To be fair, it's not that bad if you live in Japan (by that I mean you have a Japanese credit card and phone number).
I've encountered all the things you said (for "don't accept cards" though, I haven't seen one since forever. Could you name one?), but it's in the minority.
I have like 90% success rate even when I was buying from the US using a US credit card. And I buy from Japan a lot. I don't blame them for not allowing oversea cards, either: credit card fraud is really rampant.
> for "don't accept cards" though, I haven't seen one since forever. Could you name one?
I don't really remember, but basically I just went on Kakaku, searched for the 4090, and just went through the list trying to order an 4090 going through each shop and moving on to the next when it proved impossible to actually make an order.
A nice hack for some of the shops from which it's normally impossible to buy from but which support Amazon Pay is to just use Amazon Pay; if you pay through that none of the usual card-related bullshit applies (suddenly you can use a card that was issued overseas, the name doesn't have to match exactly, etc.).
I've encountered all the things you said (for "don't accept cards" though, I haven't seen one since forever. Could you name one?), but it's in the minority.
I have like 90% success rate even when I was buying from the US using a US credit card. And I buy from Japan a lot. I don't blame them for not allowing oversea cards, either: credit card fraud is really rampant.