I decided to write a review about Celga and about Crescent Shopping after using both recently.



-Celga-

For Yahoo! Japan: Bidding on an auction with Celga on either Mbok or Yahoo! Japan isn't the easiest task. You have to email the staff, wait for a reply, make a deposit and then wait. The real problem with this is you really can't bid on an item ending really soon as it will end before your email is seen (at least often-times that is the case).
Contacting the staff is easy and the process is fairly straightforward, but only being able to bid on auctions with lots of time left and not having a lot of control over bidding kind of sucks. They usually wait until the last few hours to bid which can be a little nerve wracking. One other thing is that when you request to bid on an auction you really, REALLY have to give your absolute maximum bidding amount. If a bidding war ensues and you quoted your max low, you just might lose.

Online Stores: This process is much easier than bidding on auctions. You simply fill out a form with the necessary information (store, size, color, etc) and submit. The downside is that this also takes time to be received, so if something is going to sell out really quickly you'll probably be out of luck. They also take orders for reserves which some services won't do.

Fees: Depending on what you are getting, the fees can be fairly steep. Fees depend on how much your item costs, how much it costs to ship, etc. For certain items I found Celga affordable, for others they were far too expensive.

Payment: The instructions for payment were really confusing to me, I wish they were written out in a more concise manner. I ended up paying for everything BEFORE they billed me and since an item sold out before it was obtained, I ended up with a credit to my account. After they got my items, fees and shipping totalled out I requested a refund of the credit and got it right away (with NO paypal fees attached).

Shipping: Shipping is a somewhat annoying process. You have to wait at least a week (I recommend 10 days though) and then inquire about your item(s). If they have arrived you can ask them to be shipped and once you've paid for shipping they are sent.
The package I received from Celga was well packed and arrived safely. They had marked the items down a lot on the customs declaration (which I didn't ask for) which thankfully didn't cause any problems. If you foresee problems with this, make sure you are clear that you do not want them to mark the value down when you request shipping.

Customer Service: At first I had trouble with receiving emails from the staff, my email was blocking them. So I switched emails and got their replies just fine. Answers came quickly and were helpful.

Overall: I received my stuff quickly and was happy with my purchases. I was a little frustrated with the blocked emails, the item I wanted selling out and having to do so much correspondance but it all worked out alright. If I were to use a shopping service again however, I would probably not use Celga again.


-Crescent-

For Yahoo! Japan: Bidding on Y!J is incredibly easy. They have a real-time bidding script that allows you to bid as much as you want, when you want. You have to put in a deposit which is driven by a multiplying system. Depending on how much you deposit, you can bid up to a certain amount (on multiple items if you wish).
You cannot bid on mbok or any other auction site right now, although it sounds as though they may be working on it.

Online Stores: Online stores isn't quite as easy. You have to go to the shopping BBS (which is your own private BBS on your account) and ask about an item. Generally you should put in the URL and maybe some pictures. If you ask any questions they will be answered and then you confirm the purchase and it will be added to your shopping list. From the shopping list you pay the estimate for the item and it will be ordered.

Fees: The fees here are also dependant on how much the item costs. I've found crescent to have competative prices, although depending on the price another service may be cheaper. It's best to compare with other services unless you don't really care about the fees.

Payment: Payment is quite easy, although it can be easy to overlook at first. When you win an auction, you need to go to your auction list, click the item and then click pay. Don't worry too much if you don't do this immediately after the auction ends, you put in a deposit for a reason! For auctions you have to pay the full amount, but you can request your deposit back in full which will be refunded to you very quickly.
For online shops, once your item appears in the shopping list, click on it and then click pay.

Shipping: Items that you ordered (from auctions and shops) appear on the list and you can decide which ones to ship together. You can ship things together if they were bought within 2 months of each other or you can ship things separately. Even if the items have yet to arrive, you can still ask for the items to be shipped. As soon as they arrive, it will tell you (on the pending shipment page). When the items are shipped out you are emailed with the information, including the tracking number. It defaults to EMS shipping, but you can choose other methods if you wish.

Customer Service: Since so much is automated, I didn't really have any need to correspond with anyone. The only correspondance I needed to do (so far anyway) was to inquire about an online shop order and confirm. This all happened quickly and was easy. When I inquired about the item, I received a response almost immediately and my order was placed the same day. When I requested a refund of my deposit, I received it very quickly.

Overall: Overall crescent was really easy to use and really wonderful. I really love their live bidding script, it makes it so much easier to bid on auctions. When I use a shopping service again, it will probably be crescent.

If you have any questions feel free to ask :3