My Surugaya Direct Shipping Experience

A while back I wanted to buy some Switch games, but Taobao was too expensive, so I figured I’d check Amazon Japan. Turns out Amazon Japan is even more expensive.

Then I remembered Surugaya.

I’d bought stuff from Surugaya before, but the site was a pain to use, the text was tiny, and shipping took forever…

This time I opened it and the site is still just as unusable, still just as dumb, but it seems they added a site for overseas users. Much cleaner, and hey, it even supports Chinese!

Though why does the Chinese look so weird?

Whatever, I ended up ordering three games, and they even support direct shipping to China.

The reason I bought these was either that Taobao didn’t have them, or Taobao only had the Chinese version and I wanted the Japanese one.

The purchase process went smoothly, and Surugaya even has a WeChat account handling after-sales inquiries (note: a WeChat account, not a WeChat Official Account). I couldn’t tell if the person handling it was Chinese or not — they typed with this Japanese keigo tone that felt really off to me, and weirdly enough, the absence of the usual “dear” this and “honey” that left me not knowing what to do with myself.

Shipping was fast — I mean, compared to how Surugaya used to ship, this was lightning speed. Shipped within 3 days! Then I could look up the post office tracking number, and it transferred to domestic, and about 7 days later it reached my city.

And then the customs bastards seized it!

Customs sent me a text saying the package was held and I needed to go there to sort it out, but Zhengzhou customs is stupidly far away and you can only go at specific times, plus I’d once been set up on a blind date with a customs front-desk person, so seeing her would be way too awkward…

In the end I chose to handle it through the EMS website, which lets you have the post office help with customs clearance. But I read the customs document and it said games I bought count as “unapproved publications,” so there was a good chance of return shipment…

Except the EMS site told me I could just pay the tax directly. The fee was 200-something, including a 100 yuan post office handling fee. And even though they’d already texted me, they still send you an EMS document telling you to go to customs, and you have to pay 12 yuan for that yourself. So damn shady.

After paying, I didn’t even need to declare anything — the next day they told me it cleared customs and to wait for delivery. And the biggest improvement: the post office used to tell you it takes 2-3 weeks, now it only takes 1 day. That 100 yuan was way more worth it than before.

Then about 4 more days and the package arrived. All this stuff, in such a huge box — no wonder customs looked at it.

Of course, I don’t know if Switch games are always taxed or if I just had bad luck, which makes me seriously reconsider whether to use Surugaya direct shipping in the future. Getting taxed 200-something every damn time, who can afford that? It’s almost more expensive than Taobao.