#otakutea

Messy picture for a messy product.

Company, Shipping, and Communication

On November 1st, I ordered a “trial box,” a single box of Otaku Tea’s teabox subscription service.  I learned about Otaku Tea back in July, when I ordered their tea cup and infuser set through Amazon Review Trader.  FWIW, the set is currently listed on Amazon as “Unavailable,” and “Product Under Review.”  My cup arrived with a shattered infuser; perhaps others had the same issues.

While looking up information, I found the website and learned about the tea subscription boxes.  I had to wait until I had the money to spare, but then placed my order when I could.

There’s very little information about the company online.  Through my searches, I found about 2 blog reviews and a handful of Instagram posts about the boxes.  The Facebook page hasn’t been updated since October, and the official Instagram hasn’t been updated since July.  This leads into my issues with delivery.  As mentioned, I ordered the box on November 1st.  My credit card was charged the same day, and I received the automated confirmation email.  Nothing was said about how quickly the orders ship.  I ended up tracking down the owner’s Instagram and leaving a comment on one of her posts, asking about turnaround time.  She told me individual boxes ship weekly.

Fast-forward to November 15th.  Still no shipping confirmation, no other communication.  I sent a message via Otaku Tea’s online contact form, requesting information about the order, when I can expect it to ship, etc, and gave them a deadline, after which, if I had not received any information from them, I would contact my credit card and dispute the charges.  Two days passed with no reply, so I bypassed the form and used the contact email instead.  I received an apology, an excuse about an overloaded inbox, and an offer to send 2 boxes at no additional charge.

Another week passed, and I received a follow-up email after Thanksgiving that the box would go out ASAP.  Finally, on November 29th, I received a Priority Mail box with the above teaboxes.  

So, now for the review of the actual product.

The Otaku Tea website description:

Deluxe OtakuTeaBox Includes: 24 kettle sized TeaBags filled with 2 Flavors of Tea, 1 Otaku Tea Cup, Seasonal snacks and Japanese candies, lucky stars & stickers. All delivered to you once a month when part of our subscription plan! ^.^

The actual boxes felt like lightweight bakery boxes.  

My boxes did not contain the tea cup, which is fine, as I already have 2, one minus the broken infuser.  

The “lucky stars,” origami stars, were used almost as filler, as well as a LOT of odd dried flowers.  We couldn’t recognize them, and just threw them out as we went through the contents.

Stickers...well, @prismatic-bell and I agreed that they didn’t really fit the theme of the box.  Two of them were overtly sexual, one was amusing, one was Classic Anime, and one was...drug themed?  They were NOT our cup of tea, no pun intended.  PB brought up a good point: the seller didn’t know the age of the recipient.  Someone could have bought this for a twelve-year-old, and that child would have been subjected to Spider-man grabbing his crotch, or a stoned Ninja Turtle.

Seasonal snacks and Japanese candies: each box contained 4 gel-cups, a box of Green Tea Pocky, a box of chocolate cream Pejoy sticks, a handful of Japanese hard candies, and a handful of Pixy Sticks.  The seller, in her last message, said she waited until after Thanksgiving to send the boxes to make sure they had the “freshest ingredients.”  With that in mind, I was surprised to find out both boxes of Pejoy were three months past their Best By date. 

The actual tea: One box contained “Darjeeling Black” and “Japan Sencha Green.”  The other had “Earl Grey Black” and “Lady Grey White.”  You can see in the picture that the tea bags are packed in clear pouches, four kettle-sized tea bags per pouch.  The tea bags look to be fold-and-close bags, not heat-sealed.  I’ve tried the Darjeeling and the Sencha so far; both work well in my 50-ounce teapots.  The tea is nice, but...it doesn’t seem anything unusual or out of the ordinary.  

The box also had a printout with “how to brew tea” and “where to watch anime and play games.”  Prismatic Bell had more input on the anime list: three sites were listed, but of the three, one was legal and the other two were both sketchy (and virus/malware-riddled) bootleg sites.  The game sites looked like they were all emulator sites.