Hey guys,
I received my first order at Tokyo Otaku Mode and wanted to write about my experience here.
Tokyo Otaku Mode Review
I placed an order on 8/13 for two items:
- T-Shirt: 162nd Arpeggio of Blue Steel (Takao 02) Keep Cool Version
- Sumikko Gurashi Plushie Multi- Use Stand – Sumikko Sanpo
In terms of ordering experience, I’ve found the site to be appealing to browse through with lots of images and information on the products, but it is not the easiest to filter through/narrow down items and the 15 minute time limit for the items in your cart is a bit annoying.
There is no filter options after you go into a sub-category within a category page. For example, I was looking through their t-shirts section within the Fashion category, but they were not categorized by series, so I had to look through 7 pages of t-shirts to see if I find anything I may be interested in. The good part about their product pages was that there were a lot of images and details for most of their products so you knew exactly what you were getting. Products are also genuine; don’t have to second-guess whether they’re fakes from China or not.
One annoying thing that I’ve found is that they give you a 15 minute hold for the items in your cart. There is a live “remaining time” counter that counts down from 15 minutes from when you last updated your cart that tells you the time you have remaining before all the items in your cart is removed because your hold is over. If you’re familiar with Gilt city, it’s kind of like that, but more annoying, because they remove all the items from your cart so you would have to go back and look for them again and add them to your cart again.
This is for them to keep track of stock in real time, but personally, I’ve just been frustrated with browsing through products and having to keep track of the counter and to have to consciously add/delete an item after some time just to keep the cart “active.”
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The part that I liked was after I placed my order. Right after placing the order, I received a *Free Shipping Offer* that was valid for 3 hours from when I placed my order. If I placed another order within those 3 hours, I would get free shipping; no minimum. This seems to be a nice offer for people who forget things or like to shop around after.
At the time of my order, only EMS was available and for these two items, it was $12 base + $3 per extra item. If you are not in a rush for your items and want to save money, I strongly recommend using SAL Small Packet Registered (if possible), or SAL Parcel. The prices are all weight-based and if you’re ordering a lot of items, it could cost a lot. There is a price chart here on their FAQ page for comparison of how much it would cost.
My order was shipped via EMS on 8/18. Typically, orders should take 2 business days, but there was a notice that August orders would take longer due to “sudden increase of orders,” so my order took 5 days to ship, which is not bad.
I received my package on 8/20; I’m on the East Coast of USA. It was pretty fast. I also got some goodies, an Otaku Mode clear file and a fan, shown below.
In terms of price, the products are actually not as marked up as I imagined. The shirt I ordered had a price tag of 3990 yen, which is ~$38.42. The shirt is only available at Comiket 84 as written in this post, so I was super excited to be able to order and receive a legit version of it at this price. The other plushie stand had a price tag of 1200 yen, which is ~$11.57 at the time of the post. Little to no markup on the prices, maybe a dollar or two depending on how bad the exchange rate is.
Overall, I’m happy with my order/items. Checkout was simple; they take Paypal. Only complaint with the ordering process was the 15 minute limit item hold. I think they could improve in their inventory/stock, but they do have some niche/rare items that make shopping there quite worth it. I would recommend this place.
Anyone else have Tokyo Otaku Mode experiences they’d like to share?
If you register for Tokyo Otaku Mode with my link, you can get $5 in TOM points (as of Jan 2017), 5% off your first order.
Without Restraints 