This is a thread meant to give your opinion about the sites you've bought Pinkys from.  There are a lot of sites and sellers that sell Pinkys but not all of them give you value for your money or offer good customerservice.

I'm sure you've all had good and/or bad experiences whilst buying Pinkys, so let's share them. I'll start so that you have an idea of what I mean.

Site : Anytoys.co.uk

Pro's :
They are extremely helpfull in case you have any questions. If you email them, they'll reply very fast (often within 3-4 hours of sending your email).
You'll be able to track your order's status and development. Anytoys will email you everytime there's a new development in your order e.g order confirmed, payment arrived, order dispatched, etc.  

Cons :
Their shipping fees for international orders can be expensive. The beginningrate for Belgium was £ 7. I can't say how much it'll be for your country 'cause it's calculated individually for each country and order. With each item, the shippingfee will go up slightly. The reason it's so high is the insurance. It's up to you whether you think it's worth it. (IMO, it is)

Payment methods they accept : Visa, Paypal, banktranssfers, Nochex, Cheque, etc.
How long does it take them to ship your Pinkys : 2-3 days (from the UK to Belgium)
Any other comments : I think this is a great site to order Pinkys from. They offer great customerservice and they deliver the goods really fast and in tiptop condition.
Also, if you pay by banktransfers, in my case, it'll take about 6 days for the money to arrive.

great idea ^-^

Good job Eiko! I made it a sticky so it'll be easy to find  

Site : Otaku.co.uk

Pro's :
They offer certain special Pinkys without the books e.g Go!Go!, Pinky in Town, etc. So if you're just interested in getting more Pinkys, it's a pretty good site. You can also just buy the books without the Pinkys.
Their shippingfees are really low. I only paid £ 2.

Cons :
They're not very helpful if you have any questions or problems. Whenever I emailed them, it would take 1-2 days before I'd finally get a reply. Even when I placed an order, it took 1 day for them to send me a 'Order Confirmed' email.
In fact, I had some trouble trying to pay them with banktransfers (see this thread for more details) which really didn't make me a happy customer.

There's also no way you can track the status of your order. They'll only email you when you placed an order and when payment is received.

Payment methods they accept : Visa, Paypal, banktransfers, Nochex, Cheque, etc.
How long does it take them to ship your Pinkys : 2-3 days (from the UK to Belgium)
Any other comments : I'm still undecided.
On the one hand, it offers some great deals and has low shippingrates. On the other hand, I find their customerservice extremely lacking so I'm not sure if I'll order from them in future.

anybody got anything to say about hlj?

I've bought from them before...

Site:hlj.com

Pros: They offer preorder on new pinkys, and the prices are fair. I like that you can view your orders online, change the quantity, cancel or add more items - very flexible.  You can wait for all your items to be in stock before getting them shipped, saving you money on the shipping costs.  I received a response to my question from their customer support the next day.

Cons: The selection of Pinkys can be small. They don't carry any of the earlier releases, so if you are looking for Pinkys 1-9, look elsewhere. If one item is especially hot and it sells out before you order your items to be shipped, you might be out of luck, as they don't reserve the stock for you. Happened to me when I ordered #9, it became sold out before all of my order was ready and I had to buy it elsewhere. Curiously enough, today I was notified that they have #9 in stock and ready to ship. You can't track your order online, but they do notify you when the goods have been shipped.

Payments they accept: Paypal, credit cards , money order, certified cashiers cheque.

How long it takes to ship: Once shipped, the items always arrive in under 10 days, here, in the UK, I always receive them in 7 days time.

Overall: I like HLJ and will continue buying from them. The seem to get the new releases quickly and I'm very impatient, so it works out well. As long as you're aware of the few quirks they have, it's a pleasant experience ordering from them.

This thread's a brilliant idea  :pwow:
*is surely gonna add a not-listed shop when she orders there*

Site : Akibaotaku.com

Pros :
Contrary to what it looks like, they acutally ship internationally. I had a reply to my question within a couple of hours and they shipped the very next day. You get a shipping number and can view the status of your account online. They were also the only place to be selling 3A, not anymore tho, looks like I got the last one :pdrop:

Cons :
Their shipping fees for international orders can be expensive, they gave me two choices, $28 for USPS and $60 for UPS, both taking about a week to arrive. Their system has not been set up to take orders internationally, so you have to email them with your shipping address after you've placed an order online. Also, right now, they have PK 1-3 and 7-9 in stock only. They don't seem to have the new releases (PK 10, 11, 12) and they are sold out of the special releases (go go pinky street)

Payment methods they accept : credit cards, not sure of the other methods, if any.
How long does it take them to ship your Pinkys : 7 days (from the US to UK)
Any other comments : The customer service is efficient, and it shouldn't cost much to ship within US, although shipping internationally is a bit much in my opinion (but maybe mine cost more because I had ordered a book, which is heavier than pinkys?) Also, could inquire about shipping costs before you order. Overall, I think this is a good site to order the early Pinkys from. You also get your order in a nice plastic carrying bag...  

Site : PlaJapan.com

Pros :
Quite decent Pinky prices - you also get a discount on buying "sets" (about 0,50-0,70$) of which you can chose any combination of two Pinkys.
They also have an amazing customer support - my emails were always answered within max. 24 hours. They are pretty customer friendly.
They do international shipping and accept PayPal (huuuuge pro for me).
Uninsured shipping cost me about 10$ for all the 4 sets, so that is pretty cheap.
PlaJapan has PK001-003, 4A-6A and PK007-012. They also have a preorder for SuperLovers.
You can track your order status online and are informed about a change via email.
They also seem to make exceptions! ("If it's available in Japan, we can stock it")

Cons :
It was a bit complicated to find out how to insure my international order. They had an insurance option (+2$) when I first filled out my form, then took that option out though, since they said they always had made deficit with that option on international order (insured shipping with that was about 20$, if I remember correctly).
Obviously because of the delay of PlaJapan getting the Pinkys in stock again, the shipping took 16 days.
Although you are informed about a status change of your order, there was no possibilty to track the package after it was sent (probably due to the non-insurance option).
They don't have the box Pinkys and are sold out (not listed anymore) of Pinky:cos EVA and #005. There don't seem to be any other special Pinkys either. It seems as if you can ask them for an indiviual order, though, as long as they are still available in Japan.

Payment methods they accept : Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, eChecks and PayPal.
Preferred for US orders, they also accept money orders and cheques.

How long does it take them to ship your Pinkys : It did take 16 days (US to Germany) - they announced that there was a delay in their Pinky supply, though.
Any other comments : I did a mistake when I transferred money from my bank account to my PayPal account - I missed about 50 Cent in my calculation ^^;
So I cancelled my order process when it was almost finished, in order to first get the remaining 50 Cent onto my PayPal account. The customer service contacted me what happpened, and I explained them the problem. They advised me to hurry since there was another customer who was about to buy all the #005 and Pinky:cos Pinkys. The money order took too long - by the time I was able to complete my order, they were sold out already. PlaJapan made an exception for me though, they got both sets for me to buy anyway. That was pretty nice, IMHO, since they would not have necessarely needed to do that ;)

Overall, I would say it is a really good site to order your Pinkys - they are very helpful even when there are any problems and answer to any question via email very fast.
And they make exceptions ;)

So sorry that it turned out to be such a large report
Did not want to forget anything ^^;

Site : AnimeTen.com

Pros :
Owner is very willing to keep his eyes out for Pinky 'special orders' in Japan, and has begun posting event and limited edition Pinky releases as preorders on his mailing list and lj blog.
Owner is scrupulously honest.
They accept money orders, credit cards, or PayPal.
They ship at basic priority mail cost and are in the US so it arrives fast, and the Pinkies are not as expensive as some other US sites I've seen.
They typically ship within a day of your order.

Cons :
Nothing I'm really aware of.  I have shopped from this vendor for years and never a problem or any problems I've heard from his other customers.  
If you note the cons listed under plajapan, they have a note that not all Pinkies are stocked, the same is true at AnimeTen although they seem to be trying to expand in this area, and I haven't found any shop that does, really so I wouldn't put this under a huge 'cons' header for either AnimeTen or PlaJapan.

BIN'd on 12/2. Received 12/6. From NY to MI. A little overpriced shipping but only by $1.70. I'm not complaining. For reference: one pink box fits well in a video sized priority box stuffed with newspaper. packed well and safe. :D

Yay! Yay! Yay! Yippeeeeeeee!

I ordered form freebento.com via eBay (userid = freebento) and the transaction was smooth saling. I'd a probably had them sooner if it weren't for the Christmas rush. I paid on a weekend and they were shipped Priority on Monday, but the USPS didn't get them to me until Saturday.  Very happy customer.

Anybody know anything about hobbybuy?  I just ordered from them

Got 2 pinky's on ebay from Battlerhino (they have a website too).  Fairly Quick Shipping and CHEAP. I paid 16.93 including shipping for 4a and 6a. The boxes aren't perfect, there are some creases in the cardboard, in case you're concerned with box condition (I'm not) (I got them a couple days ago, but didn't get around to posting till today.

I noticed that no one had answered your question yet, so I thought I'd go ahead.  So far, HobbyBuy is the only place online that I've bought my Pinkys (I bought two of mine in a little hobby shop in Shinjuku, Tokyo when my husband and I went to Japan for vacation in July).  They've been good so far, and I still have an outstanding preorder with them.  The prices seem to agree with what other US suppliers are charging, and they ship fairly quickly.  Their customer service is quick and friendly, and they fix their mistakes promptly (I was overcharged on my last order, and they credited my card immediately after I contacted them about it).  My Pinkys have all come very well-packaged.  Overall, I'm happy with their service.