Import of Japanese releases to UK

[Eusthenopteron]

Can anyone provide advice on importing Japanese releases to the UK? Postage seems to be high but can understand this to a point. However am wondering about sites to use / avoid and sites with good prices for products and P&P.

[Mansinthe]

yesasia is the best site for asian imports. they offer free shipping too.

[Sinthetic]

CDJapan are by far the best for packing and have a loyalty scheme. They are very quick too. Choose Airmail to avoid import fees.

YesAsia are the cheapest, with shittest delivery speed if you choose standard. Customs friendly.

AmazonJP are extremely fast, will sting you with import fees and if you don't group items together, they will send it between a wafer thin piece of cardboard.

[Eusthenopteron]

Originally Posted by Mansinthe

yesasia is the best site for asian imports. they offer free shipping too.

Thanks!

However for the purposes of anyone else reading this according to their website they do offer free shipping, but only if your order is above a certain sub-total value. For many European countries this is $39 US dollars.

[MOONPHASE]

Play-Asia pretty sure ships to UK now as well.

[Sky_Captain]

Are they customs safe, though? Only item I've ever bought from them, was well under the limit. Yesasia's delivery speed is shite, so I don't use them anymore. CDJapan are the tits and some items received faster than those Zavvi clowns.

[rewak]

YesAsia is the only one that's customs safe, it might take a little longer but having your items held in customs would take longer too and get you slapped with fees, so it's the lesser of two evils.

[Mansinthe]

and if you have to pay custom fees they will give you a voucher for your next purchase in the same amount (already happend to me)

[Aniki]

Yep my experience much the same as above really.
I've never had to pay duty on yesasia stuff but they have this weird thing where the shipments go Hong Kong to Germany to Birmingham to destination so it takes a little longer.
I've also used amazon.jp for a few releases and always had delivery in about three days and always paid import duty to DHL or FedEx. All in, my David Lynch Jap imports ended up costing about £60 each as a result!

[HotRats]

Either they are shipping the items into the lowest taxable point of entry to the EU or they are naughtily shipping to a bonded warehouse in Germany where the goods are meant to be re-exported outside the EU and pay no taxes. One of the Marketplace sellers on Amazon does this. Another point in favour of Yesasia is their packaging. I've never had any boxes that were even slightly damaged thanks to their liberal use of extra bubble wrap.

[Mansinthe]

im living in germany.. still had to wait like 6 weeks for each of my orders.
but who cares.. for expensiv orders (limited editions and stuff from CJ entertaiment) i prefer yesasia. cut if there is a problem the customer service will always help out. kinda like amazon.

[rewak]

I've never had anything take longer than 2 weeks from YesAsia, i'm in the UK.