PA can be considering my first online toys store I shop when I first got my espeed install few years back. After my cousin introduced Hobby Link Japan, I slowly move away from them due to the price different and better economical shipping. Well, of course, back then the exchange rates for SG to Yen was good and at the same time there is no free shipping policy either.
First impression
It’s easy to guess what Play-Asia.com is selling when you first enter to the website as everything was well categories and allows you to choose what kind of items you wanted it to list out.
Good things about them that not only they sell toys but also sells original consoles and PC games, music’s, movies, books or magazines and other gaming gadgets including accessories which can be found over there too. I mostly buy the PC collector edition games since it can be easily obtain it through pre-order.
Price wise for all their items sold over there, except those magazines, plastic models and figures are much expensive from my own survey pricing comparison. This is why I don’t shop there often even there is free shipping offering. Mostly, I check out the bargain section and some of the interest trading figures. That’s my habit.
The Best Parts
Getting a free US$5.00 coupon from almost every purchase and even a yearly free Christmas coupon worth US$8.00 (over US$50.00) and US$12.00 (over US$100.00) once you open an account at Play-Asia.com. I have been receiving it every year and not a single one misses to my mail box. If you don’t have anything to buy, you can simply just pass around to your friends or relatives since there is no restriction.
Another great limited time reward recently I was told to post mini reviews of the products already purchase from them on the website. In exchange, they will reward you credits for each product. It’s not much, but it’s good to earn a little store credit for future purchase.
The Terrible Downside
Their deliveries are simply too fast. It may sound good to many of you, but I look it differently and their customer services are not good either.
I remember my worst experience placing a wrong toy figure in my order and make a direct payment at night. After noticing the error made within ten minute in the invoice, I straight away sent my message for hoping to replace the figure while maintaining the same price. I thought they read it in the next day on working hours and do changes on my mistake. Somehow it didn’t, they simply just process and shipped within 24 hours which was blazing fast.
It was a disaster for me getting a wrong figure, and much worst they response my message after two days. I do not know if that was intentionally but their excuses simply cannot be accepted by telling me because there is too much mails to read. If such case does happen, then there is more reason for them to delay for few days as no point of crazily hurry and shipped out the items.
We as a customer do make mistake something and of course, they should expect some changes and modifications in our orders. I did post this issue in the Reseller Ratings website and vote them two stars out of five. Few days later, I get a reply from the GM trying to defend and telling me they have a 24 hours email policy so it very less likely happens.
You know what? He even tries to point me at fault that I sending the message during the holiday and non-working hours. I can’t believe this excuse comes again from the GM itself without understand what I wrote. If PA has a 24 hour email policy so why the fuck my message took so long to respond? Again, it was my items sent within 24 hour instead not the response message.
There is reason to believe that PA might not have any 24 hour email policy in the beginning. Maybe there was, probably not taking seriously about it. But there must be increasing of such similar complains and that’s why they decided last minute to improve this policy to avoid getting bad reputation.
Payment Methods
PA accepts credit cards, Paypals, Western Union and Moneybookers payments.
For pre-ordering, for us Bruneian, since we cannot receive refunds in Paypal. PA recommends us to use credit card instead while it can easily refund the money after your pre-order has been process or any other issues.
Shipping and Packing
There are many choices on the shipping. You can either choose Airmail, EMS Speedpost and courier shipment. For those of us who love to save more, Brunei is one of the country received free shipping offer at PA. The only downside is they are using Airmail without any tracking numbers.
As for the packaging, PA has a quality in packing. It’s not comparable to HLJ, but it’s not bad either.
Conclusion
Everything depends on what you are looking for over there. Although there are many things I don’t recommend buyers to shop in Play-Asia.com due to the price different are so much no matter how I look at it. Without doubt that the free shipping does help buyers to reduced the cost on the spending, nice yearly free coupons and especially also reduced the burden on the extra custom taxes on CD/DVD in Brunei.
The only concerns I’m think probably it’s about the customer services. There is no way I know about the improvement or not all these years. I know some of you might worry if incase your parcels lost during the shipment, will you able to get refunds? You might ask. Based on my experience, yes, so far I am able to recovered 100% refunds from them from arguments and cancelation order. I don’t know about the other buyers. If you want to make sure about their quality customer services, best to drop by Reseller Ratings for more buyers positive and negative reviews.
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