Often found at theaters and museums, Kwon Mee-yoo has covered a wide range of cultural fields from K-pop and dramas to theater and fine art for over a decade. Now as K-Culture Desk editor, she tries to connect Korean culture with global readers through fresh perspectives.
Think twice before buying shoes, bags on Internet
By Kwon Mee-yoo
Staff reporter
Jung Ji-won, a 23-year-old university student, likes to shop online as it is convenient and often cheaper than offline stores.
In May, she bought two pairs of shoes at an Internet shopping mall, but when the items were delivered to her house she found one pair was the wrong color and the other shoes were stained.
She immediately requested a refund, but the shopping mall declined to accept the returns before she paid the cost of delivery. Jung thought the seller should be responsible for the shipping fee since they sent the wrong product.
Jung had to ask the Seoul Electronic Commerce Center (SECC) to cancel the purchase and the center ordered the seller to pay the shipping.
Online shopping is getting more popular in Korea ― the volume of e-commerce in the first quarter of this year reached 5.9 trillion won ($5 billion), a 26-percent jump from the same period of last year’s 4.7 trillion won, according to the Statistics Korea.
The SECC said they received 8,312 complaints on e-commerce in the first half of the year, some 49 percent increase from the 5,566 cases the previous year.
The number of problems the center addressed more than doubled from 1,866 cases in 2009 to 3,842 this year.
“As the customer consciousness increases in Korea, we receive more complaints,” an SECC official said.
The most frequent problem is the shops rejecting accepting returned goods or giving refunds, followed by shipping postponement and closing down the website and cutting off communication.
By item, shoes and bags topped the complaints list at 42 percent, followed by clothes at 26 percent and cosmetics at 4 percent.
“Shoes, especially sports shoes worn by entertainers, have become popular and more customers are buying those online. The increase in purchases led to delays in shipping, fake products and even fake shopping malls,” the official said. “Clothes caused the most trouble in previous years, but the shoe complaints jumped 157 percent this year, compared to last year.”
By Kwon Mee-yoo
신발, 가방 인터넷 쇼핑에서 가장 골칫거리
여대생 정지원 (23)씨는 편하고 싼 온라인 쇼핑을 즐겨 한다. 지난 5월 정씨는 신발 두 켤레를 구매 하였는데 집에 배송되었을 당시 하나는 색깔이 틀리고 하나는 얼룩 투성이었다. 정씨는 환불을 요청했지만 쇼핑몰은 배송비를 부담하기 전까지 환불을 거절했다.
정씨는 쇼핑몰 측에서 잘못 보냈기 때문에 배송비를 내야 마땅하다 생각하고 전자상거래에 거래를 취소했다. 전자상거래는 판매업자에게 배송비를 지불하라고 지시했다.
온라인 거래는 지난 1분기 5조9,000억원의 거래를 하는 등 엄청나게 늘어났다. 전자상거래는 지난달 8,312 건의 피해구제 신청이 들어왔다.
전자상거래 관계자는 “소비자 의식이 늘어나면서 더욱 많은 항의를 받는다” 고 말했다.
자주 일어나는 문제는 온라인 가게들이 환불과 교환을 거절하고 배송을 연기하며 웹사이트를 닫고 연락을 두절하는 것이다.
상품별 구제 요청은 신발과 가방이 42%로 가장 많았고 그 다음으로 옷이 26%를 차지했다.