Forum - View topicINTEREST: RightStuf Looks to Canada in New Anime Survey
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Vaisaga
 Posts: 13227 |
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When I was a kid I used to use RightStuf all the time. I'd go so far as send in money orders to pre-order stuff since I had no credit card at the time.
These days, though, there's little reason to use the site anymore. Amazon.ca has all the anime you could ever want, with free shipping, no custom charges, and even if the shipping estimate says a week, I usually get my order in 2 days. Rightstuf has the occasional exclusive product I can't get elsewhere, and I have no problems buying from them in those cases. |
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Pepperidge
 Posts: 1104 Location: British Columbia, Canada |
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Technically yes, but smaller distributors that don't have proper distribution in Canada like Discotek and (surprise!) Nozomi Entertainment tend to get labelled as "Imports" and carry excessively high mark-ups. I mean, just look at what Night on the Galactic Railroad is going for on Amazon.ca compared to the US site. That's way beyond the exchange rate. Not to mention that it can often take weeks for Amazon.ca to get "Import" items in stock. They aren't too great for titles that have proper distribution in Canada, either. It took weeks for me to get Evangelion 3.33 on BD. |
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Sensei Terry Silver
Posts: 52 |
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From 2009 until the past two years, I used to buy from RightStuf all the time. However, with the price hike of all shipping costs from US to Canada, & the depreciation of the Canadian Dollar, it's harder to justify making those kind of purchases.
Currently, on rough calculations, a box qualifying for free shipping ( $ 250 US ) would cost between $ 375 ~ $ 400 CDN at the door & making smaller purchases is not worthwhile with a $ 16 USD / $ 21 CDN shipping minimum shipping charge. Due to the current lousy CDN dollar value, I put a brake on nearly all of my online purchases from US stores -- nowadays it's pretty much Amazon.ca or nothing. It's been years since I've bought something on eBay, so it's not like it's limited to RightStuf / anime purchases only. Man, I miss those days. 
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Kalessin
 Posts: 931 |
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As someone in the US, I have to say that rightstuf is way better than amazon.com as far as prices go. In my experience, it's rare that anyone can compare with righstuf in that regard if you pay attention to their constant sales and order stuff when it's on sale (which works for pre-orders too). rightstuf might be worse if your main concern is shipping (particularly if you have amazon prime), but I buy so much anime that paying anything for shipping is pretty stupid. I'd lose a ton of money by insisting on faster shipping. righstuf has done fantastically be me over the years.
But not being in Canada, I have no idea how it ends up comparing to amazon.ca. The minimum order amount for free shipping at rightstuf is quite a bit higher in Canada than the US, and if you get charged custom fees, then that could definitely make things worse. Though it seems to me that if the folks in Canada are getting charged customs fees for importing anime from the US, they're getting a raw deal. I've imported a lot of stuff from Japan without ever paying customs fees (though the shipping costs are brutal). And if you get charged foreign transaction fees by your credit card company and nonsense like that, then obviously, the negatives for ordering from the US will add up. But given how much better rightstuf tends to be than amazon.com, I would have though that there would still be a good chance that ordering from rightstuf would still be better than amazon.ca for Canadians. |
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Vaisaga
Posts: 13227 |
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FYI Amazon gives you free shipping on orders over $25, which will apply to pretty much every anime release ever. It also has pre-order price guarantee, where it'll charge you the lowest price for a pre-order regardless of what the price was when you put in the order. I've gotten quite a bit of money refunded because of that.
There was a time when Canadian shipping from Rightstuf was per item, which was absolutely terrible. It was like $10 per item so even though one more DVD doesn't add much weight wise you'd still be paying extra for it. Thankfully they don't do that anymore. |
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Kalessin
Posts: 931 |
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amazon.com does the same thing in the US (except that I think that the limit is more like $49 per order now), but I've rarely seen amazon be competitive with righstuf's prices as long as you order stuff from rightstuf on their revolving sales (and most of the anime companies' products are on sale at least a couple of times a year at rightstuf - pre-orders included). Occasionally, amazon has had a competitive price on something, but it's been rare, even with their pre-order guarantee. With a rightstuf membership, their sales on anime go up to 46% off of MSRP, and the manga goes up to 40% off. And amazon doesn't usually match that. So, with each rightstuf sale, I order whatever it is I'm interested in from that particular company, and it comes when it comes (generally close to when it's released if it's a pre-order - and sometimes before the release date, but I don't usually worry about it much, and someone who wanted everything now might have a different take on it). They don't even wait for the whole order to be ready, so you can mix stuff that's already out and stuff that won't be out for months into the same order and usually get it around the time that it's in stock. So, at least as someone who buys a lot of anime and manga (as opposed to just a title here and there), rightstuf's setup saves me a ton of money in way that amazon doesn't. That and rightstuf treats orders better. Increasingly, I've seen amazon do stuff like put books in bubblewrap envelopes that don't protect them very well, whereas rightstuf always does well with their packaging. The areas that I would expect that would be worse for a Canadian customer would be a much higher minumum order for free shipping (it's trivial to hit the $49 for the US, and most of my orders would hit the $249 for Canada, but it's a much larger committment), whatever foreign transaction fees you incur via your credit card, and according to their shipping FAQ, there's a surcharge that they charge to cover all of the customs fees and whatnot (though I have no idea how much they charge). So, those considerations could very well tilt the balance in favor of amazon.ca. For a US customer though, amazon.com has consistently charged more than rightstuf to the point that amazon.com is pretty much a waste of time for anime and manga.
That would be brutal. That's much more in line with the kind of prices that I typically have to pay to import stuff from Japan. I always go for free shipping when I can, but it's almost never available for stuff from Japan, and way too much of my disposal income gets eaten up that way. Shipping costs like that from rightstuf would instantly kill it in comparison to amazon.ca. So, it's definitely good that they stopped that.
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Polycell
 Posts: 4623 |
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Barnes & Noble is worth mentioning; their prices might be a little steep in person, but online they're usually competitive with Amazon and are the only ones I know of that have kept free shipping at $25. There's also the membership option, which gives free 2-day shipping and a discount in stores. I've ended up using them for all my manga/LN needs(I don't recall any anime recently that's included any extras on the disc, so I haven't ordered any since I started shopping there).
Canada-wise, standard shipping for three random Spice & Wolf novels to a random address in Winnipeg came to $11.46 with an estimated delivery of August 23rd. If you're buying books from the US, they might be worth checking out. And did I mention they know how to pack books? |
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