Usagi Youhinten Review- Positive

I recently placed my first ever order with the Japanese second hand store Usagi Youhinten, so today I shall be doing a review of their service. I was really thrilled to see one of my remaining wishlist prints for a good price on there and I just knew I had to try and get it!

Ordering Process

Usagi's website has a reasonably easy website to navigate. There is a link to an overseas order guide on the left hand side. I do feel that the overseas order link could have been made more prominent though, as it sort of blends in with the rest of the site and it took me a few minutes to find the guide. The actual ordering process is simple enough to follow when you use the guide. It is very similar to ordering processes on some of the other second hand Japanese sites. My only complaint here is that there was one point in the guide where the guide information didn't match up 100% exactly with the actual form, but I found I was able to figure out where the information was meant to go by myself. So overall the ordering process could be improved, but it isn't too difficult to follow.

Shipping and Communication

I got my automatic confirmation email right away and then I awaited the second email with the invoice. Usagi has some very weird opening hours and they are not open every day of the week. So because I placed my order on a Thursday, I was expecting my invoice when they next opened on the Friday, the day after. When their Friday opening hours had passed and I had no invoice, I was expecting it to come through on the Monday instead. But actually, I did eventually get my email on the Friday. One of their staff must have been working late that day! They sent me the invoice and I paid it right away. On the Saturday I got an email saying they have received my payment and that my parcel would be posted on Monday. So their communication is generally quite good and considering their opening hours, the process was a bit quicker than I was expecting.

Just over a week later, my parcel arrived. To be fair, it would have been quicker if UK customs weren't so determined to get the ridiculously small fee they wanted from me. The dress wasn't quite cheap enough to get through without a charge! My dress was shipped to me inside a sturdy cardboard box. The box was well sealed up. There was a bit of room in the box but because I only ordered a dress it didn't really need to be padded out with bubble wrap anyway.

On the inside the dress was wrapped up in not one, but 2 plastic bags. It probably only needed one bag but I am not going to complain about a bit of extra packaging. I got a nice advert for their store in Japan and a little note thanking me for my order.

And here is the dress I ordered! This is Innocent World's Rose Basket Angel. The dress was ranked as a B, so I was expecting some signs of wear. I think the B ranking was spot on. I couldn't find any damage on the dress but there was definitely a feel that it wasn't brand new. To be fair, this dress is from 2008. The dress was listed at 7800 yen and I think I got a pretty good deal.

To finish, I thought I would share a close up of the bird cages at the bottom. I love a good bird cage print! The dress is absolutely gorgeous and I am so glad that I got it.

So overall I think Usagi does deserve a positive rating. I found their service to be on a similar level to other second hand sites. When I was ordering I did feel it could have been a bit simpler, but it wasn't overly complicated either. I would definitely recommend Usagi to my friends. There are some good bargains on there from time to time, so it is worth a look.