Overseas Direct Purchase, Refund or Replace Takes an Average 20 days and Procedures are more Complicated

- Check “Refund Guide” through Cross Border Transaction Consumer Portal –

      Recently, complicated procedures of refund and exchange are making it difficult for consumers to change or cancel order on items that they bought during Black Friday season, the biggest sale of the year, for a simple change of a mind or other minor reasons.

    According to KCA(www.kca.go.kr), many consumers file a complaint for “problems after making a purchase decision such as difficulty in exchange or refund of items”. Consumers can have an easy access to information of “order, purchase, delivery” on overseas shopping websites (hereinafter refer to as “shopping websites”), while information on “refund and exchange” are inaccurate and not enough that consumers’ complaints grow.

□ Refund policy overly complicated and too many factors to check

    In case of overseas purchase (Includes refund, the same applies to below), besides factors such as simple change of mind, item damage during delivery process, and receiving an item different from order, due to unique characteristics of overseas purchase, various problems occur including unexpected customs and duty fees (hereinafter refer to as “duty”).

    For refund, there are more factors to go through such as different refund policy for each website, international logistics, language barrier, tax refund and others thereby, procedures are more difficult and complicated than domestic e-commerce.

□ Refund process takes 19.6days on average, ranging from 10 to 38days at most

    According to KCA research conducted on overseas purchase refund cases, on average, it takes 19.6days, showing huge gap among different cases ranging from 10 to as many as 38days. International delivery fees of refund differed depending on whether mistakes were made by shopping websites or not, and purchase policy (availability of refund fee subsidy) and it also turned out that paying tax in advance takes longer time to get refund.

    Consumers can easily get tax refund thorough customs agent or international logistics company, but these methods are costly and when consumers themselves go through these procedures, they face complex and difficult procedures such as declaring import, requesting tax refund, and visiting customs service office or post office.

□ To simply explain difficult procedures, KCA developed “Refund Guide”

    KCA developed “Refund Guide” based on advice from Korea Customs Service. The guidance shows specific details on how to get refund (including export declaration, tax refund, and etc.) This guideline is useful since it encompasses checklist of refund or replace, how much time and money it takes, various tips, FAQ and others that are useful to overseas direct purchase consumers. The guideline was created using infographic method and consumers can get access by visiting “Cross Border Transaction Consumer Portal (http://crossborder.kca.go.kr)”.