my gallery recently is about 3 months old--with the expection of my very early b-day gift. ^^;;

Both Deputy services are nice. :)

This year I started using SMJ because I had great experiences with Nick in the Anime Chaos years, and I was pleased with the results. And the same applies now to SMJ, I have bought a lot of cels and the service works great. If there's any problem Nick makes sure to solve it asap in a way to make both parties happy. I like the bidding system and in general the SMJ service is ++++++AAAAA and I highly recommend it.




I have one suggestion though for all the DS. It would be really nice if we're buying items/cels/cds/products from the same seller and the prices those items are low, we could get a lower fee or maybe group all those products and charge a fee for all of them. I've been tempted to buy ship stuff, but if I add the fees, the shipping charges and all that, it's not cheap anymore. If I see 10 items at 200 yens each, I would like to get them but the fees make me think twice. Just a suggestion :D

That's a great idea bulma_gt, I hope some of the other DS reps read this.