How much will shipping cost?

How much will shipping cost?

We will confirm the final shipping costs for your order after we have shipped it to you. We understand completely that customers want to know how much shipping will cost before completing their order, and are working to develop a system to accurately reflect all the possibilities. In the meantime, however, it's very easy to estimate your costs beforehand from the information on our web site. Almost every item in our online catalog has a shipping cost estimate displayed at the top of its catalog page along with size and weight data.

The SAL rate shown is the estimated cost to ship the item via postal service "Surface Air Lift" small packet rates to the country shown. If the country that rates are displayed for is not your country, or you want to check rates for another country, click the "Not your country?" link in the product data box and select the country you wish to see rates for. Note that:

Some physically larger items and valuable orders (15,000 yen or more) may be shipped by EMS or FedEx even if you request SAL shipping, depending on where you live. While this costs you slightly more, the far better handling and trackability of EMS and FedEx, we believe, is justified when shipping very valuable items.
Taiwan, South Korea, Venezuela, Brunei, Jordan and some other nations don't offer SAL service. Shipments to these countries are by Air Mail, FedEx or EMS.
SAL shipping is unfortunately not trackable.

The EMS rate shown is the estimated cost to ship the item via postal service EMS International Express mail. Shipments by EMS can be tracked on the Japanese post office's web site.

The FedEx rate shown is the estimated cost to ship the item via Federal Express International Economy (or if not available to that country, International Priority) service. Shipments by FedEx can be tracked on FedEx's web site.

If you happen to live in Japan, we will ship your order using the domestic post office "Yu-Pack" parcel service, or by Yamato's "Takkyubin" service. Up to 2kg, the cost is 600 - 1,000 yen, with next-day delivery to almost all destinations in Japan.

Please keep in mind that the costs shown are the estimates to ship this item alone. If your shipment contains more than one item, the total cost for shipping will typically be 20-40% less than the sum of the individual items' shipping estimates. Also remember that shipping estimates include the weight of the shipping box and packing materials, so they're based on a weight higher than that of the item alone.

Box & packaging material weights: Even the smallest order, such as that for a sheet of decals, requires a 200g mailer. A typical order of 2-4 medium-sized items requires 400-600g of box and packing materials. For extremely large items, such as 1/32 aircraft kits, Perfect Grade Gundam kits, etc., the shipping box alone can weigh 800g to 1.5kg. Keep these weights in mind as you estimate your total shipping costs.

When will you ship my order?

Orders are automatically shipped from HobbyLink Japan when any one of the three conditions below applies:

All items on any of your individual orders are in stock
You request shipment of available items
You have an order that is over two months old and some items are available

An order is one or more items grouped together with a single unique order identification number.

Unless one of these conditions is met, the available items from your orders will stay in our warehouse. You can use our Account Maintenance System to track the status of your orders with us, and make a decision at any time about whether you want to request a partial shipment or not.

Feel free to e-mail us if you have any other questions, comments or concerns about shipping costs or procedures.

Updated March 15, 2010