AmiAmi Character and Hobby

[cteno4]

Their CS always seemed very snooty and like they were being o so gracious to answer a question, it’s not just covid. I’m sure covid and all the shipping horrors have been rough, but never, never good to treat customers like this. I only asked a question a couple of times and got a negative answer sort of with the tone why are you bothering us? And question not really answered. After this I only did orders from them when it was the only place with something in stock or a totally ridiculously low price on a preorder price and rarely added things to orders like I usually do with other vendors. 
 

I agree cs is much better elsewhere. Good to vote with your wallet which I usually do.

 

I wonder if it could be an issue with whoever handles not Japanese language stuff and no one else there may realize there is an issue going on like this as all that traffic would pass thru the potential problem cs person. I’ve seen this happen with problems with gatekeepers of various kinds, those behind the gates may not know how the gatekeeper may be abusing those outside the gates!

 

jeff

[JR 500系]

Whoever wants a Geodude train huge shout out... 

 

unbeatable price!

 

Needless to say i got one!

[Yugamu Tsuki]

Shoot, and they just shipped out my order to deliver Monday. Oh well, that is life.

 

They have a ton of the Love Live Sunshine Tomytech buses for cheap if you wanted to make a Numazu, Shizuoka themed layout. Had to grab the ones I got to ride on.

[Madsing]

I have purchased two trains in a single order in March from Ami Ami. That's my first purchase with them. One of the trains was in stock (released in March), the other one has just been released (released in April). Do I have to do something to trigger the shipment? Or that will happen automatically any time now? Or they will wait until the end of April?

[katoftw]

If both are in stock, you should pay there and then upon order

 

What payment settings do you have?

[Madsing]

I have set the payment method to PayPal, and the shipping method to EMS.

The order does not appear in "Orders Awaiting Payment". I can only see it it "Order history" under "View all unshipped orders".

Edited April 16, 2021 by Madsing
Additional info

[katoftw]

Oh. Then for me is was normally 1-3 working days after payment.

[Kamome]

You could check that the item is in stock with Ami. As an example, Kato stock usually arrives 1 or 2 days after the Kato scheduled release date, then the order gets processed and you get sent a payment request. 

 

For April 2021, Kato have releases on 13th, 20th and TBC which will usually be the last day of the month. My Tomix HO has always been last day of month and the order is ready a few days later.

 

I have noticed this year, some orders have taken slightly longer to process and ship, but I would assume they’ve had a lot more online orders during lockdown.

[Madsing]

Thank you. These items are not urgent. I will wait a few more days and contact them if they don’t proceed with the shipment. 

[JR 500系]

Just a headsup for anyone looking for the Kintetsu Tsudoi debut livery at a more 'digestable' price ~

 

https://www.amiami.com/eng/detail/?gcode=RAIL-28223

[1954G]

It seems that AmiAmi no longer ships Kato products to the USA and Canada "due to distribution restrictions." It's a shame since their shipping prices / options are excellent. I recently paid less than 2800 JPY for DHL shipping for a full Tomix E001 base and add-on set.

 

 

[bill937ca]

1 hour ago, 1954G said:

It seems that AmiAmi no longer ships Kato products to the USA and Canada "due to distribution restrictions." It's a shame since their shipping prices / options are excellent. I recently paid less than 2800 JPY for DHL shipping for a full Tomix E001 base and add-on set.

 

 

First Tamiya now Kato? How many US dealers carry Kato Japan?  Newhall Station?

Edited October 2, 2022 by bill937ca

[disturbman]

Hobby Search doesn’t seem to have that restriction. Or is it blocked at order?

[cteno4]

1 hour ago, bill937ca said:

First Tamiya now Kato? How many US dealers carry Kato Japan?  Newhall Station?

Newhall doesn’t stock stuff they just order and trans ship from a couple of Japanese hobby shops… the only shop that I have seen consistently order Kato japan items in the us has been mb kliens (modeltrainstuff.com), and they have not been doing that much the last few years. Even with their discount they are usually around or 10% above SRP in japan, once and a while they do clearance sales to get rid of Japanese stuff not moving and then it’s nearer Japanese street prices.

 

well that’s a real bummer, I wonder what is going on here.

 

jeff

[bill937ca]

If Kato wants to pull stuff like this maybe we should stop being so accommodating to them. Delete the Kato new releases thread for starters and the AMI Ami Character and Hobby thread. Something to think about. Or maybe just get out of the hobby.

[disturbman]

Three things: Kato won’t care, we are too small for them to. Second, not all the forum is from North America. Most of the user base lives outside that part of the world. Third, we don’t know what’s going on.

 

Edited October 3, 2022 by disturbman

[katoftw]

Just purchased Kato products from AmiAmi yesterday.  We don't need to do anything stupid and start to think about deleting multiple threads without any real info other than one vague post.

I was actually gonna post that AmiAmi offered first in a long time the option of Small Air Packet.  840 yen to Australia.

Edited October 3, 2022 by katoftw

[Kamome]

Perhaps Kato have put tighter restrictions on sites that ship internationally. Kato do deals with suppliers in different countries and want to protect those relationships. If overseas online sellers can undercut domestic prices it doesn’t make it viable for those businesses. 

 

They also have copyright agreements for train models, designs which are owned by respectively manufacturer or railway. These may only cover Japan for certain things and Kato may get problems when these things infringe on these agreements. Small independents slip through the net, but larger retailers have to comply. 

 

So it’s annoying, but probably has a good reason which sadly doesn’t benefit the niche overseas market.

You pay your money and take your choice at the end of day and we can all state reasons to boycott certain manufacturers or suppliers which others would disagree with.

[Giugiaro]

KATO has HobbyTrain/Lemke and Noch as their official representatives in Europe.

And Tomix also seems to be involved with an household brand to represent them in Europe.

 

Still, I haven't found restrictions to ship internationally to Europe, despite the formal relationship between the Japanese and European brands.

I do know that our local modellbahnshops are forbidden from ordering directly from Japan, which is a bummer for those who are very sceptical of online shopping.

[cteno4]

We have katousa here, but really no train sales to speak of through then, just unitrack. Tomix did do a distribution deal with Walthers (biggest us train distributor) a few years back but that was only to sell track and structures and that was an abysmal failure. 
 

really can’t see katousa getting into distributing Japanese trains as it would just not happen here, not enough demand and way too broad a spectrum of trains to choose from to stock for shops. Modeltrainstuff is one of the biggest online shops in the us and they barely sold a dozen trains when they would do an order every few years, no one else did except Brooklyn loco works years ago when they would buy a few odd trains from mokei imports to sell, but those took a very long time to sell.

 

im hoping this is a mixup like the sale of some of the trademarked trains where it was sale to shops that was not allowed but it was ok to export to individual customers directly.

 

maybe we need to start a letter writing campaign to Kato.

 

jeff

 

 

[EdF]

Is it all Kato, or was it Kato US stuff, like the new Charger sets?

 

Ed

[cteno4]

I just looked at a couple of dozen random Kato trains and they all had

 

Due to distribution restriction this product cannot be shipped to the following area: USA, Canada.

 

guessing it’s all of them.

 

only other thing I could think is it was sposta go on one item and someone mistakenly added it to all Kato items.

 

jeff

[disturbman]

1 hour ago, cteno4 said:

only other thing I could think is it was sposta go on one item and someone mistakenly added it to all Kato items

Seeing how none of the other online Japanese retailers are affected by the restriction, that was my favoured explanation too.

 

One way to check would be for someone to try and order one of the banned items. See if the sale gets blocked during the process. The other would be to write Ami directly and ask what is going on.

[arkh]

Just saw this and wanted to chime in: I tried to order one of these restricted Kato items a couple of months ago and you are stopped at checkout. You don't have to do much to verify it - just keep going through to the review page and you'll get an error page instead, assuming you set an address in the USA or Canada.

It's also not every single Kato item but it is a lot of them, to be fair. I was able to order some other railway accessory Kato items (I wasn't really looking at any Kato trains recently) from AmiAmi with no issue as those didn't have the warning. This does seem like something that probably needs to be brought up to AmiAmi. I might ask customer service myself before my next order, but honestly don't have any specific Kato items that I'm trying to get. The last ones were just add-ons to my order.

[chadbag]

 

Kato USA sometimes does offer a Japanese train or two or other non-US (like the ICE4).  Really random and random when it occurs (or at lest when I notice it -- not on KATO USA site that often).

 

 

Maybe Ami Ami got confused about a refusal to sell to US based hobby shops vs individuals?  I know that in many cases that is how these restrictions have been interpreted.  The trains can't be sold in the US due to restrictions (snot not distributed into the USA) but individuals can purchase them (just like as if they were in Japan buying and hopped on an airplane) without issue.