Registering with Y!J

[TabletopPhantom]

Hello everyone. I live in Japan and I wanted to sign up for the Yahoo Japan auction site. Right now I can bid up to 4,990 yen for free but to go beyond that I need to pay a monthly fee of around 250 yen and I need to give a credit card number. I tried using my American VISA card but it won't accept it. Is there any way around using a credit card or getting Yahoo to accept an American VISA? :cry

Thanks in advance for any advice!

[Bobster]

You have half of the equation cracked. (i.e. Having a Japanese address.) What specific error is the site giving you? Depending on when it is shutting you down, you may need to have the billing address or phone number changed to your Japanese address and Japanese phone number. I did find a service that looks to be legitimate if it turns out there is something about the number that is causing the rejection. I have not yet used them as I have a friend in the US with a Japanese wife who will buy using her CC from when she lived in Japan. The site is:

http://www.rinkya.com/services.php

You might also look at getting a Japanese bank issued card. I get applications regularly in the US for JBC and Japanese MC/Visas.

Bobby

[TabletopPhantom]

Hi Bobby, thanks for your suggestions! I'm not sure the specifics but there was definitely something wrong with my credit card number, which is still valid and I re-entered about five times with the same denial. It might be an issue with the address I entered and the address for the card not matching, as you said. I've lived here for sixteen months and I'm not really keen on changing my bank account address from my American address as I would have to go and change the address and number on all of my online accounts.

I used Rinkya when I lived in the US and it is indeed a legitimate service but charges fees as a middle-man and I was hoping to avoid that by signing up on my own.

Thanks for your help though! I will look into the exact error it is giving and maybe I can figure it out from there.

[Karhys]

You don't (or didn't used to) actually need a Japanese address to sign up with and use Y!JA -- the primary important factor was the speaking of Japanese. (Which of course one can pretend at. ;)) A few years back I even was able to register my Y!JA account as a seller account, which required them shipping you a small piece of paper with a code written on it so that you could prove you really lived where you said you did -- and they shipped it all the way here to Australia and let me validate.

Unfortunately, recently (well, let's say within the last year, I can't remember the exact time) Y!JA implemented some changes to the system. One of these changes seems to be that it no longer accepts foreign credit cards. :( Dezarii posted some more information about this some time back (on DoA I think?) but I know this from personal experience as well, as I had a fully working Y!JA account for several years, that charged my CC like clockwork every month, and then one day I got a random email that said my CC was no longer correct. I went in to update it (it's true, the expiry date was no longer valid, but it had been that way for over 6 months and they were still charging me fine) and it would no longer accept my CC number. It just kept giving me the same generic error message to check with my CC company.

I emailed Y!J tech support about it and we went back and forth several times and they were the usual indiscriminately apologetic and largely unhelpful and the end answer seemed to be that "sometimes foreign credit cards just don't work". (Even though my card had worked fine for years and only the expiry year was different.)

Then Dezarii posted the information about Y!J no longer accepting foreign credit cards and it all sort of clicked. (I'm sorry, I honestly don't recall where or when she posted this, it's sort of a memory fragment. >_>; )

I was (and still am) incredibly frustrated because I was enjoying using Y!JA and was still able to bid on stuff even though I was overseas, because I can speak Japanese and have a Japanese bank account to do bank transfers so they're often happy to deal with me anyway. As a result, I really hate using shopping services because I KNOW that I can do it myself. :(

The only thing I can suggest is getting a Japanese credit card simply for using on Y!JA. :oops That's what I'm planning to look into doing whenever I move back there. I don't think it'd be that hard -- when I first opened my account with Mitsui Sumitomo they even asked me if I wanted a CC, knowing full well that I was a transient student. Hmm. :doh

[TabletopPhantom]

Ugh what a pain! Japan is so xenophobic sometimes it's frustrating.:mad Hm, I will find a way around this. I'd rather not get a Japanese credit card because I don't think I would trust myself with one! But if I did, do most small, prefectural banks offer them? Or should I go with a bigger company?

Also, I have a Japanese friend who offered to help me with the CC situation. If he used his credit card to be charged the monthly fee (and I paid him up front for it) what would happen if/when I won an auction? Would I be able to pay with a bank remittance or through the post office? I wouldn't want his card to be charged for my purchases.

Anyway, thanks for all your insight Cassiel. You have helped solved some mysteries! ;)

[Karhys]

Yeah, I know what you mean. :oops If you were going to get one, I would probably go with one of the bigger banks -- they have more things in place for dealing with foreign customers. (I had trouble with getting a bank account at first due to not having a hanko, but Mitsui Sumitomo, being huge, had contingencies in place for foreigners-without-hankos. :p) I'm sure you'd be able to get one with a fairly small limit.

Your CC never gets charged for your Y!JA winnings unless you specifically go in and tell it to do so. So don't worry about that. :) Just the monthly fee. (Can't remember it anymore, around 200-300yen?)
The sellers will state in the auction listing what sort of payment they prefer (and yes, some do like Y!J's direct "kantan" payment, but you can skip those) and the two most popular types of payment used on Y!JA are bank transfer and paruru. So you'll be fine. Just note that they'll expect you to pay the fees yourself for either one. (Which is usually pretty minimal though, from memory around 140yen for most small purchases like outfits or eyes or wigs.)

Also do keep in mind that they'll expect you to transact in Japanese, as that's the pre-req for joining Y!JA. Most of them are really nice about it once you make it clear that you can speak Japanese and live in Japan and know how to pay etc, but they really don't expect foreigners (even foreigners in Japan) to be using Y!JA so do expect a fair bit of surprise on a regular basis. Japan has been very insular for a very long time. :oops

If you want me to throw you some stock phrases/stock emails in Japanese for what to say to sellers, feel free to let me know; I can email/PM you with the sort of things I used to send off. :) (When I lived in Japan, I also lived on Y!JA. I had like ten packages incoming a week -- my dorm manager hated me, haha.)