Gmarket a tip a day series: Gift Certificates

여러분 안녕! (Hello everyone!)

It's been quite a while since i blog about Gmarket tips and bear with me as it is 'a tip a day' and not 'a tip every day' - i will make sure i am posting something that is newly discovered by me as i use gmarket.

Today's post is about Gift certificates! Yes, the festive season is crawling nearer to us and people are busying shopping online/offline for gifts to bless their loved ones. Some of us we run out of ideas of what to buy for our friends/family and instead we prefer to let them choose what they want to buy by giving vouchers. Gmarket has the capability of providing others with the art of blessing another with Gmarket e-vouchers through gift certificate.

Gift certificates range from different valuation, from as little as 5,000 won to a few hundred thousand won. Only smaller amount (5,000 & 10,000 won) can be mailed as paper form while the other amounts can only be sent online.

However, here's the catch that you would never know unless you buy a gift certificate before and you tried to purchase items using it:

1. Foreign cards are not allow to purchase gift certificate. This is due to the Korean online commerce law that has been established to prevent online money laundering. The only way to buy gift certificate is through available cash balance (usually comes from over charged shipping cost) and bank transfer (transferring your funds into a korean base bank account). The latter method would cost you an additional remittance cost and the former method would require you to accumulate sufficient funds in order to purchase gift cert.

2. When paying via Gift Certificate, the entire payment must not exceed the amount available. Or else, you still can pay but the outstanding amount requires you to perform bank transfer to a local bank account and Gmarket does not offer foreign card payment service in such unique situation as yet. So as we can realize here, it is actually quite a hassle if you are a foreigner who's trying to use/buy gift certificate.

To sum up, Gift Certificate can be a fun online tool for users to surprise your friends who use Gmarket, but it is not suitable for usage unless you are in South Korea.

Gmarket a tip a day series: Types of payment methods

Today's a tip a day is about payment on Gmarket. How and which type of payment is best suitable for a user and what are some of the tips when paying for your goods. Gmarket offers payment by cash balance, foreign credit card, paypal and money transfer.

Paypal is the safest way to transact if you are unsure of Gmarket's credit security systems that require you to enter your credit details on their website. Money transfer can be expensive if you have to pay for remittance fee for transferring to Gmarket korean account (unless they have a Singapore account or else buyers will be charged for overseas remittance). Buyers who pay through paypal would likely receive their cash virtually placed back in their paypal account - not the best thing for someone who needs the money because transferring money from paypal back into your original bank account would require a fee to do so.

Credit card usage deducts money directly from your credit or debit account and should any cancellation of purchase occur, this method is the most convenient and the best for a buyer who wish to have his/her cash back into their bank account if there happens to have a refund performed.

Money transfer is one option that is both a mystery and foreign to me because i have not use it personally. Maybe Gmarket would just return your money back into your cash balance instead of transferring back into your account because Gmarket would not want to pay for any remittance fee due to any cancellation by customers.

Cash balance can be used to pay provided they are sufficient. Insufficient amount would require buyers to top up the rest of the payment through credit card payment or any of the payment as mentioned earlier.

The best way to make payment on Gmarket in my opinion? Credit/Debit cards. Why? Any cancellation would result in getting your original sum of cash paid back in your account within a few working days. Thus, it spares us from having virtual money as much as possible - not a good idea if you do not know when is the next time you are going to buy online, the money in a buyer's paypal account or gmarket cash balance could be put to better use in a financial point of view. On the other hand, security loophole is an unknown threat but so far, all my transactions using credit card has been safely done. A trick to do purchase using credit card is that a buyer can use a secondary debit/credit card which has low credit limit to make purchase. This would help to manage and lower the risk faced when security loop holes happen.

*Disclaimer. This post regarding Gmarket's payment methods may not be fully accurate as they are based on my personal experience and Gmarket may have already change some of the ways in which they transact. For more info, you can search online for their payment policies & regulations.

Gmarket a tip a day series: How to use Mileage

Today's post is about how to use the mileage accumulated from Gmarket. First of all, i am going to explain how do you obtain mileage first. Whenever you purchase from the Gmarket sellers, some of them provide you with not just G stamps but also mileage as sometimes, the goods are actually at other parts of South Korea, in places like Busan/Ulsan/Daegu etc. These are places far away from Seoul and Incheon where shipment takes place and it would take some time for the items to reach the collection point. Hence, to reward customers' precious time of waiting, sellers award them with mileage.

So, to check out the accumulated amount of mileage. A user can simply login and go to their Gaccount > click the first box on the page and they would see this:

On the right hand corner of the picture above would be the mileage accumulated in your Gmarket account. Once 10,000 miles or more are accumulated, it can be converted into G cash for the users to make payment for their shipping fee. It takes really a long time to accumulate your mileage. So whether this mileage function is worth fighting for it's really on an individual's comfort level. For me? I would say that G stamps are still the best giveaways on Gmarket.

Next a tip a day, i will cover on some modes of payment and their pros & cons on Gmarket.

Gmarket a tip a day series: How to use G Stamp

Today, let's touch on the topic on how to use G stamp from Gmarket. It is a very useful tool for all customers on Gmarket. First of all, how do you receive G Stamp? There are several ways of receiving them. The first way is when you buy from merchants. Some merchants issue G stamps when you buy any of their products. you can see it from the right hand side of the search page. The seller will indicate issuance of G stamps. See picture below.

Another way to receive G stamp is through giving feedback once you receive your items from the merchants. There will be a red button under the column 'overseas status' for you to click and give ratings/satisfaction on the sellers' merchandise. Each successful completion of feedback gives one stamp. See picture below.

Well, now comes the part on how to use these stamps. From the seller's page there is a little orange box at the top of the page, 'coupon box'. This is where you could apply your G stamps in exchange/apply for discounts that are applicable to your items. See picture.

When you click this box, a smaller window will usually pop out and show you the available discounts that you can either use your G stamps to exchange or apply. See picture.

These two options vary as well. One is like a ballot while the other is a confirm discount issued by Gmarket. Hence, you will realise that doing an exchange usually cost more G stamps than applying for a discount. Well, the tip here is that most of the time if you go straight into applying for discount coupon, the chances of getting the discount coupon are quite high but the trick is to use this function only once - do not try to apply for more after you won the first one because it just wont work anymore ( i have learnt it the hard way and lost many of my stamps). When can you then use this function again? Maybe a few days later you can try again.

G Stamps can also be used in lucky draws and if you are a VIP customer, you are entitled to special exchange/apply discounts. My one last tip on G stamp is that, use it only when you need it. I'm not sure whether these discount coupons can expire but the tendency is to use it only when i need to find a discount for my purchase. Sometimes, there are some sellers that do not allow discount coupons, so it makes no point keeping any of these discount coupons in the account as well.

Next a tip a day, i would like to talk about how to use the Gmarket mileage accumulated.