Overseas Hotel-Related Complaints Increased Double

- Consultation through Cross Border Transaction

Consumer Portal(crossborder.kca.go.kr) possible -

Recently, overseas purchase has become new consuming patterns. As a result, there have been 2,632 cases of overseas purchase-related complaints reported to the Korea Consumer Agency(President Ha, Kyeon-pyo), which is a 28 percent increase compared to the first quarter(2,057 cases).

* Analyzing cases reported to Cross Border Transaction Consumer Portal (crossborder.kca.go.kr) run by the Korea Consumer Agency or to 1372 Consumer Consultation Network

□ Consultation of overseas purchasing agents has decreased but overseas direct purchase counselling has rapidly increased

After analyzing 2,632 cases of overseas purchase related complaints, agent services such as purchasing and shipping of items & services accounted for more than half(1,611 cases, 61.2%), which is a 0.6 percent decrease compared to last year. On the other hand, overseas direct purchase accounted for 681 cases(25.9%), which went by 116.2 percent year-on-year. This demonstrates that consumers’ growing capacities from increased overseas direct purchase have turned agent services into direct purchase in terms of overseas purchase

[The status of types of overseas purchase]

*Etc: types of transactions unknown

□ Service related complaints of overseas purchase such as overseas hotel reservation increased by 85.0 percent compared to last year

After analyzing 2,480 cases, “items“ accounted for 1,812 cases(73.1%), only 20.2% up from last year while ”services” increased by 85.0%. This shows that the main purchasing item has changed to services from items.

In particular, consultation of overseas hotel reservation increased by 109.6 percent. So consultation of global lodging reservation webites “Agoda”(headquartered in Singapore) and “Booking.com”(headquartered in the Netherlands) has increased by 257.1 percent and 235.3 percent respectively.

□  Efforts to prevent consumer damage reflecting overseas purchasing trends

The Korea Consumer Agency will focus on the prevention of consumer damage from cross-border transactions based on the analysis result of complaints from overseas purchase. In particular, it will look into contract terms of global lodging reservation websites since the hotel-related complaints are growing.

On the other hand, the KCA has made every effort to handle consumer damage from cross-border transactions including obtaining contact points with business who suffered damage. It has also signed MOUs with relevant organizations.

* Countries with MOUs: 6 countries including the U.S., Japan, Thailand and Vietnam(Singapore and Hongkong to be signed in May)

In addition, the KCA has provided prevention information from overseas purchase as well as information regarding tariff, customs clearance, parallel imports through “http://crossborder.kca.go.kr” so that consumers can purchase overseas products safely. It also said that consumers need to refer to “guidelines for overseas direct purchase“ and ”checkpoint for the prevention from overseas direct purchase“.