Payment
Q "What forms of payment can I send?/Can I send cash/a personal check?"
A Just like the details section of every list page says, I prefer United States Postal Service International Money Orders. You can get them from your frienly neighborhood post office. The IMO is sort of pink/red in color, the regular one is green. Don't send the green one since it is for use only in the USA. Money orders from banks or private cash services WILL be returned because it is impossible for me to cash them in Japan. Personal checks are a bigger problem since they are not used in Japan. Banks here will take up to 90 days to clear a check and if I have to send it back to the US, it will take additional time and may be lost by the post office or my bank. In short, I can't accept personal checks.
If you are living in a country which does not allow you to send the money order yourself or will not deliver US $ to Japan then you may pay me in Yen. Please use 110JPY/1US$ as a conversion rate. In any case, I can only accept Postal Money Orders. Money Orders from banks or private companies will be returned since I can not cash them here in Japan. I would rather you don't send cash, but for some countries that may be your only choice. Money orders have accountability while cash does not.
Q Can I pay by credit card?
A US customers
can pay using Visa or Mastercard through paypal.com. Just follow
the link below to sign up if you have not already done so. If you pay using
paypal.com, you must email me with your shipping address.
Q "Where do I send payment?"
A My address is:
Chris Barker
Green Mansion 2D
4-26-28 Jingumae
Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0001
Japan
Q "How much time do I have to pay for what I want?"
A Unless I agree by email, you have two weeks to deliver payment for your games. That means fourteen days from the date of the email where we agree on a deal. This is more than enough time to get to the post office and for the letter to reach Japan.
Q "I don't live in America, what should I do?"
A I have had successfull
transactions with people in most of Europe, North America and parts of
Asia. Countries where people had to make arrangements other than
a Postal IMO are:
| Australia | The Australian Post Office uses Western
Union for money orders. I can not cash
these in Japan. Your best bet is to send US$ or Japanese Yen. |
| Canada | It seems that Canada has privatized many
of it's Post Offices. Because of this
Canadians who do not have access to a main branch Post Office can not get IMOs so they must send cash in US$ or Japanese Yen, or find a friend in the US to send a money order as above. Beware do not send this kind of money order. They are useless here. |
| France | Postal money order or bank wire transfer for large orders |
| Great Brittain | I have heard from a number of people now
that the Brittish Postal Service does
not do IMOs. Subjects of the crown are therefore reduced to payment in US$ or Japanese Yen. |
| Italy | The Italian Postal system, known worldwide
for being unreliable DOES do
International Money Orders! |
| Mexico | Post Office situation unknown. The
only way I have been able to do business with
Mexico is for people to send US$. |
| Phillipines | Post Office situation unknown. The
only way I have been able to do business with
the Phillipines is for people to send US$ or Japanese Yen. |
| Singapore | Post Office situation unknown. The
only way I have been able to do business with
Singapore is for people to send US$ or Japanese Yen. |
| Spain | Post Office situation unknown. Small
orders should send cash, large orders may
do bank transfer. |
| Switzerland | Post Office situation unknown. The
only way I have been able to do business with
Switzerland is for people to send US$ or Japanese Yen. |
If you are going to pay by bank transfer then I ask that you cover the costs of transmission at your side and recieving at my side. My bank in the US generally charges me $20 to recieve a transfer. If you live in a country which requires an invoice with an international package, please let me know in advance. Some European countries require this.
Refunds/Exchages
Q "What is your refund/exchange policy"
A Everything I list is "as is". If items you recieve are damaged in transit and do not function, contact your post office. If that does not produce results, contact me and I will work on it from this side. Everything I ship by EMS is insured for just this reason. If your post office will not honor the insurance then that is that, fight it out with them not me. If you are not pleased with the item you ordered for reasons of personal preference, I will not provide a refund or an exchange: "caveat emptour", or to quote the Ferengi Rules of Aquisition, "Satisfaction is not guaranteed". If you are in the slightest bit concerned about the condition of an item, please ask in email before ordering. Sorry to do this but some people have ruined this for everyone else.
Trades
Q "Will you trade for game X?"
A Probably not.
Shipping
Q "How will you ship my games?"
A I ship everything by EMS postal express. It takes about three to five days to get to most places in the US, it is cheaper than regular air mail and is traceable. All packages are insured for their full value. US customers can track EMS packages from: http://www.usps.gov/cttgate. Customers outside of the US should consult the website of your local postal service.
Q "How soon will I get my game?"
A Even though EMS takes only a few days to get from Japapan to most parts of the world, I don't ship packages every day so your order could take two weeks to arrive at your door. I generally ship systems and large packages on the weekends, small packages may get shipped during the week depending on my work schedule.
Special Orders/Requests
As a general rule, I am not accepting special
orders at this time.
Q "Since you live in Japan, why don't you get me a copy of X?"
A I am not your personal shopper. If I know you in some way, i.e. you are a friend of mine or a good customer or I know you in some other way, you can certainly ask for favors. The chances of me saying "No" are inversely proportional to how well I know you and directly related to how nicely you ask me.
Q "What if you do agree to do a special order for me, what then?"
A If you ask me to get something for you which is not on my list. I will do so to the best of my ability. Please remember that special orders may take time. If you are looking for something even slightly uncommon, it could take me between one week and three months to find it for you. If you don't like this idea, please do not ask for special orders.
Q "If you can't fill my order what happens?"
A One of two things, we can either agree to wait till I find it, or I can refund your money by means of a bank check drawn in US $ from Citibank.
Q "If you find X can you let me know?"
A First read the personal shopper question. I get new games in every week and try to list them on my pages soon after. I keep my pages as current as time allows. This is not a full time job for me, so don't flame me if I miss a day. Please check the appropriate page regularly to see if the title you want is available.
Q "When will you be restocking X?"
A I have no idea.
Other
Q Can I send you secure/encrypted mail?
If you want to send me encrypted mail, my method of choice is PGP. My key is available off of certcerver.pgp.com and the fingerprint is C022 A4B5 4153 324E CBA0 7DCE 0C64 D29C 868F 85A9
Q "What is a (insert system name here)?"
A If you ask me about some particular system, the best I can say is do a web search for it. Lots of people have put in many hours of work to create much better hardware references than I have time for. For example, I get lots of questions about the PC Engine LT, a quick trip to AltaVista will provide much better answers than I could.
Q "I have a copy of X how much is worth?"
A Something is worth exactly what people will pay for it. How much did you pay for it? What is it going for on Ebay or relevant mailing lists? If someone will pay $500 for your unreleased prototype of "Dai Koneko Gaiden" then good for you.
Q "Why is X so expensive? My friend's friend was in Japan and he said it was only ..."
A Currency rates change every minute and prices in Japan fluctuate according to supply and demand. Maybe X was really cheap a few years ago, but it might be very hard to get ahold of now. If you don't believe me come on over to Tokyo and I will be happy to give you a list of places I go for my games. Finding a place to stay and how to get around is up to you though.
Q "I can't afford X right now, but will you hold it for me?"
A If I know you in some way, probably so. If I don't know you at all, I will hold something for you for 30 days if you send me a 25% non-refundable deposit.
Q "I have this game but I can't read the Japanese name/text"
A Take a course in Japanese. It takes most people about 5 years of constant study to read at the same level as a grade school child. I can not read Japanese at an adult level anyway, so I won't be much help in that department.
Q "I'm looking for ROM images/CDRs/multicarts"
A All my products are original. I don't deal with any pirate games or copies. Don't even ask.
Q "You sound like a real jerk."
A I really do get a bunch of email every day asking me these questions. If you think I am a jerk, it's on you. If you write to me and make reasonable requests/offers or just to say "Hi", you will find I am pretty easy going. The web is a great source of information, try one of the search engines or read the news groups if you have a question about a particular piece of hardware or game.
Q "What are you doing in Japan anyway?"
A I came to Japan as an employee of an American software company, these days I am a network security consultant. The video game stuff is a hobby for me.
Q "I want to live in Japan too! What should I do?"
A Learning to speak and read Japanese are good but not required, have a marketable skill, be ready to live as an expatriate with all the good and bad things that implies. Living here is not any better than where you are and can be worse at times. If you can adapt to the culture and enjoy the country, it can be great though!
Q "Will you sell Dreamcast systems & games and for how much?"
A I sold a few of them but now that the importers in the US like NCS can get them reliably, it would be much easier for you to buy them from them instead of me.
Q "I like your site! Can we exchange links?"
A Email me with the URL of your site and we can talk about it. I'm more interested in linking to sites which offer something really unique than general fan pages or personal pages. I will not link to sites which are dedicated to or affiliated with emulation and ROM piracy if it is aviodable.
Q "Do you have a banner available?"
A Yes. Please use the following HTML fragment to include it in your site:
<a href=http://superfami.com img src="http://superfami.com/sfcbanner.gif" alt="Superfami.com Classic Japanese Videogames"> </a>
Please do not download the image directly to your site since I may change it from time to time. If you use my banner, please let me know the URL of your site by email.
Superfami.com privacy policy.
Superfami.com does not and will not distribute or make available in any form, any information about customers, including but not limited to:
1 name
2 mailing address
3 email address
4 phone number
5 contents of order
6 any other information communicated to superfami.com by postal orelectronic
mail
From time to time, superfami.com may ask you if you are willing to be used as a customer reference. You will never be used as a reference without your prior concent. If you wish to use us as a reference to a third person you may do so without asking permission before hand.
Superfami.com does maintain records of orders shipped to whom at what address, but these records do not list the contents of an order. These records are not stored in electronic form, are not stored on line and are maintained according to reasonable security practices.
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Thanks for reading all this! Now back to the good stuff.
