Bidding and buying JDM parts through Rinkya.com

[AZhitman]

Bidding and buying through Rinkya.com -

By: d!ck

Rinkya is a business that allows users to translate and bid on auctions on Japan's Yahoo! auctions site. By signing up with them, you are able to browse and (hopefully!) purchase rare JDM items and have them shipped straight to your door, thereby cutting out the expense of middlemen, in most cases.

To register, you need a valid credit card. A deposit in the amount of your choosing is deducted and returned to the card, which determines how much you are cleared to bid in the auctions. Please note that these amounts are all US dollars and the currency conversion rate to yen would be helpful so you know approximately how much you can bid on the japanese auctions.

After you have been cleared, you are ready to start searching for parts. By searching Rinkya's database of common auctions, you are able to easily and accurately find your items (well, at least as easy as ebay anyways).

When you select an item from the list of matches, you are viewing the actual Yahoo! Japan auction. Can you read japanese characters? Neither can I. This is where the button comes in handy. The broken Engrish is much easier to decipher than a bunch of gobbeldygook symbols that your browser throws up when confronted with the foreign language. If the item meets your expectations, you can click on the button and start the bidding process. This sends your request to Rinkya, which then bids on the auction for you, just like eBay.

I recently won 3 auctions for a set of s13 dual-projector headlights and two corner lights . The total cost of the items was y7,900, or approximately $62.50. Rinkya does charge commission and fees based on the amount of the winning bid, so my total was a little over $100 US including everything except shipping.

Payment may be complicated if you prefer to use your paypal account instead of a credit card like me, but it's nothing you won't figure out based on the detailed instructions on the appropriate form.

My auctions ended on February 28, and I had to wait for the sellers to ship the items to Rinkya in Japan, which made up most of the time i waited until i received my order. After Rinkya received and processed the items, they were held until I made arrangements to ship, which was as easy as filling out a short online form and having the cost of shipping (again just over $100 US). It was shipped from japan via EMS in the sixth of march and they were delivered to my house today (March 23). Not too shabby! Shipping costs a little more when you are having fragile items such as glass headlights sent, but imo its still well worth it. Everything was packaged safely and securely and even came with real JDM newspaper at no extra cost!

All said and done, I spent a little over $200 USD to get everything and have it shipped to my house with no strings attached. Online parts stores and dealers charge well over $300 for these parts, and that DOESN'T INCLUDE SHIPPING!.

You might see a good deal every once in a while on eBay, but by the time the auction ends you could be seriously out of price range because the items are rare stateside. That's the beauty of Rinkya; most of the junk that is uber-valuable to us is ridiculously overabundant there, so its easy to find the parts your looking for without spending an arm and a leg.

IT'S IMPORTANT TO NOTE that large items such as conversions, motorsets, body kits, *some* spoilers, and full exhaust systems will be exponentially more expensive to ship, simply because of their size and the trouble it is to pack/ship them. Rinkya frowns upon the purchase/winning of these large items without clearance from them prior to bidding, and there is a fee if you happen to forget that. Things like wheels, lights, misc. motor parts etc... are fine

I will continue to use this service as long as there are small-to-medium parts to be had. I would rate my transactions thus far as excellent, and the customer service is simply unrivaled, especially compared to eBay. Happy bidding!