An Extensive Rakuten Yumetenbo Review Part 1

Hello everyone!

Before I start, I would just like to warn you that this review is going to be intensively and extensively long, since I will try my best to provide as much of an in-depth review on Yumetenbo as possible!

It seems that I had let time get the best of me yet again, but when you are in the middle of finals at the very moment anything goes! Anyway, lately I had been finding myself lacking the motivation or the drive to "frill-up" and dress myself up in Hime clothes. Not only that, but I realized that I have not changed up my wardrobe in over two years! In fact, some of my clothes were leftovers from my junior high to high school days! Yes I had added some pieces here and there, but generally overall it hasn't really changed.

To keep my wardrobe from getting even more stagnant, I had cleaned it out a while back and am now on an online shopping spree. One of the websites that I had been eying for quite some time now is Rakuten, specifically Yumetenbo. Apparently being well known for their affordable prices and cute clothes, Yumetenbo is pretty much the "Forever 21 or H&M" of the Gyaru world. Now I am absolutely sure that this is all common knowledge to most of the people by now, and I had actually been aware of this site for what seems to be ages. I just haven't gotten around to placing an order up until now, though why haven't I done so earlier is beyond me.

Before actually placing an order, I had done some thorough research on basically everything you can think of under the sun. What are the precise shoe sizes? How exactly do the clothes fit in terms of sizing? Did the order process drastically changed from the old reviews commonly found via Google? To make a long story short, it seems to me that I had found more of old reviews compared to new reviews. In addition, I noticed that a majority of the reviews did little to help me answer the questions posted above. Not saying that all of them did not help me out in some sort of way, since I did find a couple of exceptions. Just simply saying that most of them were not really helpful in answering questions in terms of sizing.


Here were a couple of other pieces of information that I had attained from looking through a bunch of reviews along with some basic observation:

• The sizing of all items overall (clothes and shoes) tends to be smaller than stated, example would be a M size top translating to a S size in reality
• Shipping charges tends to be based on the value of the total order rather than on the weight, according to a blog that I had found online, the shipping would go up in increments of 1,575 yen for every additional purchase of 5,250 yen (click here to go to the blog post)           
• Which leads to the next point, apparently due to this unique shipping system, this would work more in your favour if you were to buy more heavier items (shoes, coats, bags) than lighter items (tops, dresses, skirts/shorts) 
• The tops and dresses that were or are available in a lavender colour-way are always the first to sell out in all sizes 
• Generally the items will be processed and shipped out in 3 days unless there were pre-orders, which in that case it will vary depending on when the pre-order items arrive at their location, some bloggers made the advice that if you wanted your items to ship out within 3 days it is best if you were to place your pre-orders on another order
• If any of the ordered items sell out in a particular colour or size, then the store will not refund your money, which greatly increases the risk of ordering from there

So what now, you may ask? Well after continuously looking through a bunch of reviews, I got to interpreting the sizes available and the size that I should buy in. Usually when the models pose in the clothes, they generally pose in the smallest size available, which is an M. However the size measurements for M for dresses in particular tends to be a bust size of 90cm, which I should be able to fit in with no troubles. However if you were to look at the pictures carefully, the clothes seem to fit just right on the models and I highly doubt that they are of a bust size of 90cm, rather that they are probably around 78cm at the most. I also tend to wear M size clothes locally, so I decided on buying everything in a L or LL, depending on the actual size measurements given.

I had decided to make 2 orders. One based on heavy items and one based on pre-order items along with some lighter items. The pre-order has not been made yet, so I will go over them in a separate blog post.

Heavy-based Item Order

Princess Back Tiered Coat (L, Pink) - 7,980 Yen or $82.39 CAD 

Low Wedge Ribbon Heels (24.0cm, Baby Pink) - 1,980 Yen or $20.41 CAD

Ribbon Rose Sandal Heels (L, White) - 2,980 Yen or $30.72 CAD

Bear Sweater Parka Dress (LL, Mint Green) - 1,980 Yen or $20.41 CAD

Interchangeable Bow Lolita Boots (LL, White) - 2,480 Yen or $25.56 CAD

Two Set Princess Leopard Bow Cardigan (LL, Baby Pink) - 1,980 or $20.41 CAD

Altogether I had paid 18,459 Yen for the base cost (around $192 CAD) + 6,300 Yen for shipping (around $65 CAD) for a total of 24,759 Yen ($257 CAD)!

As you can see, the shipping amount is nothing to be laughing at and is clearly not meant for the faint-of-heart. It really bumps up your overall amount with the more items you decide to buy. However given the unique clothes, I feel that the shipping amount is worth it, since for one thing you are getting the clothes directly overseas, and for another thing these clothes are cute and affordable in comparison with gyaru brands such as Liz Lisa and Ma*rs.

What I can suggest to slightly reduce the shipping costs is to only buy enough items that had just reached the threshold and not go over. For instance, if one of your items had made you go over the threshold by say 600 Yen, and the next threshold to increase the shipping costs by another 1,575 Yen was 12,000 Yen (so you had really had 12,600 Yen in your shopping cart), then delete the item that made you went over by 600 Yen or place it in a future order. After doing this, you would have only have to pay the shipping amount for up to 12,000 Yen, since your order is now less than that. By doing this, you would not have to fully pay for the additional 1,575 Yen off of the 600 Yen that was on the total amount. Hope this makes sense. ^^; Of course, another method would be to just buy cheap items or items that had gone on sale, but only do this if you are willing to take the risk of your item selling out within that time.    

Order Process

The order process overall went smoothly. Just like any standard checkout process that is out there, the one on Rakuten is not any different. First they had prompted me to register or sign in, followed by entering in my shipping information. Next, I was to enter in my credit card information. Now I am quite sure you are all aware that Yumetenbo does not accept Paypal payments, so this was understandable. After that was all done and over with, I was to confirm all of the information that I had entered, and after that they would notify me that my order has been confirmed. In addition, they had assigned me my order number and told me how many "Super Points" that I had gained from the transaction. Quite a simple process and it was all in English too. Here are some photos showing the order process.

Also as an important note, a couple of people had noticed that the personnel at Yumetenbo tends to format the address a bit "weirdly", and it is strongly recommended that you leave a note to tell them how exactly you want the address to be formatted. I decided to take this precaution, since it is always better to be safe than sorry. I believe the notes section had appeared in Step 3 and that there were two separate boxes. Thanks to Google Translate, I decided to put it in the second box, since the first box is for "coupons". 

  

Step 1

  

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4 part 1

Step 4 part 2

Step 5 and the last step

In terms of processing time, I had placed the order on April 17, 2013 and it wasn't fully processed and shipped out until April 19, 2013. That was really decent, given that I had not actually placed the order until the night of that day and that it was an international order. The items were processed smoothly and I had not encountered any problems in regards to the items selling out or anything similar. I was not billed until my order was shipped out. 

All email correspondence from the seller's end was done in all Japanese, so Google Translate is strongly recommended. I have to admit that even with Google Translate that the emails were a little difficult to understand, but just so as long as you understand how the email process for online orders go, you should be alright in that respect. A couple of days before my order was shipped out, they had sent me an email telling me of the expected ship out date and the full amount that I will be charged. On the expected shipping date, they sent me another email telling me that my order has been shipped, so their processing time to me is really fast and I love it.