Ordered my first Gmarket Haul. Some Tips.

So it hasn't actually arrived yet. I ordered it on Friday, Dec. 7, 2012. It is my first purchase from Gmarket, and I must say I'm already addicted. There is so much I want to buy, but I don't have the funds at this point in time. hehe. If you've never heard of Gmarket, it is sort of an online Korean marketplace. People always compare it to Ebay, and technically it has recently been acquired by Ebay, so I guess you can call it the Korean Ebay. (Note, I am from the U.S. so I use the Global Gmarket- "english.gmarket.co.kr". Most international buyers will use this site, if you understand Korean, feel free to use the actual one at "gmarket.co.kr", or if you're from somewhere in Asia, I'm not sure, because I do know there are other names for certain countries. Pretty much sellers have mini shops were they can sell their various items. Most international buyers, usually buy cosmetics and apparels because even after shipping everything is fairly cheap. 

So I guess I can talk about some hopefully helpful tips, if you're like me, and making your first purchase. Now I am not going to give a full on detail, there are plenty of other sites that already help out with that and they've all taken the time to post pictures as well, so just type in the words 'gmarket haul' into Google, and I'm sure you'll find many good blogs. Also another place to look is on Gmarket itself. At the bottom of the homepage, under 'News & Events' Check out any of the articles titled 'Winners for Top Blogger'. There they will list customers who have posted their experiences with Gmarket. Hopefully I'll be one of them next month. (I just need to find my camera charger). Tips I'm giving will just be things I noticed and or were helpful to me to keep my cost down, because shipping is expensive as Gmarket uses EMS, so by weight. 

1. Mini Shops Sellers may have multiple pages, so always check their mini shop page to see what they offer and also if there is an item you like but you don't see it, perhaps one of their other pages will have it.

2. Always check to make sure the estimated item weight is reasonable for the item you are purchasing. Some seller tend to overestimate the items, and if you're buying a lot from them then your estimated weight will be very high, meaning you'll pay more in shipping price. Gmarket will refund you for the excess but it won't go back to whatever you paid with. It'll go into your Gaccount, and you will be charged a large fee to withdraw that money back to your bank account. So it is best to have the item weight similar to your actual purchase. A little bit over will be fine, but say you buy a simple t-shirt and the seller puts the est. weight at 1kg, that is way too much. 0.5kg would be acceptable at most for a simple t-shirt. But if you know that one of your items is underestimated, then it's okay to counterbalance this with items overweight. Essentially what you want to do is be as close as possible to your actual weight to lessen any future complications, because if the estimated weight is under the actual weight by 3000-5000 krw(korean won), they will not ship your items until you pay the additional shipping fee.
Another reason to look at the other pages of the mini shop, is to compare estimated weights, and prices. Sometimes sellers will have the same item at the same price at a more accurate weight for the product. So definitely make sure to look at that. 

3. Always have a translator open. (Unless you know how to read hangul) To be incredibly honest, through my experience no translator was accurate. However, it is better than nothing. You yourself do you have to put the translated pieces together sometimes. Sometimes the translation  is clearer than others, most of the time it is not. Also a site where you can type the hangul is quite helpful for the posts where you can not copy the texts. I used this site: "http://www.lexilogos.com/keyboard/korean.htm" It's actually quite helpful to teach you how to pronounce the hangul.

4. Worldwide Shipping If you are an international buyer, make sure the item you click is available for Worldwide Shipping. There will be a pink strip under the item image, saying Worldwide shipping. And when you click on the image link to get to the item page if the "Please check, if ship to address in Korea." box is checked then that means that item is only for Domestic shipping, and not Worldwide. So don't waste your time looking, it can't be shipped to you. However once again check the mini shop page of the seller to see if they do have a page for worldwide shipping on that item. 

5.Discounts Look out for discount coupons, but at the same time before you apply, make sure what you purchase will qualify for the coupon. Because coupons have very short expiration dates, so don't go wasting stamps, or whatever on a coupon that you can't even use. Like for me I had 2 coupons, but I couldn't use either of them because mainly none of my items met the limitation amount. I only bought items cheaper than 9,900 won, when the coupon qualified for 10,000+. (Hurray for being frugal, and finding great items for low prices, but boo for being unable to get even cheaper deals.) 

6. Good times to make your purchase, for faster delivery. So I made my purchase on actually Thursday night, but then I made a second purchase on Friday, and did a combine shipping. What I noticed was that 4 of my items from my Thursday purchase were able to get packed by the seller and sent to Gmarket the next day (Friday). So they were really fast, but I also got a notice from 2 sellers saying to expect shipping delays. It is the holiday season, and there are lots of sales going on, so shipping delays are probably going to be the norm. So do keep that in mind if you are going to be making a purchase around the holiday time. And not really holidays for you, but Korean holidays. So it has been 4 days since I made my initial order, and as I said some items were shipped out on Friday, but then I believe that it was due to the post office/carriers not working on Sat/Sun. Definitely Gmarket does not make any shipment out on  Sat/Sun. So keep that in mind for how long you'll have to wait, as well as what day you might want to make your purchase. If you're patient enough, and you don't mind seeing your status not change for a few days then ignore this, but if you're like me checking everyday and not seeing any changes, and just getting antsy, then I recommend making your purchase on a Sunday. That way hopefully everyday something will be happening. Monday: hopefully seller gets your item shipped out to Gmarket, possibly Tuesday or Wed. the postman delivers it to Gmarket, and then by Thursday to Friday Gmarket will have finished packaging and weighing your items and if nothing is wrong will ship it out, and then you should be seeing  your packaging within the next week. This is all assuming nothing goes wrong, and there are no delays. 

7. Don't take too long to decide on what to order. (Especially if items are really good deals) It took me 4 days to make my final decisions, and within that time frame I had like 5 items go either out of stock, or the prices changed. I've read other blogs and some people have made their decisions in only 3 hours, but if you're like me and always looking for a bargain don't take too long. Be a little compulsive. If you find more stuff within the next few days, then you can always combine shipping. But know you can only combine 2 orders once. So if you are still waiting for your first 2 deliveries to be combined and  you find something else and make a 3rd purchase, you CANNOT combine it with the first combined order. If you make a 4th purchase though you MAY combine it with the 3rd purchase. But you may not combine a 5th purchase with the 1st or 2nd combinations. Sorry if I worded that in a confusing manner, but hopefully you get what I mean. 

Yeah, that is about it on tips, if there are any more that I feel aren't really mentioned out there on other blogs I'll let you know in future posts. But otherwise happy shopping! 

Order status update: Currently Sunday night/Monday morning. Originally I said there were 4 packages with the status 'On Delivery'. 1 of them has arrived at Gmarket. 3 are still outstanding, and surprisingly 3 items from 1 seller, that were 'On Request' status throughout the weekend, are suddenly 'Delivered' at Gmarket. o_0 I guess it's because Gmarket doesn't update on weekends. So as of this moment out of 14 items, from 8 different sellers, 4 items from 2 sellers has been delivered. 3 items from 2 sellers is 'On Delivery', and the rest are all still on request. Not bad, for the holiday season, some sellers are very fast. 2 did give notice that there would be a delay, which is fine unless they make me wait over the estimated date posted by Gmarket which is 12-15-2012. Also 4 items I'm not sure if they'll be cancelled by the seller, because I bought 4 Holika Holika Egg Soap sets. They were only $1 each, which was super cheap. I wasn't sure if the page happened to be an old event page and if the offer was still available but I figured I might as well take the chance to get them. Worst case scenario would be they cancel and refund my money to my bank account.  Scratch that, just checked and they are 'On Delivery'. Holika Holika is very fast! I was expecting them to be busy because they're one of the more popular sellers on Gmarket.