“I still have not received my december box.
And the supposed box is pending shipping since mid december. We are now living in almost end of January. If you cancel your subscription, they will not even give you back your money back. Even if you have not received the boxes/service. This feels like a scam to me. DO NOT BUY”
“Wanted to like this service but it just seems like they are more interested in making money rather than providing a quality product. Below are the main reasons we would NOT recommend this service to others.
1. They are not up front about how their subscription service works. On their pricing page, they have 12, 6 , 3, and 1 month subscriptions; all at different price levels. If you wanted a 12 month subscription, the price per box would be less than a 6 month, etc. We wanted to order 1 box for our daughter to try even though the price per box for a 1 month was a little higher. To us, selecting the 1 month meant that after 1 month, the subscription is finished unless we chose to renew. If we wanted multiple boxes, we would have selected one of the other subscriptions where the price per box was less. Clearly in this case, we only wanted 1. When the second month rolled around, we got charged and they sent us a box we did not want, without even emailing us or notifying us that our subscription was ending. We opened a dispute with the credit card company but in order to get a our money back, we needed to provide the bank the cancellation email and confirmation that they received the returned item. All of this makes sense. The issue we have, with the subscription is that now we have to go through all this non-sense for something that should not have happened in the first place because of the underhandedness of how this company implements their subscription service. What a scam! This is the same sentiment and experience from numerous user on the Reddit forums.
2. This is one of the worst value propositions for a product I have seen. What they are trying to sell you is an "experience authentic Japan" in a box. What you get are a bunch of cheaply packaged, mass produceable crackers, and a trinket from Japan. If you are truly looking for authenticate Japan, make it your goal to go to Japan and experience it first hand. You won't find it in these boxes. We were totally deflated when we saw what came in the box. Not worth it for us. I can think of lots of better ways to spend $50 per month (includes the shipping cost you will pay).
For these reasons, we DO NOT recommend this service. Very disappointed.”
“cannot leave a lesser review. cancelled subscription. they are not filling it, but charged card and will not refund money.
when asked by paypal, they sent a shipping code for an old box (3 months prior) to try and prove they were shipping. have not received box for 4 months because subscription was cancelled but they charged ajyway”
“I placed my order on 12/13. My packaged was marked delivered on 1/3 and after 72 hours of not seeing my package actually delivered, I contacted Sakuraco. I even spoke directly to a mailman to help me check for all the packages and he couldn't find anything from Sakuraco. Almost a week later, Sakuraco still refuses to refund me.”
“I made sure that I put in my order before the cut off for the box I wanted. It didn’t ship out for nearly 2 weeks, and when I did finally receive it, it was a different box than I had ordered. Which was incredibly disappointing. I will never be ordering from them again. There was no communication, no delivery date, and when I did get the box, it looks like somebody had kicked it around for a week. Highly disappointed after all of the reviews had heard.”
“Beware of this company! Not only is the box quality not worth the price, but they will not refund your money. They automatically renew your account, without notice, and leave you stuck with product you don't want. So be very careful with your subscription! Very disappointed in this company!”
“I paid for three (3) 12-months gift subscriptions (Sakuraco, YumeTwins & nomakenolife) which are to be shipped to Vietnam. The order number are: T48876170, T48876197 & T48876179. At USD 500 plus each these are obviously very expensive subscriptions.
It is February 2023 and our January 2023 box has yet to arrive. The shipping company DHL is requiring a lot of information that we don’t have as they mentioned it is needed by Vietnam custom. The information they require for the 3 boxes include: number of items, brand, size, weight & ways of packing for every single item in the boxes. Obviously we do not have such information. Not to mention, as the contents of the boxes are meant to be gifts, if the recipient have to do this every time for the next 12 months it sorts of defeat the purpose.
When we used Bokksu (also shipping from Japan to Vietnam) their shipment simply arrived without any questions or inquiries from custom.
I reached out to customer support and got an answer that they will look into it. That was on Jan 17, 2023. Until now (Feb 1, 2023) there has been no update, no solution. I am not happy at all after having paid that a massive amount of money and having zero customer support whatsoever.
I'm requesting for a refund and instead go with Bokksu instead in the future. I have neither the time nor the willingness to be filling up millions of custom forms every month just to receive some silly snacks.”
“Boxes typically took 20+ to arrive after shipping meaning the snacks were stale and broken.
On top of that, Sakuraco does not offer customers renewal reminders whether you have a month, 3-month, 6-month or annual subscription. They are also completely non-refundable, zero exceptions.
After having an annual subscription I missed my cancellation date by a few hours, but Sakuraco renewed my annual subscription and refuses to cancel or refund me. I now owe $540 for snack boxes I do not want.
How hard would it be for Sakuraco to send a reminder a week or two before an annual plan renewed? Most companies do because they understand it's a way to show customers they care and aren't trying to scam you into another subscription you do not want and they refuse to renew.
TL:DR - Does anyone know where I can sell Sakuraco boxes to make back some of my money? Anyone want an annual subscription for a reduced price????”
“They will give you the option to change your shipping address up until the box ships. Unfortunately, they don't send the box to the new address, so I never actually received my box. They don't offer refunds or replacements in any way, saying there was nothing they could do based on the delivery confirmation to the wrong address.Their shipping also takes about a week longer than anything on the website says and the tracking was very confusing. They also make it very convoluted to unsubscribe. Would not recommend based on them taking my money and not sending anything to me.”
“Repetitive items. You will get similar items each month but a different flavour. Automatic renewals that they refuse to refund. I had no idea it automatically renews for another 6 months. They do not send any emails or communicate that it is a recurring subscription. I was under the impression it was a one-time subscription. I contacted customer support and they were useless.
I've lived in Japan and the box is way overpriced for the items you get. It's cheaper to buy it from a different website or a local Asian grocery store.”
“The subscription is automatic renewal but you will not be informed of this at the time of subscribing. I was charged $540 without prior notice, which is a significant amount of money just for snacks. I have requested a cancellation and refund of my subscription as soon as I was infomred about the charges but they refused and is still refusing to refund my subscription. There is no way to contact them but to open a ticket. I find this unfair and deceitful. They are hiding negative comment on their social media so that no one will find out about their decpetion. I would never recommend this to anyone. Avoid subscribing if you do not want to be charged against your will”
“So my mom ia in the hospital, I'm looking for work. I completely forgot to remove auto renewal because of this. I contact them and inform them amd even offer to pay for one month. They flat out tell me nothing can be done. No changes, nothing. I can't afford the 6 month plan and they care little. Mia, replied to my first message, since than I have been ignored. I will be asking my credit card company to dispute the charge and requesting a refund through PayPal. They simply do not care and thus this makes them a horrible company to do business with with that type of customer service.”
“Sakuraco did not in any way make clear that when you purchase 3 months they mean 3 months at a time -- there was no notification at all via email or otherwise that they would charge me again, yet they went ahead and billed me for $140+ for an additional 3 months that I did not want. After I immediately reached out to request a cancellation and refund they told me no, and also warned me that if I take it up with my bank they will hold the boxes I already paid for.
Do not buy from them -- this is false advertising and a total scam to me.”
“Poor customer service. We didn't authorize any renewal and yet we were charged unexpectedly. The system is borderline a scam offering no apparent cancellation under Account Setting or any visible sign to customer that the account is either active or renewal is due! Contacted customer service and even they couldn't explain clearly where to cancel until a bit of trail and error on my part! so POOR!!!”
“This will be my last box. You had two items with peanuts in them without listing it as an ingredient OR an allergen when in past boxes you did have peanuts listed. My daughter could have died. Completely irresponsible.”
“Very slow the last 3 times I’ve been. Called in food was told it would be ready in 15 minutes. Had to wait an additional 45 at the restaurant and still didn’t get food. Multiple people got up and left while I was waiting.”
“I wanted to share for you all my experience here. I looked at this and other reviews and agonized over the very high price point before purchasing a box. Especially with the converted Canadian price and shipping cost, this is VERY expensive for a small box of snacks ($50)) I eventually decided to try one and while it is quite a delightful unique offering, they lack severely in customer service and they are a bit dishonest and sneaky. It is very easy to accidentally sign up for a second subscription (when you think you are just extending your first one) and end up with two of the same very expensive box. And if you buy one month, it automatically renews you for a second one even if you start a 3 month subscription (like I did). For me this also didn’t look obvious on their hard to find/navigate portal.
It's very difficult, contrary to what the FAQ says to find and be in the right circumstances to skip a box. And when you try to work with them on the fact that you have two of the exact same very expensive treat being packed to be sent to you they simply don’t care and will not work to rectify the situation at all.
To me that's very dishonest and misleading and they seem to do it purposefully. I feel ripped off, and when I planned in my bidget and splurged, I was planning to pick 4 different boxed I thought looked most interesting, instead I have two of the same box and the September box shipped before I had a change to see what was in it and select it. And they basically said oh well too bad.
For this reason, as soon as my 3 box commitments are met I will not be renewing this service.
If you have lots of spare cash and aren't picky about maximizing your spend, skipping months etc. then the treats are mostly excellent and unique. But if you think you may need any complexity or this is a big financial decision, then I would not recommend this.”
“This is a misrepresentation of quality Japanese sweets and is at best a basket of cheap Japanese dagashi (snacks we get at convenience stores). I wouldn’t recommend this as a gift item for anyone. Definitely not for corporate gifts.”
