Aim! Shoot!! Duck!!!

I ran into Borderlinx on Citibank website one day, promoting the ability to do online shopping in USA by providing you with a local USA address to send your items to. This perked my interest to check it out as I thought this is a neat service to have. When I first checked it out sometime last year, it was still very new & the website didn’t have much info. Apart from creating an account, I didn’t bother to do much more. That was until one day I received an email notification from them regarding their new ‘Total Cost Calculator‘ tool in their website. This happened around the same time I started to check out BigBadToyStore. Call it a coincidence. I compared the shipping cost using their ‘Total Cost Calculator‘ tool with BigBadToyStore international shipping & it seemed at that time, Borderlinx didn’t cost a lot more, like maybe around RM40 to RM50 more when converted. Unfortunately, the ‘Total Cost Calculator‘ tool didn’t really make it clear how shipping cost is calculated nor did I have a clue as to why there was a section in the tool to enter the dimensions of the package. It’s like, how would I know how big the packaging would be? So I ignored it & proceeded to try out using Borderlinx. This is where the ‘nightmare’ begins.

Borderlinx Total Cost Calculator

Basically how Borderlinx works is that it provides you with a local USA address to send your stuff to. This is of great help when online shopping sites only ship to USA addresses & don’t do international shipping. Their service has since been updated to offer a UK local address as well to do online shopping in UK. So you pay for local shipping from the online merchant to Borderlinx, then ship it back when you are ready. Sounds great right? So I waited for my item to arrive in Borderlinx, and when it did & I checked the cost of shipping it back, I was floored. From just being an extra RM40 to RM50, the shipping cost is now a staggering RM100 extra. I instantly used their very useful online chat to find out more. Here I found out 2 things:

1) Volumetric weight vs Dead weight. Volumetric weight is the amount of space a package requires while Dead weight is the actual weight of the package. Shipping is charged based one whichever value is bigger. So if your box is big but it’s light, you’ll get charged for the space of the big box.

2) Items can only be kept in Borderlinx for 30 free of charge, after that, it’s shipped & your credit card automatically charged.

I have to say, I was shocked. Shocked because I knew, no matter what I’m stuck with Borderlinx & will have to pay that amount to ship it back, whether I liked it or not. Worse, I had to do it in 30 days max. During that time, these particulars weren’t clearly mentioned in the website & the support staff apologised for it. I even asked the support staff how could I know how big the package would be in the first place? He conceded that I wouldn’t be able to know. That’s OK, lesson learned, I thanked the support staff & waited as long as I could before I hit the ‘Ship It’ button.

The day finally came when I had to hit the ‘Ship It’ button. Luckily, the exchange rate for USD to RM went down so I saved a measly RM5 on shipping. So I clicked the ‘Ship It’ button, hoped to see my package arrive in a week time & be a happy guy. Too bad lady luck completely deserted me. A week after I shipped the item, I got a call from the local DHL office, informing me my package has arrived, BUT I needed to settle customs tax before I could  get my item. How much was I charged? Tax + administrative charges = RM100++. At this point, I’ll be honest, I was PISSED & really wanted to ‘kill’ someone/something.  I couldn’t believe my luck. But I decided,  I was going to find out how did they calculated the tax & get it reduced. After a few days talking to DHL & customs, it turns out it was calculated based on some odd shipping charge DHL was giving customs. After clarifying & providing proof of the shipping charge I paid to customs, DHL finally informed me my item has been released from customs FREE of tax! Wow! Thank heavens! Finally it’s settled, after a week being stuck in customs & DHL.

By now, you must be thinking, this is a damning review of Borderlinx & I would never use it again. It almost reached that point. But it didn’t because of the great support staff. I chatted with 3 different support staff & had email exchange with 2 more. They all answered my queries well, even though they couldn’t exactly give me a better solution, they at least helped by clarifying everything. I’ve noticed after my conversations with them, the website was updated with more detailed information, like for eg, clarifying volumetric weight & a detailed section about tax & duty. It’s even mentioned in the tax & duty section that tax & duty is now prepaid with shipment & your item SHOULD NOT be held in customs. I’ll hold them on that.

So would I use Borderlinx again? Maybe, because it can clear customs faster & will most likely arrive when compared to using international parcel. I got an email from the support staff thanking me for my feedback & rest assured that my feedback would be channeled to higher management so that the service will be improved. That email kind of made me feel, OK, at least my relentlessness paid off.

Having rekindled my Transformers interest, I find myself checking a couple of Transformers fan sites daily nowadays, checking on news of new figures, new happenings, conventions & stuff like that. It’s a very lively community, with yearly Botcon conventions organised by Transformers Collectors’ Club & Hasbro in the USA. There are BotCon organised elsewhere around the globe too like in Europe & Japan.

Two sites I check daily nowadays are Transformer World 2005 (TFW2005 in short) & Seibertron.com. TFW2005 is more of a forum while Seibertron is more of a news site. There’s a gallery section in Seibertron where you can check out tons of galleries of past & present Transformers figures. Browsing these 2 sites, I can’t help but notice a link to BigBadToyStore.com on both sites. So curiously, I went to check it out. Turns out it’s huge online toy store with an amazing variety of selection you can gawk at. They sell mint as well as 2nd hand toys in loose, opened or sealed form which is great as buying used toys is the only way to get some very hard to find figures, provided you can afford it of course. My focus was of course Transformers, in particular the Alternators section. As mentioned in my Transformers! Final Part post, Alternators are rare collectible figures now so I was wondering if I might be able to find 1 or 2 figures that I was looking for at reasonable prices. To my surprise, there were 2 figures, in good shape (one is sealed, one is opened but Back in Box condition) & price wise I can afford it. So I took the plunge, created an account, paid for it with my credit card & sat on the order for a while, wondering how I was going to ship it back here.

I had 2 options for shipping it back, use BigBadToyStore shipping by US Parcel or use Borderlinx, a shopping consolidation service by Citibank. Shipping it by US Parcel was cheaper but slower delivery (3 weeks) & most likely will get stuck in customs. Shipping it by Borderlinx was a little more expensive but faster delivery (5 days) & might slip through customs, depending on my luck. So I decided to use Borderlinx & try it out. I’ll blog about the Borderlinx experience seperately as it was not a very smooth one, unfortunately.

So finally, I got my package from BigBadToyStore, delivered via Borderlinx & here are some pictures to commemorate the ‘joyous’ occasion.

Overall I’m very happy with the packaging & how they sealed each box individually. I have no issues recommending BigBadToyStore to anyone, but please keep in mind, you’re shipping from USA so shipping cost is a bomb. Always try other cheaper alternatives in finding your rare figure, whenever possible. But if you can find an alternative method to ship it back, then shopping on BigBadToyStore is highly recommended, especially since they have clearance sales quite often.

UPDATE 21/04/2010: Talk about coincidence. BigBadToyStore is having a 15% sale on almost everything till this Friday, April 23, 2010!!! So go check it out.

Something I forgot to mention yesterday was BigBadToyStore has a ‘Pile of Loot’ shipping system. What this does is allow you to buy an item, store it in their warehouse for up to 6 months, all the while adding new items you wanna buy to the pile. A great way to consolidate stuff you want to buy & ship it in one go. I still have stuff sitting in my ‘pile’ over there now .

Final part, at least for my current collection. This post will be on the few latest additions to my collection. There’s a funny story to it as I wasn’t planning on getting these figures, though one of it was on my  ’Maybe will get‘ list. All depended on my budget & currently my budget is non existent.

Alternators Wheeljack

The Alternators series was launched way back in 2003 as a line which features 1:24 scale & accurate real-world vehicle modes officially licensed from car manufacturers. This is more of a figures series & doesn’t really have a story or cartoon to go with it. Though the Japan version, called Binaltech did have it’s own back story but that’s not really important. I remember seeing these figures back in 2004 & thought how amazing the car modes looked. They looked so good they could pass for those replica models you see selling of those officially licensed cars. The car modes also features working doors, hood, trunk as well as a detailed car interior! Well, detailed to a certain point but it looked great. Unfortunately poor sales resulted in the series being pulled in 2006. Though Takara (the original makers of Transformers toys in Japan) did revive the idea with a new series called Alternity featuring current cars such as Nissan GT-R & Suzuki Swift. Alternators are now rare collectible figures that fetch ridiculous prices for certain rare & very nice looking figures such as Smokescreen & Hound.

Wheeljack is a classic character from the G1 which most of you would know if you watched the cartoon. An inventor & skilled driver, he has a knack for building all kinds of stuff that most of the time unfortunately blows up in his face, or worse, blows him up. But once in a while when his inventions work, he’s a gem to have on your side.

Bludgeon

This figure is based on the character from the G1 Marvel Comics. I myself have no idea about this character. But the character has been updated for the ROTF figure line & looks kick ass! There are actually two figures in the ROTF line, which you can check out here. The voyager version is supposed to be the robot he becomes after he was defeated by an Autobot & he reformats himself. Don’t really care about that, what matters more is how much cooler he looks now. Can you beat a samurai robot with a skull head wielding a dagger & katana? Oh! This is the figure that was in my ‘Maybe will get‘ list. Fortunately, I got it for my birthday from my best bud. Thanks again Nick!

Extras

The extras are from the Takara version of Legends class. The difference? They come packed in boxes that gives no clue as to what figure is inside. Wonder why the Japanese like this kind of idea, I just find it annoying.  So it was a gamble on who I got, though Ironhide was an exchange with Nick for Legends Optimus(Damage Version). He actually found a way to peak through the side of the box but this method would only work if there was some distinguishing feature to notice on the figure, like the silver smokestacks of Optimus. Finally, a nice ‘family’ pic of all the figures in my current collection. Never thought I could fit it all in the small table I use to take all my pics. Enjoy!

P/S: Try to spot Sam, Mikaela & Arcee in the ‘family’ pic.