Gmarket: Internet shoppers worst nightmare

Koreans do a lot of their shopping online. My Korean friend always has new gadgets and beauty products and when I ask where she got them it's always, "On internet!" or, "Home shopping!" It's not surprising because you can find insane deals. I, myself, bought an oven from this website and not only was it a great deal, it's been alive and kicking for a year and a half now!

The site is  http://www.gmarket.co.kr/  It's (obviously) all in Korean but you change the language to "English" but most of the print is still in Korean... When I bought my oven, it was so simple. The most difficult thing was tracking down my address so it would turn up at the right place.

This time, however, I did not have such luck. I simply wanted a poncho. Cheap. Low quality. The cheapest one I could find at the store was like $5 and I didn't want to spend that on something I'll only use once. So Gmarket seemed like a great idea. At the time.

Within a matter of minutes, I'd found what I wanted. Poncho. Fifty cents. Two-fifty shipping. Perfect. I'll take four.

The next hour and half was spent trying to check out on that damn website. Seriously. An hour and a half. I tried English. I tried Korean. I even enlisted the help of a Korean coworker who was even unsuccessful. First, I couldn't use Google Chrome. This wasn't surprising. Korean websites have way over the top security software that only works in Explorer. Whatever. My online banking is the same way.

Then I had to download a special secure pay program. Whatever. (I was on my work computer so I don't care what I download on it! Ha!) **Sigh**


It wouldn't accept my American credit card. Come on, Korea! You accept Mastercard! What the hell?!?! So I tried my Korean bank card. First it had to connect to the bank's server. (What?!?!) Didn't accept my card number. **Humph...**


Switched to Korean. No luck. Back to English. Tried my Mastercard again. I have to download yet another special security software, register my car and set up a username and pin. But there was no link to download said software.

Finally it accepted my Korean card number! And then it took another half hour of putting in pins and usernames and passwords, registration number and some random typing of Korean characters and numbers (still not sure what that was for, but oh well). Just as I was about to give up, the damn thing finally took my money. $4. Yep, an hour and a half for $4. For all my time they should just give me the stupid ponchos for free.

Email confirmation? Nope.

This is the spokesperson for Gmarket. The captions translate what the Korean characters say.

You will spend half an hour on the very last part of the checkout process.

Take a picture of this useful screen because you'll never find it again.

I'm already thinking of new ways to make my website even more difficult for you next time.

You will curse your computer at least 100 times before you're finished.

You will waste a minimum of 5% of your whole day trying to buy four cheap ponchos. 

As Gmarket is laughing in my face it's saying. "That's how I roll, yo. Anyanghasayo... SUCKA!"