Attending AKB48 handshakes: how-to (work in progress)

Ok, then it's conbini I guess. Hope this works at least...

 

My mastercard is refused too, while it worked nicely so far.
This is annoying.

 

Indeed. So much for "World Senbatsu"...

Well Lawson worked fine so I won't have to bother with this until next year

 

Anyone tried to send them a help request ?

 

I doubt they'd be able to give much support in a language other than Japanese. Give it a shot if your Japanese is passable.

For those in Japan, I highly recommend using a Line Pay card. It works for most online services and also links to most Japanese bank accounts so you can re-load with the push of a button. I use it for chara-ani and the ticket center without issues.

 

I've sent them a message (in proper Japanese) but haven't gotten a reply as of now

 

I also have a problem with my visa card. The huge problem is I live oversea.
And what's worse is I don't have any friends who live in Japan or know anyone who have Amex.
Could anybody help me? Or just give me an advice of what I should do now.
Is there an agent who accept deal to pay for customer at a convenience store in Japan? How can I contact them? I have been searching for a while and can't find one.
Please, please, please anyone help me.

 

Ask @Sakuraism .

 

+1 from me. I’ve been able to use my UK Amex card with the AKB48 Ticket Center, Fan Club and their new video service, also with Chara-Ani. However neither of my UK cards are accepted by any other Japaness online ticket service including e-plus, Rakuten, Yahoo and Lawson. Each time @Sakuraism has saved the day for me by making konbini payments on my behalf.

 

I've gotten a reply from chara-ani, they told me they currently don't accept foreign credit-cards (I think they mean in general, but we know there are exceptions)

 

@Chrissel The last payment I made to them was in December so this must be a new thing?

 

Do you need a VPN pipe to view the videos outside Japan?

 

Yes, I use Tunnel Bear.

 

From @ithebigc 's Twitter
https://twitter.com/ithebigc/status/993391436811812864

This suck !!!
If their sale dive, it will be well deserved !!

So what is the next step ?
forbid export on all CD versions ?

Exception = China (or the Asian market in general)

And what about other groups ?
Doomed for STU48 too since their HS / theater CDs are also bought through chara-ani

 

Let's see if FortuneMusic will follow their lead.

 

This is horrible. I'm about to get a lot of money and I've planned to have a vacation to Japan next December.

I can't apply handshake. I wanted to meet my oshimens.

P.S why December? I live in Indonesia & another reason why I wanna go to Japan is because I wanna see winter & snows.

 

It sucks but it's not like foreign Credit Cards being declined with Japanese net purchases is anything really new. It just wasn't THIS bad. In short, cards like AMEX and obviously JCB will still work (since they're joint). I guess another option is to use prepaid cards of some kind. There are also available services out there that could potentially help with Konbini payments like ones I offer as well. I feel like it's not so much they dont care about oversea revenues, but rather they know we will prolli just find alternatives around it as we have been doing already till this point.

That being said it's prolli easy for me or others who already use these cards to brush this off since it doesn't affect us.

 

I’d imagine they have changed payment processor to one that only works with Japanese cards.

 

Most likely explanation.

Some other points that are worth considering:
- high amount of bounced payments, due to credit card fraud among foreign cards
- some whacky anti-money-laundering / anti-terrorism law that has been phrased too wide

Basically somebody ran the numbers and saw that caring to 'tourist' fans doesn't justify the expenses and that the domestic market can compensate for it.
That seems to be inline with JPN48's current strategy. Concentrate on the domestic market and franchise the international market.

P.S.
For 1,5 years I have experienced problems at the GroupShop when using VISA/Mastercards. Usually in the form of
- not more than 2 unshipped orders
- combined value of unshipped orders not exceeding a certain number
- value of a single shippment not exceeding a certain number

Don't know the exact threshold, but if i can make a guess it should be somewhere aroun 100-150 USD
That might indicate that they've had some bad experience with overseas cards.

 

Definitely a damn shame but not surprising and this definitely isn't a new mindset. They keep going back and forth on whether they want foreigners to give them money or not. We're all pretty used to finding workarounds.