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.

How do I use Qoo10 Gift Card?

If you noticed, Qoo10 has recently added a $10 gift card prize to their daily roulette. This to me is the penultimate prize from the roulette. I have no idea what is the algorithm behind this roulette, but I guess you stand a higher chance of winning the gift card if you are Gold or VIP member.

The $10 gift card on the bottom right of the wheel

I have only won it once and I forgot to screenshot the steps so I shall just explain it. The way it works is pretty simple. Once you received it, you can go to 'My Qoo10 > Q account > Gift Card'.

Click on 'My Gift Card' to redeem one (if someone sent you a gift card serial no.) or activate one (if you receive it from the roulette Q). You should see something like this:

If you are using gift card verification, just typed in the serial no. and verification no. and click 'Use'. If you received the gift card through roulette Q, the gift card will appear below the 'Gift Card Verification' part and you can just click 'Use'. The gift card value will automatically be activated and deposited in your Q-money portion of the Q-account. This amount cannot be withdrawn but is like e-cash that you can use during payment.

You may now proceed to add items to your cart and check-out through the usual way. At the Step 2 'Place Order' page, scroll down to the part on Q-account/Q-money and typed in the amount you would like to use for this payment. Fill in the payment information and click 'Order Now'.

That's it! Very easy. You will notice your Q-money decreased by the amount you used for payment!

Qoo10 Coupons/Q-points/Q-stamp, where do I start?

Hi, I have seen many newbies to Qoo10 asking about their benefits (coupons, Q-points and Q-stamp) or loyalty system. It is extremely difficult for a newbie to understand how to make full use of their loyalty system. Here, I will be sharing how to apply the various benefits and some tips in making the best out of your purchases on Qoo10.

Coupons
Generally speaking, there are 3 main categories.

• Shop coupon - Available on the shop/seller's page and applicable to items sold by the shop (subject to certain restrictions). The coupon can be applied at the cart page when you check-out.
• Item coupon - Obtainable through roulette spin, gift from someone or Q-stamp exchange. The coupon can be applied at the item page where you are choosing your options and adding it to your cart.
• Cart coupon - Obtainable through roulette spin, gift from someone or Q-stamp exchange. The coupon can be applied at the cart page when you check-out.

Occasionally, Qoo10 will have event coupons which works similar to the above 3 categories of coupons. For e.g. the 'MasterCard Item Coupon' which is an item coupon but only applicable if you check out using MasterCard. Another one is the 'Black Friday 30% Cart Coupon' which is essentially just a cart coupon available around Thanksgiving.

Within each category of coupon, there are different value or denominations. The common ones are:

• $1 coupon for minimum spending of $10
• $5 coupon for minimum spending of $30
• $10 coupon for minimum spending of $100
• 50% coupon with a maximum of $5 off

Since coupons are the easiest to obtain, for any purchases above $10, it is highly recommended to use at least one when purchasing.


Q-stamps
Q-stamps can be obtain either through roulette spinning, MameQ exchange or writing a review to a product you have purchased.

Q-stamp can be used to redeem coupons or charge Qtalk Callpoint (an app similar to whatsapp). When redeeming, note that 'EXCHANGE' means you are guaranteed to get the coupon, while 'DRAW' means you are just getting a chance to try to get a coupon. My recommendation is don't bother with drawing a coupon using your stamps.

Another use for Q-stamp is to buy items at an offer price. The items offered are shown on the Q-chance sale page: http://list.qoo10.sg/gmkt.inc/Event/QchanceSale.aspx

Q-points
Out of the 3 main types of benefits, I would say Q-points is the most valuable, but also the hardest to get. You can see Q-points as a form of online currency, where you can use to offset the cost of your purchases. It is available from roulette, buying an item, writing a review or special events.

This option is only available after you clicked on 'Place an Order' from the cart page. You will then be asked to fill in the shipping details, choose a payment option and to select if you would like to use your Q-points, if any.

As you can see from the screenshot above, there is a drop down menu to select how much Q-points you would like to offset your purchase. 100 Q-points = $1. You can only offset up to 30% of your purchases or 1,000 Q-points (i.e. you can only have a further discount of at most $10).

Additional Tips
Now that you have a clearer idea of the various types of benefits, here is my final advice to you.

1.  Always check if you can use all 3 categories of coupons (i.e. item, cart and shop coupons). If can, use all, duh!
2. If there are items you know for sure you are going to get, best is to plan which coupon to use for which item before you purchase any of the items. For e.g.you might have a 30% discount coupon and you used it on item A which only gives you a $3 discount, but you could have used it on item B which will give you a $5 discount!
3. If you have more than one cart coupon and a few times that individually satisfy the cart coupon criteria, split your payment. Pay for item 1 using one cart coupon first, before buying item 2 using another cart coupon.
4. Combine small-value items (individually <$10) during payment so you can hit $10 and at least use the $1 coupon.
5. Coupons cannot be applied to some of the time-sale or daily-deal items.
6.  You can always ask for a coupon at the Q-desk (scroll all the way down at the roulette page). Bear in mind though, that you can only receive the same type of coupon as a gift just once.
7. Earn additional Q-stamps by writing a review with a photo attachment of your purchase.