BalroG,
I do have a tracking number from him now - along with an excuse that Japan had a bad routing day or something that screwed up all sorts of e-mail. Haven\'t looked for independent news on that.
There was a newspaper article today about how doctors who communicate well get the most respect back from their patients - independently of whether they\'re actually very good doctors in terms of diagnosis and so on. And doctors who are technically good but communicate badly tend to have patients taking them to court.
Likewise here, taking a half-minute to send a brief e-mail whenever there\'s a reason to explain where the process is can do a lot to keep the world happy with you. In this case it looks like more than half K\'s customers check in here. I\'m sure other\'s are nearly as tired of this saga as we are ... but those scanning the whole board will see ranked options like (for a US buyer):
1. Buy from that shop with the fluxuating price by credit card, and do the conversion yourself. (around $685 shipped)
2. Buy from K for a bit more and get a partially converted unit plus screen shield, but with uncertain delivery date. (around $712 shipped)
3. Buy from Japan-Direct.com for a bit more than that and get some sort of translated manual. (around $752 shipped)
4. Pay a lot to Dynamism.com for a converted unit delivered domestically. (around $850 plus shipping)
5. Plan a trip to Japan. (priceless)
Shirtpocket.co.uk should be in there for non-US (so I can\'t remember where they rank by price and features). Anyhow, if K can refurbish his rep he should be a solid player. And there don\'t seem to be so many here who\'ve tried Japan-Direct to establish its rep. The conversion and screen guard are worth the diff between the shop and K, except the shop takes plastic ... and we\'ve learned we would have felt a lot better through this if we\'d been in that position. Sigh. I still like to see the smallest retailer win, else being balanced.
