Laziness saves my wallet

So, after being totally lazy about it all month, I finally decided to make my import run. When I got around to doing so, I realized why I had been putting it off for so long.

It is a royal pain to figure out who to use to get stuff for you if you're being stringent on cash. If you're getting all your stuff from one place, just use a forwarding service (preferably one without handling fees, like JShoppers) and be done with it. The only problem is when you know you have to order from many different places.

Now, I got Celga's site bookmarked, and they'll box your stuff in a single parcel and send it off to you, but they'll charge a handling fee. That handling fee is per item - even if you order multiples, you'll be charged ten times over for ten of the same thing (from the same place). The plus side is you only have to pay international shipping once.

So, at this point, you have a choice: you can use deputy service (Celga, or whatever) and be charged handling fees and one international shipping fee, or you can just buy from whatever stores and pay international shipping per store/package. That last one doesn't sound too appealing, but take a look at Celga's handling fees and it starts to look better.

Consider this: Celga charges $5 handling for items less than 1000 yen. Currently, that handling cost is around 460 yen. Domestic shipping you can't really do anything about, so we can ignore that in our comparison. Let's say I want two of these. That makes handling 920 yen.

The next thing to think about then, is how much it would cost to just ship them overseas without Celga. This is where you have to start thinking about weight and size, which will give you a good measure on what EMS or SAL will charge you. In our case, say that these two items combined are 0.2 Kg. One lookup later, and JShoppers (the forwarding service) will send them to me for 1140 yen.

Now at first glance, there's a clear winner here (920 yen against 1140), but then... let's think about shipping on the deputy side. What are the chances that, with everything else ordered with the deputy service, that this 0.2 Kg will push me up a weight category for shipping? How much will that cost?

Let's say I'm already expecting Celga to ship me a package about 1 Kg. The next step up is at 1.25 Kg, and costs 380 yen more. And if we consider this the international shipping cost of these items with the deputy service, that's 920 yen + 380 yen... potentially 1300 yen. All of a sudden, paying 1140 yen to just get the things forwarded to you sounds like as good a bet as the deputy service.

... Now imagine doing this for like twenty items.

Fortunately, I was able to find half the list at Suruga-ya, so I had those forwarded (and here's hoping to the quality of the items). I crossed about half the rest of the list off, saving them for later, and ended up ordering only a few things from Celga. Honestly, it may have behooved me even then to have them forwarded to me individually, but things were getting pretty drawn out, and the last question I started asking myself was whether or not I cared anymore. I just have to hope Suruga-ya doesn't hate forwarding services, unlike Melon Books.

What's left on the list are mostly figures and manga, with the occasional music CD. I was thinking next month would be manga month, but figures do sell out... so I'll have to put some thought into it.