anyone heard of these online shops?

finally found a kit i've been looking for and at a good price. but i've never heard of them

http://www.hobbyasia.com/index.php

and this one looks like a wholesaler from japan that sell bits and pieces but also have some kits in the hobby section

http://global.rakuten.com/en/


has anyone had any experiences with either company?

cheers

Jason

I'd be a little weary of Hobby Asia since the Latest news headlines on their home page is :


46th Shizuoka Hobby Show 2007 was held in Japan on May 19 and 20, 2007

Click to view the photos gallery on NEW PRODUCTS on the left menu.

And the newest item added to their inventory is Tamiyas PE set for the R35 GTR...... something tells me they may not be active anymore...lol

I've never heard of Rakuten before, but it appears to be a shopping portal with items listed from many different sellers ala, Yahoo or Amazon(but not just books)

Regards, Dan.

Rakuten is one of the biggest online shopping portal in Japan with more than 120,000 stores (9600 in the global site).

I almost exclusively use Rakuten's Japanese stores for discounted model kits, magazines, books, CDs, DVD/Blu-Ray movies for the last few years. I buy a little more than once a month, and my relative in Japan combines packages and ship by surface a few times a year. I've also used one of their global sites (paid through Paypal, and shipped by EMS), and received the item directly from the store without any problem.

Because I have never had any problem with any of the Rakuten stores, I don't know how they'd respond when a problem occurs, especially with the global stores whose communication skills may vary.

Because Rakuten global stores only ship by EMS (fast, trackable and insured, but expensive), the total cost end up being almost the same or higher than the competition, so it doesn't make much economical sense to choose Rakuten over, say HLJ or Hobby Search or AmiAmi (that's probably why Rakuten isn't discussed frequently), but if I find something others don't have, and the total cost is reasonable, I would use Rakuten with confidence.

thanks heaps for the info fellas!

i tried to join up to Rakuten seemed easy enough except for the post code/ zip code

It wont accept my Australian post code so i cant go any further in the join up process