Buyee

I just received an empty box from Buyee shipped by FedEx. Unbelievable and ridiculous. Will not recommend this company to anyone.

Overpriced, hidden fees, bad service, I tried to buy 4 cheap items and ended up paying a hundred dollars because of this absolute scam

Some weird $#*! kids were makin fun of oje of my nine tees cuz they said its a reprint! I thought it was from the official site?!

After being a customer of Buyee for years, I'm never using their proxy service again. Things on this site have definitely not changed for the better. So I recently purchased a item and within days, the order had been cancelled. Strike one. Continuing in, I tried to purchase the same collectible under a new listing (hoping it had just been an issue on the seller's end). Everything seemed to be going well until shipping. Buyee has limited all their options to DHL (which has a poor reputation) and sea mail. Both of which, come with their own issues. Choosing sea mail, I had been waiting over a month for the package with no updates to the tracking number. Strike Two. I decided it would be best to file a claim with my billing office and let them know it hadn't come. They reached out to Buyee and no one responded within the time frame. They decided in my favor and I thought the issue was over. Instead, it seems like Buyee just woke up and sent an invoice demanding I return that payment. Otherwise, they will refuse service to my account. Sure, pay for something you didn't receive and may never. All that matters is we get your money. Nice job Buyee, you've just lost a customer. I'll gladly take my business elsewhere...

Update: So its been a couple days since I posted this review and Buyee has continued with their nasty emails. I won't reveal the representative's name out of respect for them but its been made very clear their all about the money. My claim for the lost item was only refunded because of their lack of response. Instead, they can't even address that issue and rather send empty threats of termination. To add on, I've been hit with the "we're not eBay line" and "we're sorry your delivery (they meant to say tracking) isn't updating fast enough for you"'. Very rude individual and it they did their job, this wouldn't have been happening. Will NEVER deal with them again!

Let me provide you with a word of warning regarding this company's unethical business practices. Beware even if you pay for the standard insurance, this company does not inspect the product as advertised and will not honor their refund policy. I received a fatally damaged product that was specifically advertised by the seller as not being fatally damaged and was met with customer service that could not communicate in clear English and that denied a refund based on said inability to understand the nuances of language. In my example, they provided multiple fraudulent reasons for denying the claim including saying I was past the 14 day delivery deadline to file despite not even 10 days having passed since the order was placed, much less delivered. Eventually they simply stopped responding. It was made patently clear at point that they have an unnofficial policy not to refund customers despite the reason or evidence as they likely operate on slim margins but of course that is no excuse when they are scamming additional insurance money from customers that is supposed to cover exactly that. Expect a canned response to this review from Buyee Customer Service but don't for a second believe they care anything about the quality of service they offer outside of separating you from your money and protecting their company name while they continue to operate unethically and with a sense of impunity you only get from operating overseas. If you have been a victim of said no refund practices, please reach out to *******@gmail and share your story. The only way to stop them from cheating customers is through concerted legal effort. Hope to hear from you soon.

I buy mostly Japanese crafts, often antique, from Yahoo Japan Auctions in the range of approximately $70 to $800. The only way to buy on Yahoo Japan is through a proxy service unless you have a Japanese address.

Buyee has been very good during the past two years of buying via their service. It's wonderful to have access to tens of 1000's of pieces that otherwise I'd have no access to. And often these works are less or even much less than I could get from a brick and mortar dealer.

A drawback is that it is not easy to write to the particular online dealer and ask questions and so it helps to have some knowledge and experience. Buyee forwards the questions but between translation and time often the answers are inadequate. I don't think this could be much improved, it comes with the territory. Customer service is usually quick to reply to concerns.

It's not a perfect proxy service but I don't think one of those exists. Usually, it's easy to use and great stuff can be found. EMS (the Japanese national post/courier) is a great service and so shipping is fast and safe.

There are some inflexible aspects like not being able to withdraw a bid, or that once packages are requested to be consolidated you can't unrequest, etc. Again, this is not unexpected... given that buyee must be handling huge numbers of goods and the shipping warehouses are enormous.

Consolidation can be pricy. They don't take anything out of the packages mailed to them by the seller before consolidating in a bigger box. Not surprisingly this is often costs more money than not consolidating. It works for me when buying books and sending by sea mail... that is certainly less expensive than individually by EMS.

Most of the charges are reasonable. The exchange rate they give is not great but it comes with the territory. Overall, the many advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

This was real purchase experience from me that happened recently.
1. Buyee customer service is slow, reply once per day, at the end of working hours. Delaying complaints.
2. When informed them regarding import tax charged due to mismatch invoice, they tried to push away their fault.
3. Their system allows item category modification on final invoice, but they ignored it and shipped out with a totally different version of invoice, without informing me the mismatch. In other words, customer is not known of the shipped out invoice version. Until now, my Buyee page invoice is different from the shipped out invocie.
4. With the incorrect item category on invoice, I am being charged import tax that causes paying extra.
5. When informed them regarding incorrect item category from seller, they are reluctant to show proof of sellers' invoice, which seems to hiding truth. Totally does not makes sense on the point of argue that all sellers put the incorrect item category in their invoice. On top of that, they also refuse to inform sellers regarding incorrect item category issue.
6. They discriminate customer that is with Lite Plan that does not pay extra, and refuse to refund/ compensate the tax charged due to their fault, not even portion of tax amount.
7. Requested them to send a letter describing the mismatch of invoice issue, so that I can show it to local Customs to appeal and claim back my imposed tax, they also refuse to mention or reply any words.

In summary, from this issue, customer should learnt that:-
A. Buyee system invoice item category modification does not function as we thought. Buyee can ignore it, and their system would not send notification email to inform customer on the finalized invoice version
B. Sellers invoice info can be wrong, but we as customers are transparent to it. Even incorrect item category, Buyee will not correct it even though they can
C. Discriminization against Lite Plan customers, no refund even fault at Buyee side

Very disappointing experience, and will not continue to use their service in the future.

[Edit: After about a month of investigation into my case, I got a full refund for the damaged items. So there's that. However, the customer experience was still extremely bad and it took a lot of effort to just get them to even consider "investigating" (they just looked at the photos of the items I sent them). So all in all, the one star still is valid in my opinion, but I still wanted to mention that in the end they seemed to have seen the problem and gave the refund.]

NOT RECOMMENDED for collector items or even just books. There are just two options: EITHER you send the package in the standard packaging, which is fine for national shipping, but inappropriate for international shipping. So the goods often arrive overseas with damage. OR you can select (expensive) protective packaging and have your package so overly protective packed and with so much wasted plastic and material, that it just blows up the shipping costs.

And don't even get me started on the customer "support".

They're all nice and friendly and I'm sure they're good people, but here's the thing:

Very rarely do they understand what the actual problem is in the first message. Usually I had to explain my issue multiple times until they actually understood what needed to be done.

As long as it all went well considering delivery and shipping, there were no problems (obviously), but as soon as problems occurred and I was dependent on their customer support to help me, I was left alone and had to pay for it.
My package was sent back because I wasn't notified. I had to pay shipping costs a second time because Buyee refused to check with their carrier to request a refund of shipping costs, so I wouldn't have to pay twice.

Not using this service again. They've lost my trust when it mattered.