Every day thousands of users use the largest online auction site in Japan, Yahoo Auctions, we also have many new users every day and therefore many questions about this site.
Before we begin, here is a previous article on Yahoo Auctions to check out if you haven't already:
- HOW TO BID ON YAHOO AUCTIONS
If you prefer a quick explainer, watch this video instead:
With this article, we are going to analyze the Japanese Yahoo Auction page in detail in order to explain the important information to note when placing an order.
Product information
When you are on a product page, a lot of information is displayed like on the screen below:
Below the product images, we find the auction information which is also present on the page of our site except for the initial auction price, this is important information to take into account.
Let's take a closer look, here the Pokémon game is auctioned off for an initial price of ¥ 3,500. In Japanese, the characters are 開始価格 (initial selling price).
On the far right, we can have interesting information about the seller.
1. 送料 is the domestic shipping cost From the seller to our warehouse in this case.
Here it is marked "全国一律 360円" which simply means delivery will cost ¥ 360 anywhere in Japan.
If the domestic shipping cost is free, then it will be marked 無料.
Please note that we are based in Osaka. The Japanese characters for Osaka are 大阪府.
It also happens that the shipping costs vary according to the prefecture of origin and arrival. Sometimes if the shipping cost is not shown, you can message us through the "Message" tab of our ZenMarket site to have us check for you.
2. 良い評価 corresponds to good feedback from buyers. Here, in this case, we have 100% satisfied customers from this seller.
When scrolling further down we can see a description of the product as below.
1. This is the description of the product, you can use a machine translation tool, Google Translate, if you want. If you have any doubts, please feel free to send us a message.
2. This part is the shipping method and the shipping cost. We have framed in green a part where a lot of people ask us this question: They do not deliver abroad?
Here it states that Yahoo Auction sellers do not ship overseas as shown (海外発送 ： 対応しません) in the photo above. As ZenMarket is based in Japan, we can make the purchase for you.
"支払い手続き から 1 ～ 2 日 で 発送 -> 1 ~ 2 日" is the number of days before the seller's package is shipped to our warehouse. Note that in some cases it may take longer.
How To Check if the Seller is Reliable?
It is important to understand what the seller's rating on Yahoo Auction is and the "good / bad" report.
1. A Yahoo Auction user can receive a review as a seller (出品者) or as a buyer (落 札 者).
A Yahoo Auction user may therefore have good buyer ratings (ratings that a user received by purchasing products from Yahoo Auction themselves), but have a bad seller rating!
Unfortunately, Yahoo Auctions! by default combines the 2 types of rating systems in an "overall" rating system, which can make it harder to see if the seller is reliable.
ZenMarket typically blocks all sellers with more than 8% negative reviews and all new sellers with less than 5 positive reviews, in order to keep our users safe.
To view all user reviews, positive and negative, click on "Yahoo Auction Item Page" from the ZenMarket auction page, then click "Full Review" on both the Yahoo Auction site and on the image below.
2. Also check the items the seller has sold in the past. To view this listing on Yahoo Auction, click on "Good evaluation" as in the image above.
You will be able to see the summary of positive and negative ratings on the completed auctions as in the image below.
Do not hesitate to click on the links for more details on these previous auctions.
Note that if the seller's bid is much cheaper than the actual price of the item (for example, on an item valued at ¥ 100,000, but the ad says a price of ¥ 1), the seller is probably not to be trusted!
We, therefore, advise you to beware of auctions starting at ¥ 1!
Let us take a concrete example of something that you should watch out for when using Yahoo Auctions!
For this example, we took a bid that looks correct on the surface, but then we check the details.
On the right of the page, framed in red, it is the part of the shipping costs, it is marked that the product is shipped from abroad (海外 から の 発送).
In this case not from Japan. If you click on details (詳細) you will then be able to see a drop-down menu as on the screen below:
This is the delivery method and shipping costs. In our case, our warehouses are based in Osaka Prefecture (大阪 府) where our warehouse is located, the shipping cost is ¥ 7,800.
Further down we can see it takes 7-13 days for shipping.
Important Japanese words to identify here:
- Country of origin -> 発 送 元
- Foreign -> 海外
To find out the shipping costs in Japan, you generally have to find them at the bottom of the auction page on Yahoo Auction.
If there are none or they are not predefined, this will usually be indicated in a box like the image below.
(We have automatically translated the Yahoo Auction site for this example is not always 100% accurate).
If you are on our site, you may sometimes see warning banners like this (image below).
Read what is indicated there. In this example it could be a counterfeit item, so be careful when you decide to bid on these kinds of products!
We wish you the best possible shopping experience so if in doubt, do not bid and please contact us first.
We may occasionally accept requests allowing you to bid on these items that have caused our system to flag the listing as a potential risk. The purchase will then be made at your own risk.
All you need to do is contact our customer service via the "Messages" tab of your ZenMarket account".
Happy shopping with ZenMarket!
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