Miata Mailing List: January 1998, Message #0
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From: 	Al Roethlisberger <aroethli@cisco.com>

Subject: Re: K.G. Works... HOW DO I ORDER?

Date: 	Thu, 1 Jan 1998 00:04:55 +0000



At 02:13 PM 1/1/98 +1100, you wrote:

>At 7:54 PM +0000 31/12/97, Al Roethlisberger rumored to wrote this:

>>I have been sending them email since last summer on this very subject =(

>>

>>Eventually I received some cryptic psuedo-english response(no offense

>>intended to our Japanese friends =) )  But, anyway, the poor fellow trying

>>to respond basically said at first that there would eventually be an

>>English online order form.  But later exchanges told me that I could send

>>an order for whatever part I wanted and just use current Yen/Dollar

>>exchange rates for determining payment.

>

>The cryptic response was because he's using different character set from

>ASCII.  Remember English is not the only language in the world. <g>  If you

>have the e-mailer that can handle both 8bit and 7 bit with 2-byte character

>set you will find that cryptic message is in fact in Japanese.

>

>That poor fellow is - probably IMHO - Kiatgawa san, the head of K.G.Works.

>Remember English is not second but probably fifth or sixth language to

>Japanese. :)  (Just kidding but it's true English is very difficult

>language to them as Japanese to other nationals.)  Basically no company in

>Japan will accept the foreign order using c/c.  The reason being they need

>heck of lot of approvals from various local and province governments and

>simply it's worth the hassle unless they receive an order exceeding, say,

>100M yen!  That's why usually the only way to order something from Japan is

>using EFT into their bank account.

>



Yes he was very nice, and I didn't mean the message was garbled, or that he

was not helpful.  Just that his English was very broken, and he obviously

made quite an effort to help.  Which I appreciated, and that is why I have

suggested checking back periodically as they have tried to add

functionality to the site.



It is just that it serves little purpose to advertise their product, much

of which is very interesting, but provide no reasonable method to purchase.





>>So, for now, I just go back every once in a while to see if things have

>>improved.  They have added some things/functionality since last summer, as

>>promised, but unfortunately it has mostly been cosmetic.

>

>Remember lots of shops do the custom jobs for the customer and these aren't

>usually on the catalogue. :)

>

>[snip]

>>Hey, maybe that's what we need... a brief letter-writing campaign to let

>>them know how much we all would like to be able to give them some

business =)

>>

>>al

>

>Give the poor guy a break, will ya? <g>

>



I think I did give the guy a break...the point of my response to this

thread. I have tried to purchase product several times, but he really

hasn't provided a method to do so.  Remember that I was only responding to

an already existing thread asking how one actually places an order, not

condemning the operation. =)



Also, I understand extended/other character sets for various web-browsers.

What I meant was that his English was very broken, and he obviously put

great effort into trying to respond to my emails.  Because I recognized the

effort he put forth to try to respond as best he could, I responded to this

thread to let everyone know that they do indeed want the business, but

still haven't gone far enough to facilitate our actually purchasing anything.



Hopefully they will eventually have everything lined up so that we can

order easily one day...I hope so.



Everyone have a nice New Year's Eve.... be safe.



Al



> dj

>

>P.S. BTW I use Japanese web page and it looks ok to me.

>

>  To email me, remove the "-xxx" from my email address above

>  U&I Autocom, Shop 6, 605-609 George St., Sydney (02) 9261 4300

>    "... In all matters of opinion,

>         our adversaries are insane." - Mark Twain

>

>

>

>