A serious lack of honesty, transparency and integrity pertaining to purchase and service failures.
**UPDATED** I put an order in for 64 doujinshi through ZenMarket (having bought 100+ from them before) from a specific Mandarake store. Usual process: Confirmation received, payment, all items marked as 'bought', waited for things to arrive at warehouse. 3-4 weeks pass, ETA has long since passed. Suddenly, 26 doujinshi are cancelled and marked as 'out of stock'. What's going on? Worried, I check my remaining orders - all with a warehouse ETA of 06/05 - using the weblinks to Mandarake and see that nearly all, bar around 7, of my remaining 38 doujinshi are still listed as being in stock (the same ones, not new ones). It doesn't look like ZM actually bought any of them in the first place. The explanation I received for this situation was: "Please note that this store performs stock confirmation only after the purchase has been completed." + "To clarify our process, the status of an order is updated to 'Bought' once our department has placed and paid for the purchase with the seller." Yes, I know. That's why, when they were all paid for and marked as 'bought' on my page, it should have meant that stock had been confirmed and they had been bought. Why were my items marked as 'bought' if they had, in fact, not been confirmed and bought, for nearly a month? Everything was in stock at the time of my order and after confirmation. I have screenshots. Things I've 'bought' shouldn't be getting sold on by the store if they've confirmed stock and taken payment. Are ZM telling me that they placed and paid for my order with the Mandarake store, who then just... ignored them for a month and sold everything anyway? Something wasn't right and didn't add up. Eventually, ZM admitted that because some of the doujinshi went out of stock, the Mandarake store contacted them to confirm the remainder of the order... to which ZM just didn't respond, 𝙨𝙤 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙤𝙧𝙙𝙚𝙧 𝙬𝙖𝙨 𝙘𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙙 (this would explain what happened to the first 26 as well as the remaining 38) 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙕𝙈 𝙙𝙞𝙙𝙣'𝙩 𝙗𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙩𝙤 𝙩𝙚𝙡𝙡 𝙢𝙚. I've since been asked to reconfirm if I want to purchase any of the remaining doujinshi still in stock from the store as a reorder. Repeatedly. I kid you not, the number of times I was asked to (re)confirm that I wanted to reorder things, leading to more time-wasting and delays, when I'd already said yes, became ridiculous. By that point, it honestly felt like they were being obtuse on purpose. DMing ZM is like talking to a brick wall: you have to chase them for updates and replies; explanations are patronising and treat the customer like a complete idiot; they don't actively keep track of your orders so the onus is on the buyer; and your custom, loyalty and money spent clearly mean very little to them. I've spent tens of thousands with them but that hasn't made a bit of difference in terms of their willingness to be honest with me or show some integrity. If there's ever a problem, certainly one this big, they'll pretend it's not their fault. They are still a company being paid extremely well to provide a service - if they fail to provide that service then customers have a right to straight answers. If ZM do not wish to see bad reviews on sites such as this then they ought to consider staying on top of their orders, listening to their customers' feedback, being more transparent when they've screwed up, and not fobbing people off with inapplicable excuses. That I was only told the truth due to persistence has damaged my confidence and trust in them far more than the loss of my purchases (still frustrating and upsetting) and led me here. Between this incident, the fact that more and more of my parcels are arriving with entirely inadequate amounts of packing material (I've raised this but they did not address it, only asking if items had been damaged which did not indicate any intent to provide adequate packing in future) and delays in making purchases has regularly lead to losing out on items, I would recommend that new buyers take the time to shop around. One-off purchases are one thing but the more you buy, the more likely you are to encounter issues such as mine. A quick look around Trustpilot shows other, equivalent proxy services with far better ratings and reputations. Once all of my outstanding orders are fulfilled, I will be taking my business to one of them instead. What other people choose to take away from my review is entirely up to them. It should at least in part be that big companies do not care about their customers, they care about making money. They only change if they lose enough business. Potential customers should be aware of what could happen and how they'll be treated. Buyer beware. N.B. I would treat some of their positive reviews with caution as many are so short, formulaic and scripted to the point that it makes me wonder if ZM staff are in here boosting their rating.