Buyer Protection
You can request "Buyer Protection" insurance for all purchases from Yahoo Auctions sellers and Japanese Online stores.
— Buyer protection fee is 500 yen*.
— Once requested, this option cannot be removed.
Yahoo Auctions:
— Buyer protection can be requested only during placing your bid.
— Buyer protection fee is charged to your deposit balance only if your bid is won.
— Buyer protection cannot be requested after auction is won.
— Protection covers the following:
* seller didn't send anything 30 days after auction is won or order is placed in the store (case of fraud; pre-order items excluded)
* seller sent wrong item and there is no possibility to get correct item (a brick instead of the toy figure etc.)
* we received item, but it significantly differs from the description (not a complete set; has damages, not described by the seller).
In all cases, mentioned above, you will receive a full refund of your purchase, including domestic shipping fee and Remambo service fee.
Buyer Protection fee will not be refunded.
— Buyer protection does not cover cases of counterfeit or fake items. Appraising and guaranteeing items authenticity is not part of our warehouse inspection. Therefore, any negotiations with sellers to return or change your item will not be accepted, even if you have received a fake item.
— Buyer protection does not cover TCG (trading card game) displays (booster boxes).
Unfortunately, many of the pokemon and other cards scammers are intentionally targeting proxy service users as they are aware of international shipping times usually taking longer than Mercari/Yahoo Auctions return timeframe.
These scams are commonplace, even on Amazon Japan.
When purchasing items from Mercari or Yahoo Auctions, make sure to check how many ratings the seller has, and the average star rating!
Even if they are 5 stars, scammers tend to have a very small number of ratings that they have gained through making legitimate sales on a few low-value items before they start scamming.
Once the bad reviews start coming in, they will delete their account and start over!
Sellers with thousands of positive reviews are unlikely to be scammers, but it is not impossible lately.
Based on the above, we strongly recommend not to buy such items on Mercari, Rakuma, Magi and Yahoo Auctions, because this category of items simply entails too much risks for all parties involved due to a high rate of scams (opened boxes then re-shrink wrapped, weighed booster packs, different series being shipped etc.)
— Buyer Protection does not cover items that do not work, even if the seller claimed they were working.
— Buyer Protection does not cover international shipments, i.e damages, losses or other problems with the parcel, sent from Japan to the client's address.
* Buyer Protection fee changed from 5% of the auction winning price on 13 June 2019.