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Dessa



Joined: 14 Jul 2004
Posts: 4438
PostPosted: Wed May 01, 2013 12:56 pm Reply with quote
Review I just wrote about TSRI's customer service on my Tumblr:

There’s good customer service… and then there’s Right Stuf wrote:

So, The Right Stuf, Inc (hereout referred to as TSRI) is an awesome company. We’ve known this for a long time. They’ve got awesome sales, Shawne (CEO) and Minion are awesome on ANN’s forums, and we’ve known they have awesome customer service (we’ve had to make some adjustments to orders, no problem).

Then we had April (2013, for reference, if this thing goes around longer than this year).

Other than the normal orders of manga, there were 2 special orders that I had this month (“I” meaning my stuff, Angie orders for me). One was Hyrule Historia. The other was Necomimi (those electronic cat ears). HH came later, but I’ll talk about that one first.

Hyrule Historia is a gorgeous book. I wanted it since it came out, but, well, money is money, so I wait for sales. A week or so before Sakura-Con, there was FINALLY a Dark Horse sale, so Hyrule Historia, along with a few Vampire Hunter D novels so we could get free shipping (reaching the $49 requirement is rarely a problem for us).

Ended up paying about $23 for the book (good price, down from $36 cover price), and while, yes, I could’ve gotten it for $18 straight from DH on Sunday of con, I’d already ordered it, and was happy with my price.

Then the book got here.

I excitedly opened it… only to find that the spine was almost completely separated from the book! Definitely a problem. So we got a hold of TSRI’s customer support, and they said they’d ship us out a new copy, along with a box to return the original.

Box came, we shipped out the old one, and I excitedly opened the new one…

And 2 pages fell out. Now, bear in mind that this is really nice binding, where the pages are sewn in. And there were no holes in the pages, so it didn’t fall out, it never made it into the binding in the first place.

So we contact TSRI again, they said no problem. But there was a delay on getting a third copy, because they PULLED EVERY COPY off their shelves, so that they could inspect them for defects, so no one else had this problem. Sure, the odds that there were even 2 freak defects like this are pretty rare, let alone to the same person (^^;), but the fact that they wanted to make sure that not only I got a flawless copy, but that EVERYONE got a flawless copy, really speaks to how much they value their customers.

Needless to say, my third copy is perfect, and I love the book greatly.

Now we get to the Necomimi.

I’d wanted a pair of Necomimi since I saw them at Sakura-Con 2012 (which was, for the record, before they were officially released). But $200 was quite a bit steep for a toy, regardless of how cool said toy was. When the official release came by, and they were available on TSRI (and Amazon), the release price was $99. Still too steep for me.

Then there was a price reduction, down to $70 (Okay, I think they’re $69, but whatever). I’d gotten a really nice tax return, and my birthday was coming up, so… I decided to get them as a present to myself.

I eagerly awaited their arrival. Fridays at my work are “Fun Hat Fridays”, so I was waiting to wear them at work, and had told everyone about them. They got here on April 5, yes, a Friday, but obviously the mail came too late for me to wear them that day. It didn’t, however, stop me from opening them as soon as I got home, and wearing them that night. Or wearing them when I went out to run errands on Saturday. Or when I went to a committee meeting I had on Tuesday, April 9 (yes, I’m a dork).

And then, the big day came. I told all my regulars at work that I’d have these ears, and was totally stoked. Yes, I got strange looks on the bus (my driver just laughed, he’s a great guy). But I was so excited. In the morning, they worked fine (I didn’t keep them on the whole time, since I didn’t know how long the batteries would last). However, not even halfway into my shift, they started acting up.

Now, an important note here, is that the paperwork included with the Necomimi stated that, when the batteries are low, that the power indicator light would turn red (as opposed to the normal blue). This never happened for me.

So, they were “acting up.” And by this, I mean, that I’d turn them on, they’d wiggle a little, and they’d turn right back off. Now, despite what the paperwork said, I figured that maybe the batteries were low. Because this was the only explanation, right?

Sent Angie and Mom out to get me batteries, and put the new batteries in on Sunday, April 14th (I had an event to go to… yes, I’m a dork).

The result? The first time I tried turning it on, the power light flashed on-then-off, and nothing happened. Subsequent tries, nothing happened.

Leaving them at home while I went to the event, Angie decided to try to look at them. She said that she got a whining noise, definitely NOT what this is supposed to do.

At this point, I went online, to see what other people were saying. A friend, when I told her I got them, had told me that she’d heard that lots of people had problems with them. Online, I found a number of people reporting the same problem as me: they suddenly stopped working.

By this point, the Hyrule Historia ‘fun’ was going on, so instead of starting a new customer service ticket with TSRI, I asked Minion on ANN’s forums what we could do. Minion replied that s/he’d asked CS, and gotten the form letter for these problems, and forwarded to me (privately, of course).

Wait, what was that? TSRI has a form letter specifically for people with non-working/broken/defective Necomimi? This doesn’t bode well.

Regardless, the instructions were to contact Neurosky, the manufacturer. We did so… and they told us to contact TSRI. Oh, fun, we’re going to play this game.

We start a new support ticket with TSRI, and let them know that we’d already gotten help from Minion (I’m assuming that they know who Minion is, even if we don’t), and that we’d contacted Neurosky.

TSRI said that Neurosky had procedures set in place for returns/exchanges (note that, because of my research, I really don’t want an exchange, I just want a refund), and that we had to go through them.

So back to Neurosky we go. And now Neurosky is saying that, because we bought them from TSRI, we had to go through TSRI, but that they’d apparently “instructed them to provide you with a RMA as you purchased your unit from them, and not NeuroSky.”

So, back to TSRI we went. And this is where things get awesome.

TSRI is allowing us to return the ears (for refund or for a new pair, obviously, I’m going for the refund), but, because of the frustrations here, they’re going above and beyond. In addition to the refund, they offered us either a 10% discount on our next order, or a year extension on our Got Anime membership (which would be expiring in a couple months anyway).

We’re taking the GA membership, but the fact that it was offered in the first place was awesome. TSRI really cares about its customers. It’s obvious not only from these two instances, but from Shawne going onto ANN’s forums, and offering to personally help people with their problems. As the title says, there’s good customer service, but this is above and beyond anything we’d expected.
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 23665
PostPosted: Wed May 01, 2013 1:11 pm Reply with quote
@ Dessa - thanks for sharing those examples with us. I too have been the recipient of outstanding customer service from TRSI. It is clearly a company that understands the importance of good customer relations and takes pride in providing it.
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FLEABttn



Joined: 10 Aug 2003
Posts: 106
Location: ABQ
PostPosted: Wed May 01, 2013 1:59 pm Reply with quote
I'll take this opportunity to speak to TRSI's great customer service.

I ordered Mushi-shi and the case broke in transit and scratched the fourth DVD up severely. TRSI sent me a new disc and a new disc the next day and I got them a few days later. No hassle or anything.
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RightStufSpecialsMinion
Company Representative


Joined: 12 May 2011
Posts: 331
Location: Iowa
PostPosted: Wed May 01, 2013 2:09 pm Reply with quote
I'm glad we were able to get things worked out for you. Smile Sorry about all the trouble with the ears; we've had some back and forth with the manufacturer about that.

The Historia's pretty great, isn't it? I got a copy for my little brother for his birthday, and we had trouble dragging him away from it for the rest of the evening. And that's with someone too young to truly appreciate the significance of the included timeline, too!
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Dessa



Joined: 14 Jul 2004
Posts: 4438
PostPosted: Wed May 01, 2013 3:52 pm Reply with quote
Someone take a picture, Blood- and I are agreeing on something (^^)

Minion - Aww, how cute! And the only thing I wish HH had, would be the theme sheet music (or at least the Ocarina songs).
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mow123



Joined: 10 Apr 2008
Posts: 339
PostPosted: Sun Aug 11, 2013 5:56 pm Reply with quote
Has anyone done business through http://www.rakuten.co.jp/ or http://global.rakuten.com/en/. They are also known as Rakuten Global Market.


Like most Japanese sites, I don't know what the shipping will be until I already pay for it. Anyone have any feedback about them or know how much shipping would be for a PC game? It's funny how the games have a crappy region locked that can be fooled with a patch, but they are fine shipping it somewhere the game is region locked. All you really need is to make sure you have the Japanese region selected on your windows and put on the English patch. Then again, I am probably almost the only one who actually pays for visual novels since they are so difficult to order from the U.S.


It would be ideal if we could get localizations of more Japanese visual novels. I know its happened a few times, but still most of them are untranslated. I am also only interested in the non-adult stuff which I think would probably be way better to translate and localize than gutting a an 18+ game to make it non-adult. As for importing adult stuff as is, go for it but I won't ever buy it. The second best thing would be a US based store that sold import visual novels. You would still have to patch it with fansubs and get around region blocks, which are ironically there to deter pirates that you still have to deal with if you import the game.


Last edited by mow123 on Mon Aug 12, 2013 8:48 am; edited 2 times in total
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Polycell



Joined: 16 Jan 2012
Posts: 4623
PostPosted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 7:43 am Reply with quote
Your link just gives me a 404.
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zawa113



Joined: 19 Jan 2008
Posts: 7357
PostPosted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 12:47 am Reply with quote
Has anyone ever ordered anything from animeshop.net? They have some awesome wall scrolls I'd like, but I can't seem to find much info about them...
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Megiddo



Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Posts: 8360
Location: IL
PostPosted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 12:56 am Reply with quote
Their soundtrack CDs are all bootleg, that's about all I could tell ya.

That they still have "2006 Calendars" on the side menu makes me really question any sort of possible legitimacy as well.
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zawa113



Joined: 19 Jan 2008
Posts: 7357
PostPosted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 1:04 am Reply with quote
Yeah, I thought the "2006 Calenders" section was weird. I can't tell the difference between real and bootleg CDs, so I'll just take your word for it.

Well maybe this will be a better question: know any good sites to buy wallscrolls? Particularly older ones? In particular, I want them for: RahXephon, Outlaw Star, Hikaru no Go (or I should say another Hikaru no Go one, one can never have too many), Macross (or Robotech, so long as it's not Shadow Chronicles, like old Robotech/Macross stuff), Macross Plus, maybe if I see some other older series I'd like a scroll of. Or Steins;Gate for new series
Rightstuf, of course, is on wallscroll hiatus, RACS doesn't have a good selection, and I was just at Otakon, no such luck. I've bought some randomly on ebay before, but they don't have quite the design I want...
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Megiddo



Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Posts: 8360
Location: IL
PostPosted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 2:31 am Reply with quote
Ever try Anime Castle? Granted I only did a cursory glance of their video and music selection but I didn't see any obvious bootleg stuff there. I have zero clue when it comes to wallscrolls though so I can't vouch for anything there. They have a couple RahXephon, Hikaru no Go, and Macross scrolls along with older series.

http://www.animecastle.com/c-18365-wallscrolls.aspx
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crosswithyou



Joined: 15 Dec 2007
Posts: 2892
Location: California
PostPosted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 4:58 am Reply with quote
classicalzawa wrote:
Has anyone ever ordered anything from animeshop.net? They have some awesome wall scrolls I'd like, but I can't seem to find much info about them...

All the wall scrolls and posters are bootlegs too. With a domain like animeshop.net and Gundam Wing in the header image, I wouldn't trust them to provide too many legit items.
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victor viper



Joined: 18 Jun 2011
Posts: 630
Location: The deep south
PostPosted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 5:04 am Reply with quote
classicalzawa wrote:
Well maybe this will be a better question: know any good sites to buy wallscrolls? Particularly older ones? In particular, I want them for: RahXephon, Outlaw Star, Hikaru no Go (or I should say another Hikaru no Go one, one can never have too


Have you tried Circle Red (www.circlered.com)? I've bought a few things from them over the years, and they do seem to have a pretty big selection of wallscrolls.

It's a shame that Rightstuf and RACS have basically stopped carrying wallscrolls, but I guess they're just so damn expensive to ship.
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zawa113



Joined: 19 Jan 2008
Posts: 7357
PostPosted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 11:12 am Reply with quote
Animecastle does have Hikaru no Go and Macross scrolls I like, but not for RahXephon, the one I'd really like a scroll of.

Didn't see any of the series I'd like at Circlered.

Here's another vaguely fishy site, Joy's Japanimation, though this place has a real store in Pittsburgh it would appear. But they do have RahXephon scrolls I like (and Outlaw Star)
Also found Toon Junkie, they have tons of scrolls.

When it comes to scrolls, I'm not too concerned on legitimacy. I know that might sound horrible, but I'm pretty sure I already have bootleg scrolls, and they're of better quality than official US scrolls. Not as good as actual Japanese ones, but better than the US ones, which is weird. What I am worried about are places just taking my money and running.
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owlie42



Joined: 04 Oct 2013
Posts: 8
Location: AZ, USA
PostPosted: Sat Oct 05, 2013 2:00 am Reply with quote
GokuMew2 wrote:
classicalzawa wrote:
Has anyone ever ordered anything from animeshop.net? They have some awesome wall scrolls I'd like, but I can't seem to find much info about them...

All the wall scrolls and posters are bootlegs too. With a domain like animeshop.net and Gundam Wing in the header image, I wouldn't trust them to provide too many legit items.


Pity. They have a couple pins that I wanted. They seem to be the only ones who have them.
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