Review: KoreanBuddy, a South Korean shopping service
Thursday, February 18, 2016
Hello my lovelies! I hope you've all had a great start to school for those of you that have it (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) I'm going to be starting university very soon, and I'm so excited + nervous at the same time!
Back on topic, today I have a review of another Korean shopping service. I've talked about Korean shopping services a lot on my blog, since I've started lusting after a lot of the Korean products that I post and a lot of you guys have also asked me how to buy items from Korea. In the past I've used Avecko... but let's not talk about them anymore. I also recommended Dowaja to some people but unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to try them myself before they suspended their service.
Today's review is on a newer shopping service called KoreanBuddy! They just opened in January and I was really eager to try them out since they had waived their usual fees for the month of January only. Their service fees are quite reasonable though, they charge 10% of the item price if you provide the URL or 20% if you need help from them to find any item (or if they have to purchase items in-store). They do have a minimum service fee of $9 USD, so I would recommend placing a larger order or maybe getting some friends together that also want to order items from Korea (´ω｀)
I find their website really helpful, especially if you've never had an experience using a shopping service before. They have guides on how to shop on popular Korean websites, as well as a pretty comprehensive FAQ. The only downside I've found is that they don't accept Paypal at the moment. Their accepted payment methods are credit card, Bitcoin and Korean bank transfer.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with or sponsored by KoreanBuddy. All opinions are my own and always honest regardless!
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ORDERING PROCESS
Anyway, time to talk about my experience with their service! To order, you can either send in a request through the help page on their website, or you can also send them a document directly. I found their page a bit tedious to use since I had a large amount of items, so I made a similar format form on a word document and sent it to them. |
| The order form on their website. |
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| The simple form that I whisked up on a Word document, a bit easier to see the options for each item here! |
I shared my document with them on the 25th of January. There's a handy button labelled 'send shopping list' on the right sidebar of their website, you can just upload your documents there if you don't want to use the order form. If you don't have an account already, you just need to leave your contact email address and name.
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| The conversation window where all communication takes place. |
Uploading a document also initiates a conversation window, which is where all your communication will be happening. Each time KoreanBuddy sends you a message, you'll get a notification in your email so you don't have to keep checking the site for updates. As you can see from the message screenshot, their English is quite proficient and communication was pretty fast! ✨
After correcting some details of my items, they sent me an invoice on the 27th which I paid later the same day.
One thing that I really like is that they updated me every step of the way. They told me when items were ordered, and about any communication they had with sellers. One of my items was sold out and they asked me if I would just like them to take the cost off the shipping price or change to a different item. I've never had that kind of communication with other shopping services before, I'm pretty sure others would've just told the seller to cancel the item without my input (or in the case of Avecko, leave sold out items idle for two weeks and not telling me about anything).
My items arrived to their address on the 3rd of February and they sent me a photo of my items, without me even requesting it. At this point they told me the prices for the two options of shipping (EMS and air mail), and I chose to go for EMS because I'm an impatient gal.
Really irrelevant sidenote that doesn't have much to do with KoreanBuddy: I was looking at the prices they quoted me and I suddenly got really suspicious of Avecko (again). I paid $56.39 for EMS (base EMS price + small amount from some items I added) and they told me the box was just under 4kg. I was looking back at my Avecko email from my last terrible order and they tried to charge me $54 for a package that was 2.2kg, that can't be right? I looked at the shipping rates on EMS Korea and it seems to suggest that Avecko might have been overcharging me for shipping, but I don't really have other evidence so who nose.
Anyway, they told me the price and then I asked if I would be able to pay in NZD instead of USD (which helps to avoid the currency conversion cost), and we had a brief chat about it but it seemed that it wasn't really possible using their payment provider, which was Stripe. Communication during this time was super quick! I could've waited to hear an answer back from Stripe about whether or not I could pay in NZD, but I am super, super impatient so I just paid in USD anyway.
About 2 hours after I paid the shipping invoice, they told me my order had been shipped! They were shipped on the 3rd of February via EMS and I received them on the 11th. I was a bit annoyed by the delay haha, since I did pay extra but it can't really be helped because we had a long weekend (the only time where I will curse a public holiday lol).
After correcting some details of my items, they sent me an invoice on the 27th which I paid later the same day.
One thing that I really like is that they updated me every step of the way. They told me when items were ordered, and about any communication they had with sellers. One of my items was sold out and they asked me if I would just like them to take the cost off the shipping price or change to a different item. I've never had that kind of communication with other shopping services before, I'm pretty sure others would've just told the seller to cancel the item without my input (or in the case of Avecko, leave sold out items idle for two weeks and not telling me about anything).
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| Look at all the nice pastel colours!! |
Really irrelevant sidenote that doesn't have much to do with KoreanBuddy: I was looking at the prices they quoted me and I suddenly got really suspicious of Avecko (again). I paid $56.39 for EMS (base EMS price + small amount from some items I added) and they told me the box was just under 4kg. I was looking back at my Avecko email from my last terrible order and they tried to charge me $54 for a package that was 2.2kg, that can't be right? I looked at the shipping rates on EMS Korea and it seems to suggest that Avecko might have been overcharging me for shipping, but I don't really have other evidence so who nose.
Anyway, they told me the price and then I asked if I would be able to pay in NZD instead of USD (which helps to avoid the currency conversion cost), and we had a brief chat about it but it seemed that it wasn't really possible using their payment provider, which was Stripe. Communication during this time was super quick! I could've waited to hear an answer back from Stripe about whether or not I could pay in NZD, but I am super, super impatient so I just paid in USD anyway.
About 2 hours after I paid the shipping invoice, they told me my order had been shipped! They were shipped on the 3rd of February via EMS and I received them on the 11th. I was a bit annoyed by the delay haha, since I did pay extra but it can't really be helped because we had a long weekend (the only time where I will curse a public holiday lol).
・ ✧ ・ ✧ ・
THE ITEMS
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| Look at the nice pastel colours!! |
marishe:
gmarket:
10x10:
- 2nul polaroid deco sticker
- 2young london simple pacer
- bookfriends deco sticker set
- colour seal heart stickers
- gmz petit deco sticker ver. 3
- iconic masking tape duo
- iconic polaroid photo album
- iconic two-way pastel highlighters
- jam studio du-dum sticker
- lookit art deco stickers
- wednesday i need you, 6 notebook set
- wednesday line note 200, 6 notebook set
- woodcard pastel gift envelope set
Overall, I'm super happy with my items. The only thing that was damaged was the Iconic polaroid photo album, but I'm pretty sure it was a defect on the item itself, not caused by shipping. Oh well, can't really return it now (︶︹︺)
・ ✧ ・ ✧ ・
OVERALL RATINGS
✧ Shipping: 5 / 5
I paid for EMS shipping which is typically faster than plain registered mail, but this time it wasn't on the faster end of EMS delivery times (not really KoreanBuddy's fault thought since it is the postal office's dealings). It shipped on the 3rd of February and arrived on the 11th, which is about 8 days or 6 business days. This was probably due to a public holiday in New Zealand as well as higher volumes of postage from Lunar New Year. I am really pleased that they shipped out my package so quickly though!!
I paid for my shipping at 2pm and they shipped it at 4pm, so, so quick!!! The box was also pretty secure. The more fragile items were bubble wrapped and the box was pretty stuffed full so nothing rattled around during shipping.
✧ Communication: 5 / 5
I was super happy with their communication, it was definitely wonderful. I think that the most important part of a shopping service is good communication to be honest, since they're essentially acting on your behalf to buy items. They always responded to me within 1 business day and on one day, I even got a reply within 5 minutes. I spoke to a staff member called Chris who had super good English and we never had communication issues.
✧ Overall: 5 / 5
If you need to buy something from South Korea and want to use a shopping service, I would definitley recommend KoreanBuddy. Their service is super easy to use, communication is excellent and just the way they handle things in general is good. I would definitely order again, whenever I need to buy more things from Korea ( ◡‿◡ ♡)
Thank you so much for reading this review today, and I hope it was helpful! Take care and have a good day~
5 comments
GOD BLESS YOU OMG I HAD SO MANY INCIDENTS WHERE I WANTED TO BUY KOREAN PRODUCTS BUT COULDN'T BECAUSE OF MY LOCATION. THIS IS SO BEAUTIFUL. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SHARING OMG
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