Jauce - How does it work?

I'm looking to use Jauce for my first time over the weekend, but I'm not entirely sure how anything really works. Is it pretty much the same exact as eBay? Is there a time limit for when I can pay after winning a bid?
Two of my biggest questions are if I can use PayPal, and something more complex:
I've heard that Jauce isn't worth it unless you buy a lot of items. Does that mean individual listings of large lots, or many smaller listings at once? Or does it not matter in the long run? I hope one of the latter options, since I found one thing in particular I really want for a super cheap initial price.

[Ucwepn]

I haven't used it personally but my understanding of how it works goes like this: Japanese Auction sites do not sell to foreigners outside of Japan, so in order for people overseas to buy items in Japanese Auctions there are middleman services such as Jauce. You pay for postage and the cost of the item and the item gets sent to the middleman who repacks the item/s and sends them to you. You have to pay for this service each time so that's why people say it's better to get a bigger order to save on middleman costs of multiple transactions. So you essentially have to pay for postage twice and the middleman for his time etc. Seemingly cheap items can get expensive fast with all the extra cost.

[ripley802]

Yeah, be sure to read the FAQs and shipping/payment info. If you purchased say an item for 500¥ it could easily be 2000-3000¥ once final shipping and fees are in. It is defiantly a good idea to get a few items and a lot of us do, the problem is knowing when to stop.. haha.. this is where the Super termed "Might as well" syndrome comes in. You get a few items and then see something cheap and figure, might as well, and before you know it you have 10 items and a $300 shipping bill.. (I know nothing about this..)

Jauce does take PayPal. I have switched to siring FromJapan as their fees are a bit cheaper but I still use Jauce to search for items get the item number and then copy to FromJapan. I like the way Jauce has their payment structure though as with FromJapan it can make the final payment staggering where with jauce it is more split up.

[Super]

You get a few items and then see something cheap and figure, might as well, and before you know it you have 10 items and a $300 shipping bill.. (I know nothing about this..)

Holy Baby Bottoms, I have never come near that. The most I paid was actually a mistake by Japamart. Shipping came to about $250 EMS which I wondered why at first but because it was the largest purchase I had from Japan to date I thought I would wait until I received it to weight it out and calculate if there was a mistake. Well, as it turned out Japamart sent me an item that was for someone else and that item was the complete, in box, large Time Station Set (ask AC about the shipping on those huge things) They reimbursed me about $96 for my overcharge on shipping and sent me another $96 to ship it back. So my shipping is normally between $30 and $150 for EMS. We will see if I exceed this on my latest shipment sometime next week.

[ripley802]

Yeah that was the Charge 2 total using FromJapan, so that included the local and international shipping as well as the fees. But yeah this was my largest shipment too. I should measure the box as it was massive.

Okay, I sorta get everything now. But would every item on Jauce also be available on Fromjapan? is the item number just in the URL?
Should I get multiple small items in one order, or multiple huge lots in one order?

[ripley802]

Okay, I sorta get everything now. But would every item on Jauce also be available on Fromjapan? is the item number just in the URL?
Should I get multiple small items in one order, or multiple huge lots in one order?

The items should be on both sites because they are just offering a proxy service to purchase the items. The items themselves (for auctions anyway) are central to the Yahoo Japan auctions so the item number is the same. I usually just grab it from jauce and search/watch the item in FromJapan.

It is sort of a catch 22 regarding multiple small items or a few large lots. If you go small your fees will be more as you pay for each auction won a 700¥ fee using FromJapan, but shipping may be less since the items are smaller and weigh less. On the other side, if you go big you may only have two or three auctions so cheaper fees but shipping may be crazy expensive.