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Ishibashi on eBay

#3
That makes me sad.. The prices are much higher than their web shop and they are listing loads of stuff that's NOT listed on their web shop..

Why they have to go and screw up something that already works so well? It's not like the web shop is hard to deal with..
 
#4
May I suggest all people who bought instruments from them or likely to order instruments from them to send them an email stating how disappointed not to be allowed any more to buy through their U-box.
I persnally did order 3 basses from them and the service was just perfect. I would have probably ordered more Items from them. Now there's not so many nor so interesting things in their ebay store.
 
#5
mr.mow said:
That makes me sad.. The prices are much higher than their web shop and they are listing loads of stuff that's NOT listed on their web shop..

Why they have to go and screw up something that already works so well? It's not like the web shop is hard to deal with..
Click to expand...

I honestly think their EBay ads will be more up to date than their website inventory. I've contacted them many times and found out the item listed was already sold. If the EBay market will command higher prices, there's not much that can be done.
 
#6
Frenchdaddy said:
May I suggest all people who bought instruments from them or likely to order instruments from them to send them an email stating how disappointed not to be allowed any more to buy through their U-box.
I persnally did order 3 basses from them and the service was just perfect. I would have probably ordered more Items from them. Now there's not so many nor so interesting things in their ebay store.
Click to expand...
It doesn't actually state that you won't be allowed to order from their u-box anymore, just that they want you to use ebay while they redesign their ordering system. Here's the statement on their global website:

Ishibashi said:
FOR THIS REASON, WE WOULD ONCE STOP ACCEPTING ORDERS FROM OUR U-BOX WEB SITE AS WELL AS BRAND NEW ITEMS WHICH YOU USUALLY SEND INQURIES THROUGH OUR INQUIRY FORM AS OF JAN.25 (MON), AS WE NEED SOME TIME FOR PREPARATION IN REDESIGNING OUR ORDER-RECEIVING SYSTEM.

WE WOULD MAKE AN ANNOUNCEMENT WHEN WE WOULD START ACCEPTING ORDERS AGAIN FROM OUR U-BOX WEB SITE AS WELL AS OUR WEB SHOP INQUIRY FORM. WE APPRECIATE YOUR KIND PATIENCE AND UNDERSTANDING IN THIS REGARD.
Click to expand...
The bolded part says they will accept orders from the u-box and the web shop (new products) again. It looks like it's just temporary. I assume they're now on ebay so they can expand their market, but the u-box and web-shop should be back to normal eventually.
 
#7
Further to my post, I sent following email to Ishibashi (please forgive my poor english):

Dear all at Ishibashi Web-shop,

I have been very happy to order used equipment from your Company and I wish to thank you for your efficiency, honesty and professionalism, now that your U-box is no more operational for us, foregners.

I have been very disappointed to see that we now have to go through an ebay store which is right now far from being as attractive. I hope this will improve soon.

I have received following message in return :

Dear Jean,

This is Ace from Ishibashi Music. Thank you for your e-mail.

I am sorry to say we have stopped International U-BOX business.
First, I would like to explain our situation. We have continued our international business on a U-BOX basis for 12 years. Our stores do not always have a sales person good at English so that my international sales team has relayed overseas customers to our stores. When we started this way, we believed it would be good for both of our customers and our company. We could have a lot of good customers worldwide and they were satisfied with our service but we could not make profit suitable for our labor. My international team had to spend our labor to correspond with the customers and contact our stores much more than we expected. After Lehman Brothers bankrupted, many of our international customers have gone and sales has decreased. We can hardly continue the international U-BOX business.

We have made a test marketing for eBay in the spring of 2009. We found eBay was totally established. I are convinced business on eBay is much better than U-BOX.
Our new eBay business is managed at our Shibuya store. The store has the largest inventory of used items in our company. Three of my international sales team just moved to the store. They are now listing selected used items from the inventory on eBay.
The number of items which we are selling through e-Bay is still a few.
However, we would do our utmost to sell more items through our e-Bay web page.

Again, I am sorry for your inconvenience. I appreciate your understanding.

Best regards,
Eiichiro "Ace" Shirai
International Sales Manager

So it seems that we will have to go through their ebay store.

Let's wait and see
 
#12
I think Ishibashi are shooting themselves in the foot here.

I've been following the Ishibashi eBay shop for the last month and the few basses that have appeared have nearly all been Fenders.

For every bassist after a CIJ Fender I would guess that there's at least an equal number who have been watching the Ubox for something a bit more unconventional. Those basses are still turning up on the Ubox pages but none appear to be making it onto the eBay store. That for me is a massive disappointment.

For me the whole point of the Ubox was the fact that they had a huge range of instruments that only very, very rarely appear for sale outside Japan. I've dealt with them on a couple of occasions and their service has been exceptional, and I was hoping to buy more from them in the future.

Unless the ebay store gets a bit more interesting in its selection, I guess that's not going to happen anymore.
 
#15
well I am in australia and I just made a purchase out of the ubox so perhaps things have changed a bit for the better since this thread was started. the only new thing to me was they are requesting a minumum purchase of 50000 yen for international customers.
 
#16
I'm an American living in Japan and have bought quite a few instruments from Ishibashi at various stores and U-Box. I have also help people stateside get instruments from Ishibashi. As has been mentioned, one of the reasons for selling internationally through U-Box is that Ishibashi does not have enough staff at all their stores (and they have dozens) to deal with English.

There is another website, called Digimart (Invalid Link Removed), which Ishibashi also uses to sell instruments in Japan. On this website you can find an e-mail address for the store that is selling the instrument. It's my experience that the individual store MAY be willing to deal with an international customer on its own.

Having said that, I realize that if individual stores begin getting more request for instruments to be sent oversees, Ishibashi may stop that, too.

Gale
 

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