Gmarket Korea online shopping, another eBay shopping platform, well, I know, I heard of it for a long time but never bother to try on it. The reason, not a fan of eBay kind of shopping platform and yes, I never shop at eBay before 😯 . But what tempted me to try on Gmarket Korea is the Korean skincare and cosmetic products.

I have been trying out various Korean skincare and cosmetic products by buying them via Taiwan online shop. You heard me right, from Taiwan. At that time I was not aware that I should have shopped directly from Gmarket Korea. So by paying quite some extra costs to get Korean products outside Korea, oh my gosh! 🙄

Finally after I have made my first purchase on Gmarket, I decided to write this guide, although not a comprehensive one(there are already many guides out there) but it will still be a lengthy article and therefore I will have to split it into 2 parts. Hope this will help those who are like me, heard of Gmarket million times but couldn’t be bother to look at it or try on it. But please, don’t blame me when you are hooked on it later, deal?

Let’s get started: first of all, I shall skip the registration part, for those of you who are new to Gmarket, you might want to sign up an account. I will break the guide/tips down to sections for easy references. Since the account registration steps are quite easy to follow through so let’s skip to the coupon section.

Gmarket Coupon system

When you are on the home page of Gmarket, you will be greeted with the banners ads on top, slide through them straight up to the coupons section as shown below:

See the 50% off for first purchase? Don’t be so excited! Let me explain in details about Gmarket coupon system. For first timer like me, when I saw that “50% off”, I was like “Wow, so good?”, nope, there are terms and condition to use it. Gmarket coupon system is kind of cumbersome to me, each coupon can be applied on to ONE item ONLY.

The other thing to take note is that most of the coupons has limitation, condition and expiration date, click on those to view them. See picture below.

You will have to screen through your item price to apply them individually and smartly to get the best out of it.

For the 50% off, the maximum discount you can get is ₩10000 only. For example, if you item price is ₩36000, the discounted price will be ₩26000 and not ₩18000, get it? This also applies to those monthly Fashion and Beauty coupon of 20%.

Let me give you another example here:

If you have one item cost ₩9000 and another ₩29500, let’s say you have 2 coupons, a 10% and a ₩1000 off and can be used for on purchase over ₩1000; it is pretty obvious that you want to use the 10% on item price at ₩29500 and ₩ 1000 off on item ₩9000, right? In this case you will get a total discount of ₩3950(2950+1000) instead of ₩1900(1000+900).

Well, some simple math calculation will be needed to shop smartly at Gmarket. This system is way too cumbersome to my liking.

There is also a guide by Gmarket on how to apply the coupon here so I would not elaborated further on this.

Smile Cash

Smile Cash doesn’t put a “SMILE” on my face! In fact it is very annoying! What is it then? The refunded amount, the difference of the deposited amount and the amount from the events will be saved to Smile Cash which you can use it for purchasing items and withdraw the cash into your bank account.

But don’t bother to deposit or withdraw if you are international shopper like me(unless you have huge amount of smile cash), in addition to the transfer fee charges, you will have to provide your Government issued photo ID, Bankbook, full name, Gmarket ID, name of the bank, account number etc.., this is just not worth the trouble!

As you can see, I have 7300 smile cash from my first purchase which I will be using it for the 2nd purchase soon.

To use it as stated in the Gmarket:

• Click the ‘Apply’ button after selecting smile cash as the payment method from the payment page.
• If the smile cash is less than the required amount, additional payment can be made with other payment methods(Credit card, Online banking, PayPal, Alipay).
• If the coupon for a specific payment has been applied, then the smile cash will not be displayed since it cannot be used.

Smile Point

Quoted from Gmarket:

• Smile Point is a point which can be saved through purchasing and events on Gmarket.
• You can use your points by joining for some events and exchanging them into some coupons.
• If you have over 10,000 Smile points, the points will be able to be converted to Smile cash. Converted Smile Cash can be used for purchasing items like cash.
• Smile point is available for 2 years from the deposited date and the earned points by event will be expired on the due date according to the event rule.

You can also earn smile points from writing reviews/premium reviews which I will be writing on those in part 2 of this article.

Gstamp

You can get Gstamp via the following methods:

• Once you receive your item and click on the “Item Received” button, you will be awarded with Gstamps. Oh, I think I have missed this section as I didn’t go back to the page to confirm “item received”, will verify that if I made my 2nd purchase.
• Write a review(normal/premium), you will also be awarded with Gstamps.
• Play daily Lucky Draw(see picture below) and depending on your luck, you will be able to receive Gstamps from it. Well, I have so far participated for 14 times this month but have yet to get any Gstamp, I am not a lucky cat, “meow”! The best spin for me was 30 Smile Points, only 1 time!

You can exchange Gstamps to discount coupons or draw to see you can get the respective coupon. Well as luck is always not with me, I would not try the draw it unless I have too many stamps to spare and if I get bored with it.

Take note on the condition which I marked “*” on picture above. You can be tempted to exchange 25 stamps for 5000 but you must use that on item which is over ₩50,000+. So my advice is that don’t exchange any coupon till you finalize with what you intend to buy.

Gcash

I wouldn’t be writing on this because I don’t see the point of using it as an international shopper. Maybe some of you out there has some tips to make use of Gcash?

Continue to part 2 of Gmarket shopping guide

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