Understanding Gmarket's Smile Cash, Smile Point, Gcash, Coupon and Gstamp

For Gmarket users, you would be familiar with the various payment supplements or benefits that Gmarket has. Log in to your Gaccount and you will be greeted with a overview of your points, gcash, coupon and gstamps. With so many different types of benefits, I wished they would streamline some of them or expand them to make staying loyal with Gmarket more worthwhile.

I will describe the uses of each benefit in order of their value i.e. from most valuable to least valuable.

Smile Cash
This is cash. Your refund, compensation or shipping fee differences will be returned to you via smile cash. Another way of getting smile cash is through converting your smile points (I will touch on this later).

Gcash
This is similar to Smile Cash in the sense that they are both cash. However, you can only receive Gcash through events by Gmarkets. Another difference is that while you can withdraw Smile Cash to your bank account, you can't do that for Gcash.

Smile Points
Once you reached 10,000 smile points, you can convert it to Smile Cash. They have an expiry date of two years from when you first received the points. You can receive smile points through the daily lucky draw or applying for it when you clocked certain days of attendance.

Coupons
In most instances, you will only encounter coupons during your purchase. You can either exchange for it using Gstamps (refer below), through daily lucky draw or the basic monthly coupons.

Here's where you can download your monthly coupons:

You can check the conditions, expiry date and amount of your coupon in your Gaccount:

The coupons can be applied to your purchased product either on the product page or in your cart.

Gstamps

Basically kind of useless. You can only use it to draw or exchange for coupons. Like I mentioned earlier, in most cases there will not be lack of coupons, so I seldom have to use Gstamps. They are also one of the easiest to obtain - from daily lucky day to writing product reviews.

Which EZbuy service should I use? Ship for me or Buy for me?

EZbuy, formerly known as 65daigou, was one of the pioneering Taobao purchasing agents in Singapore. I have used their service to get some stuff from Taobao previously and it was a breeze. However, ever since Taobao started their own forwarding service, I have stopped using EZbuy.

Recently, I have been hooked on buying stuff from US. I came back to EZbuy again after finding out they now provide forwarding service for US parcels! I have since tried their Ship-for-me and Buy-for-me service and here's a lowdown on which service will be more suitable depending on your needs.

The Service
Ship-for-me means you place and pay for the order yourself and ask them to ship to EZbuy overseas warehouse. Thereafter, they will ship to Singapore and you pay for the shipment.
Buy-for-me means you ask EZbuy to help you place and pay for the order. On top of the shipping fee to Singapore, you also have to pay for an agent handling fee.

International credit card
This is the most important criteria in determining whether you can even use ship-for-me service. If the website you are buying from does not allow international credit cards or modes of payment e.g. paypal, you will not be able to use ship-for-me service. Your only option is to use buy-for-me and EZbuy will charge you an additional 10% handling fee on top of your product cost and agent fee (if any).

Agent Fee
In terms of pricing, the only difference between the two services is the agent fee. If you are familiar with the website you are purchasing from, you can use ship-for-me and save on the agent fee.
However, I do notice EZbuy does a lot of promotions where they waived the agent fee. You can also use EZbuy credits to offset part of the agent fee for buy-for-me.

Risk of missing/wrong parcel
What I refer to as missing parcel is when it goes missing from the shop to EZbuy warehouse. If you had chosen buy-for-me, you won't have this issue because EZbuy would be accountable for helping you purchase and ensuring it arrived at their warehouse. If anything goes wrong in between, I would expect them to be the ones liaising with the seller. Also, EZbuy helps to inspect the parcel to ensure the item the seller delivered is the right one e.g. colour, size is correct.

Website promotions
Some US stores may offer promotions where they require to key in promo code for a discount. Both service allows you to take advantage of the promotions. You can key it in yourself for ship-for-me or include in the remarks for EZbuy to do when they buy for you. However, certain promo code may have restrictions e.g. only for new accounts or the promo code is tied to certain email. In this case, you will only be able to do it through the ship-for-me service yourself.
Further to that, if you find yourself frequent a particular store often, you want to use ship-for-me service and start building up those loyalty points or VIP benefits yourself!

Timeliness
My experience with EZbuy buy-for-me service is that it can be slow. If the order is not straightforward, they might get back to you and seek your opinion before proceeding. For e.g. if you mis-calculated the total price (including the shipping), they will inform you that you need to top up additional $x and ask if you are agreeable to it. This might take one or two days depending on how fast they or you reply.
This also brings me back to my previous point on website promotions. If the store has a flash sale and an item is only on offer for a day, EZbuy might not be able to place the order in time or the product might be sold out.

I generally would prefer to use ship-for-me service and have used it at least 3 times already. I find their buy-for-me service to be very slow and I wouldn't have used it if not for the website doesn't allow international credit card. I paid for my item 4 days ago and till now I don't think they have purchased it yet. Day 1 was spent asking if I'm ok to top up additional 10% fee because the shop doesn't accept international credit card. Day 2 was spent telling me that I miscalculated the shipping fee which I have no idea why because when I carted it, it has free shipping. Day 3 was spent telling me that the link I gave them for one of the items did not work (that's because they took quite some time and the item was sold out). Now, I'm still waiting for the status to change from 'purchasing' to 'purchased' for my 1 item.

Review: Everlane's The Modern Point

If you followed my blog you would have read my review on Everlane's Modern Loafer which I said I was pleased with the look of the loafer.

Now, the very first shoe at Everlane that caught my eye wasn't the modern loafer, but the modern point. I was hesitant to get it because of the price but ultimately, the need to have it overcame my hesitancy. I was looking for a comfortable and basic shoe for everyday work wear and Everlane's The Modern Point just looks to be the one.

When I first opened the box and took out the pair of modern point, the first thought was 'wow, it's huge'. For a moment I thought I could have gotten a size larger. However, when I put it in, it fitted like a glove.

Like what the other reviews said, the leather used in the modern point is definitely softer than the loafer. Design-wise, it probably won't be much of a head-turner as compared to the loafer but at least it's sleek and clean-cut. For the record, I ordered half a size up from my usual size and it was the right decision. The modern point is more suitable for semi-formal and casual wear with the pointy toes giving it a more upgraded feel.

The soles are still an issue. You can see it has a plasticky shimmery look, so I added some anti-slip stickers to the front part. I would highly recommend buyers to do that as it can get slippery at times. I do appreciate the white strip design at the heel as it adds a touch of elegance to a otherwise standard looking pair of flats.

So far so good, I like how it looks on me though I have yet to walk long distance on my modern point, Hopefully it performs better than the loafer!

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Update: I figured I needed to size up by another 0.5! I'm a standard 6.5 but have gone with a 7 for the modern point based on Everlane's recommendation. Still, I feel it's a bit pinching on my heels and toes for one of my feet.