Hi!

I just signed up for SCANDAL MANIA the other day with a proxy JP address, but still wondering about the membership system as a whole. Are there any MANIA members in this forum that can help me clarify a few things, mainly about renewal?

I also noted a VIP section that seems to be locked to members with 3+ months since registration

Thanks!

I've been a MANIA member for many years and am currently a SCANDAL MANIA PREMIUM membership holder.

On December 1st they revamped both MANIA and their mobile fan club, and combined them to now offer three different types of memberships:

1. MANIA
2. MANIA LIGHT (this was formerly their mobile fan club called CLUB SCANDAL)
3. MANIA PREMIUM (this is a combination of both)

I'm guessing you're only a MANIA membership holder? And did you sign up for yourself using your own card + Tenso address, or did you ask a proxy company to sign you up?

And as for renewal, they give you two months to renew your membership. You have from the first of the month before your membership expires until the 20th of the month your membership expires in. So, if your membership expires in November, you have from October 1st to November 20th to renew it. You can pay the renewal fee via credit card. They accept overseas-issued ones.

(Edit in October 2023: The renewal process has changed. If you're paying by credit card, they will do an auto-renewal and charge the card you have on file at the beginning of the following month that your membership expires in. Ex: If your membership expires at the end of September, they will charge you at the beginning of October.)


Also, the "VIP" section is only for those who are LIGHT or PREMIUM members. It's also kind of a joke lol. They just upload small versions of their most recent promo photos.

Yes only MANIA member for now, signed up with personal card + Tenso address

My membership expires on 31st Dec 2022 so that means I will have from 1st Nov - 20th Dec 2022 to renew the membership?

Also yeah... not really a fan of the 'special' calendars and wallpapers in terms of quality, strangely enough the Android version is the landscape one, and for some months there is no landscape version at all!

Another question I'd like to ask, what are the free physical goods that you get from being a MANIA member? I think I ticked yes to the mail magazine so is it only that?

johh wrote:My membership expires on 31st Dec 2022 so that means I will have from 1st Nov - 20th Dec 2022 to renew the membership?

That's correct.

Another question I'd like to ask, what are the free physical goods that you get from being a MANIA member? I think I ticked yes to the mail magazine so is it only that?

You also get a physical birthday card mailed to you during your birthday month, as well as a silicone bracelet sent out when you renew your membership.

Talking of Mania revamp, with regards to Birthday Email (usually leads to a greeting video), you need to enable/check the option to have them send it to you, I recently opened a ticket about it with them.

Check under "My Page", "メルマガの登録・解除" and make sure バースデーメール checkbox is ticked, the default is not to get the email.

Birthday greeting, since it still based on the Club Scandal website is designed to be open on smartphone/tablet browser only, so errors when opened on a PC.

Got an email for birthday card/greetings recently, but when I clicked the link it says I need a SCANDAL MANIA LIGHT subscription, is this correct? So does this mean on top of my current ongoing MANIA membership I need to pay for LIGHT as well? Sounds weird…

It's correct, though it is weird they'd send you a link to the MANIA LIGHT card in the first place when you're not a member of that.

I mentioned in my first post that there are three tiers of memberships:

1. SCANDAL MANIA (regular fan club - let's call this "SM")
2. SCANDAL MANIA LIGHT (mobile fan club - let's call this "SML")
3. SCANDAL MANIA PREMIUM (combo of SM + SML - let's call this "SMP")

Think of SM and SML as being two completely separate fan clubs, because they technically are. That's why paying for only one subscription won't give you permission to view things meant for the other club.

It's always been that their mobile fan club (SML) gets digital-only birthday cards while SM gets physical birthday cards. You said you only have an SM membership. If it was the other way around and you had only an SML membership, you would not get the SM physical card. So yes, you need to have both memberships in order to get both the physical AND the digital birthday cards (AKA an SMP member).

Also in my first post I mentioned that the signup page tells you what the perks are for each tier. I've gone ahead and translated that into English:

I recently renewed my Mania membership.

Mania membership has changed so that you renew on the month of your renewal.

i.e. if you account is due for renewal Jan 31st, you can renew from Midnight Jan 1st.

Since I was renewing I tried to look for where to change my "Scandal Light" payment from Monthly to Annually, its cheaper and only need to deal with once a year.
I found no option to do this so I worte them in inquiry, they replied with below response, you need to cancel your Scandal light subscription i.e. end of the month and then renew the following month. (don't do same month of cancelling and applying at is incurs 2 payments for that month, i.e. don't cancel in Jan and apply in Jan)

i.e. If you want to do it in Feb, cancel Mania Light on Jan 31st and THEN on Feb 2nd re-subscribe to Mania Light on Feb 1st.

Renew within 30 days otherwise your old Mania Light data/status will be lost.
(I guess they mean the VIP gallery section)

Note: For Scandal Mania renewal, on your credit card statement it will still appear as "SCANDAL MANIA LIGHT" for the credit card transaction, even though its for "SCANDAL MANIA renewal"

Original Japanese response.:

Hello I am fairly new to the whole fan club scene but I love scandal and I am a newer fan so Im not 100% sure how to go about it I am from the states and if anyone can help me out I would appreciate it.

Question (especially for thoseguiltyeyes & wildthing )

Does Mania text you randomly that are important about your account?

Or only during initial sign up and mania ticket purchases?

For things like purchasing goods or membership renewal notifications, is that all through email?

I'm sending a phone and SIM with a Japanese number with my friend when he returns to Japan next week for a few months so he can try to help me with tickets and fan club sign up. 

I'm trying to make sure I'm using the same Japanese number for Mania + ticket services. For address I'll use his family address if they are okay with it, otherwise I have tenso address which I know some ticket services are now blocking (I think lawson).

I want to make sure I won't miss renewals or have goods purchase issues when neither my friend nor I are in Japan in regards to the systems texting/calling. Between my friend and I we're probably in Japan about 6 months of the year. 

I really want to see Scandal in Japan live at least once <3

Would appreciate any details/insights, thank you

outlawboof wrote:Hello I am fairly new to the whole fan club scene but I love scandal and I am a newer fan so Im not 100% sure how to go about it I am from the states and if anyone can help me out I would appreciate it.

Sign up for a Tenso account and then sign up for a MANIA account (the second drop-down bar at the bottom) using the address Tenso provides. We've covered in this thread that there are two types of memberships, LIGHT (SML) and MANIA (SM), and if you decide to do both, you'll become a PREMIUM (SMP) member. If you choose to sign up via this route, it requires slight knowledge of Japanese or use of Google Translate/DeepL.

If you don't want to bother with all that, ask a Japanese proxy service (like Rinkya) to sign you up for a membership and they'll do it for you for a fee.

Also, be aware that there aren't many perks for overseas fans if you don't or are not able to utilize Japan-only stuff like applying for concert tickets (which is a whole other can of worms). The only real physical perks that you will get are: A birthday postcard (SM + SMP members only), a silicone wristband when you renew your membership, and newsletters sent about 3 times a year.

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nosferous wrote:Does Mania text you randomly that are important about your account?

Or only during initial sign up and mania ticket purchases?

MANIA doesn't text you at all, as far as I know. I think requiring a phone number to sign up for an account is just a formality.

For things like purchasing goods or membership renewal notifications, is that all through email?

Merch purchasing is done via the ROOFTOP ONLINE STORE. You just need to put your 6-digit membership number in the comments section when you place an order for MANIA stuff. They don't specify if your name/address needs to be the same as what's listed under your MANIA account, but it's probably best to make them the same.

Membership renewal: They will send you a reminder email on the 1st of the month that your membership expires.

I'm trying to make sure I'm using the same Japanese number for Mania + ticket services. For address I'll use his family address if they are okay with it, otherwise I have tenso address which I know some ticket services are now blocking (I think lawson).

Pretty much all of the ticketing services are blocking Tenso addresses. So if you are planning to try and set up a ticketing account and you want the addresses to match on both that and MANIA, then it is necessary for you to use your friend's family's address.

Thank you so much for the clarifications, thoseguiltyeyes ! 

Really appreciate the info!!!

thanks to safari automatically translating the text to English I was able to figure it out with relative ease! It was a bit tricky at first but once you get the hang of it its easy. Im now a premium mania member for two months and I even ordered their 2023 member t shirts and their cards! Looking forward to buying more merch in the future.

Hi, Just a question.

I just entered SCANDAL Premium today and would like to ask if they give a physical member card for premium members? I saw the other day during the Kashasai live a member that has a physical card..

Just wondering.

thesheepersgame wrote:I just entered SCANDAL Premium today and would like to ask if they give a physical member card for premium members? I saw the other day during the Kashasai live a member that has a physical card..

Yes, they give physical membership cards to MANIA PREMIUM members (this infographic I posted earlier in this thread lists that perk). They'll mail your card to the address you entered when you signed up.

Yes, they give physical membership cards to MANIA PREMIUM members (this infographic I posted earlier in this thread lists that perk). They'll mail your card to the address you entered when you signed up.

Thanks. Saw it as well on the flyer I got.

Hello I’ve recently moved to Japan and was looking into joining SM. I saw the perks and stuff but I’d like to confirm/personally ask the SMP members here. Since being an SMP member requires you sign up for both SML and SM membership type, does that mean you also get charged twice (since you are paying for two membership types).
Hoping to hear from the other members. Sounds quite dumb, but I’d just like to confirm before I do anything yet hahaha.

M wrote:Hello I’ve recently moved to Japan and was looking into joining SM. I saw the perks and stuff but I’d like to confirm/personally ask the SMP members here. Since being an SMP member requires you sign up for both SML and SM membership type, does that mean you also get charged twice (since you are paying for two membership types).
Hoping to hear from the other members. Sounds quite dumb, but I’d just like to confirm before I do anything yet hahaha.

Yes. To activate premium you need to pay for both SM and SML which will total like 9k yen for the initial payment and must pay both again if you want to renew.

Hello quick question I had if anyone is able to answer so on the 9th scandal mania sent out the physical newsletter for vol 40 and I was wondering how do you know if you’re eligible to receive it? I’ve been a premium member for 4 months now and I just want to make sure I receive the physical copy of the newsletter

outlawboof wrote:Hello quick question I had if anyone is able to answer so on the 9th scandal mania sent out the physical newsletter for vol 40 and I was wondering how do you know if you’re eligible to receive it? I’ve been a premium member for 4 months now and I just want to make sure I receive the physical copy of the newsletter

You just need to be an SM (SCANDAL MANIA) member.

Since you're an SMP member that includes membership for both SM and SML, you are eligible to receive it.

thoseguiltyeyes wrote:

outlawboof wrote:Hello quick question I had if anyone is able to answer so on the 9th scandal mania sent out the physical newsletter for vol 40 and I was wondering how do you know if you’re eligible to receive it? I’ve been a premium member for 4 months now and I just want to make sure I receive the physical copy of the newsletter

You just need to be an SM (SCANDAL MANIA) member.

Since you're an SMP member that includes membership for both SM and SML, you are eligible to receive it.

Awesome thank you so much for answering my question and always being very helpful I appreciate it I’m assuming that also applies for the birthday card/video? My birthday is coming up at the end of the year and I want to make sure I get that as well

outlawboof wrote:I’m assuming that also applies for the birthday card/video? My birthday is coming up at the end of the year and I want to make sure I get that as well

Yes. Since, again, you're an SMP member, you'll receive the physical card from SM some time around your birthday (usually after), and the digital one from SML via email when it hits midnight JST on the day of your birthday.