The "Big Three"
AmiAmi (amiami.com) - By far, this is the site I use the most. They usually have the lowest price for any given figure. They are occasionally beat out by HLJ or Hobby Search, but it is rare. Their shipping tends to be a bit higher, but they are still worth it. You can save on shipping a little by using their "Combine Orders by Month" feature. When pre-ordering, you can apply this feature to a figure. Each month, all figures you pre-ordered in this fashion will ship together, which is usually cheaper than shipping them all separate. It also requires very little work on the customer's end. You simply pre-order whatever figures you want, and once a month, they'll send you a shipping payment request, and, once paid, a shipment of everything that released that month. The biggest problem with AmiAmi is that there are no order cancellations allowed. I have heard rumors that you can beg for one and they will allow it, but too many times and you will be blacklisted from their site. Could be true, could be internet gossip. They are also, in my experience, one of the quickest to sell out of popular figures. Their mobile site is great, very easy to use. They accept PayPal, credit cards and, apparently, cash-on-delivery.
Hobby Link Japan (hlj.com) - My second favorite site. Good prices, and have great clearance sales throughout the year. Much of the staff is English speaking, so customer service is easier to deal with for non-Japanese speakers and their item descriptions are much easier to read. They do seem to be writing less detailed descriptions these days, however. Their method for making shipping easier and cheaper is their "Private Warehouse". When you are completing an order, you can select (on a per-item basis) if you want it shipped immediately upon release, or placed in your Private Warehouse. If you choose Private Warehouse, the figure will not be shipped to you until you login and choose to have it sent, or 60 days have passed since it was released, whichever comes first. When choosing to have it shipped, you may combine all released items in your Private Warehouse into one shipment. It requires a bit more active care than AmiAmi's "Monthly Combine" feature, but allows you to combine 60 days worth of figures, rather than one calendar month, which ends up being much more useful. They send email reminders when an item is about to be automatically shipped. They accept PayPal, credit card, or (and this is what I use) PayPal Billing Agreements. With this agreement, you connect HLJ to your PayPal account, and when a pre-order of yours comes in, they automatically deduct the total from your PayPal, ensuring you receive your figure as-soon-as-possible.
Hobby Search (1999.co.jp/eng/) - This store is very good, but I rarely use it, unless the above two are out of stock, or Hobby Search has several items releasing around the same time for cheaper. They can combine orders by month, the same as AmiAmi, but, unlike AmiAmi, cannot also include in-stock items. They have a useful, but confusing, "Order Recombination" feature, that lets you move around pre-orders into different order numbers, but despite that, they will still only combine orders by calendar month. Hobby Search uses a loyalty points system. One point is equal to one yen, and you earn 3% of a figure's cost as points. So a 1000 yen figure gives 30 points, which you can apply to future orders to reduce the total by 30 yen. They also have a great mobile site. They accept PayPal, credit cards and Paypal Billing Agreement.
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