I've purchased two Kpop related items until now, and I've been pleased with both of them! I was hesitant at first to actually buy something from the website after seeing a lot of negative reviews about it. But to me, it seemed like it was the only Kpop website that sells newly released items for a reasonable price and they also claim that all of the items they're selling are 100% authentic. Their prices are higher than the item's original retailing price, which is common to me since I've visited a lot of other websites and they've had the same policy. Anyways, I thought of giving it a try. First of all, I purchased the BT21xConverse white, lowcut sneakers, the first they were officially released and began being sold on the website (July 27). They were about $103. As I checked out, I realized that the shipping was quite expensive for both express and kpacket, but it also depends on where you live. I live in Saudi Arabia which is quite far from South Korea so of course the shipping will cost more than if you were living anywhere near Korea. Anyways, I chose express shipping (3-7 business days) which cost me $38. So that's a whopping $141 for a pair of sneakers, but I didn't mind as long as they were comfortable, able to be used for a few years without getting really damaged and liked the design. After 3 days (July 30), they've sent me an email, notifying me that my order has been shipped as well as they gave me a tracking number. And after 6 days, I was notified that my package had arrived at my local post office. Once I received my package, I was glad to see that it wasn't damaged at all. And when I went through it to see the shoebox's condition, it wasn't damaged as well. Also, my sneakers fitted me perfectly and they were SO comfortable. I was pleased by this purchase.

The second time using this website, is when the new Official BTS army bomb ver 3 was available to pre order (July 28). It cost about $38.90 without the batteries, which is pretty reasonable. The express shipping how ever was WAY pricier than expected. It was $34.90, so I paid $73.80 for both the army bomb and shipping. However, the army bomb wasn't released until August 9, and K-Armys were able to have it delivered on August 10. Luckily, they actually shipped it on August 10, and it took about 4-5 days to arrive at the local post office. But, I wasn't able to receive it until today (August 25) because the employees were on a holiday. But anyways, like the first package, it wasn't damaged it all and the photo cards were in amazing condition as well as the light stick itself.

I'm very please with both of my shopping experiences, and I would definitely purchase more Kpop merchandise from them soon!

What a joke.

I purchased Taeyeon's persona photobook on the 19th of September, and it arrived a month later. I thought this was strange because usually things only take about two weeks to get to me in the UK from South Korea. But anyway, I didn't mind the wait too much. I opened the package up to find that the photo book was damaged in two different places. I was very disappointed, as you can imagine, and decided to contact them to see if a replacement could be sent to me or if I could get some of my money back. I sent the following email on the 17th of October:
"Dear sir/madam,
I recently pre-ordered Taeyeon's persona photobook from your store and it arrived today. However, I was disappointed to see that it was damaged in a couple of areas. I have attached photos of the damage.
I am writing to ask what can be done about this as I am a first time buyer and this has left me feeling quite disappointed. Is it possible to get a replacement sent out to me?
Regards,"

They replied three days later with:
"Thanks a lot for your confirmation photos
We are sorry for trouble.
We can give you 1 USD partial refund as compensation in our side.
Because exchanging is very hard for international shipping.
So we can give you partial refund. Please kindly understand
Difficulties of international shipping.
Please give us your reply.
Sincerely yours.
Kpoptown Customers Service."
Fair enough, they apologised, but 1 dollar? That is almost insulting. I'd get about 70p back for a damaged product. I wrote back the same day:
"Hello,
Thank you for getting back to me. While a partial refund is preferable, a $1 refund is slightly insulting considering the damage. I would expect at least a 10% partial refund, and even that is not much. I paid for a new product so I expected it to be in great condition, which it was not. It arrived damaged in two areas which is unacceptable as the seller has a responsibility to package their goods well enough that they do not sustain damage during shipping.
Regards,"

Five days later all they replied with was "We can give you 2.5 USD partial refund as compensation in our side." That's it, no "dear customer." I was beginning to get very annoyed. I didn't and still don't consider 2.5 dollars to be enough. But at this point I was fed up and just decided to accept the offer, and not shop there again. So the same day I replied stating I accepted, and expected them to issue a refund via paypal. I heard nothing. I emailed again on the 6th of November, asking them what was going on. Still nothing, so I emailed AGAIN on the 13th. They finally replied saying that they would refund me with a store voucher!

What good is a store voucher to me when I'm never going to buy anything from them again? I emailed back: "No, you never said anything before about a store refund voucher. I want my money back rather than a voucher as I wont be buying anything from you again. I paid with PayPal so it will be easy to issue a refund through there."
They replied: "We are sorry but we can give partial cover damage refund through
Voucher code only."
My reply: "That is not good enough!
I wont be able to use that voucher! Why should I buy anything from you again after my item was damaged? If this was the only way you could refund it, you should have said so at the beginning of these emails." This was sent on the 20th of November.

A lot of time passed and I decided to email them again after hearing nothing. On the 8th of December (yes they never bothered to reply in that amount of time) I said: "Hello,
Again it has been a long time since you have replied. Are you going to issue me with a refund or continue to ignore me?"
I finally recieved a response today which read: "We are sorry but we can give partial cover damage refund through
Voucher code only
Sincerely yours.
Kpoptown Customers Service." The. Exact. Same. Response. So I replied:
"Again, a voucher code is not acceptable, you mentioned nothing previously about it and now all of a sudden you offer a voucher code. A voucher code is useless to me, why would I buy from you again after this experience? I will need a refund via PayPal soon otherwise I will be opening a case with them."

So the moral of the story is: NEVER SHOP WITH KPOPTOWN. THEY ARE AN ABSOLUTE JOKE OF A COMPANY WHO'S CUSTOMER SERVICE IS BASICALLY NON EXISTENT. THEY ARE HIGHLY UNPROFESSIONAL AND IF YOUR ITEM ARRIVES DAMAGED, THEY SIMPLY DO NOT CARE.
I usually never write reviews but I felt I had to in this case. Please, spare yourself and shop somewhere else.

Hopefully the threat of opening a case causes them to actually do something.

Bad costumer service paid extra shipping fee for nothing!
Never purchase from this website again!

EDIT:
I escalated to claim on Paypal and finally after almost two months I managed to get my money back. Of course, not thanks to Kpoptown's cooperation since they proceeded to ignore me right until the very end. They probably thought that if they ignore my claim, it'll just go away but unfortunately for them and luckily for me that's not the case. Never again.

Original story below:

Worst experience ordering something online in my whole life!

It was my first time trying out kpoptown since I usually order from somewhere else but they were the only one that offered 2 different posters when you preordered both versions of BTS' YNWA album and I was also buying the Epilogue DVD which made them the overall cheapest option (albeit not by far).

Boy, did things go south pretty fast. I had 2 different addresses listed on my profile - the bill address in Europe and another in Japan because I lived there for a year. I chose the European one and everything - the address, the shipping fee - was fine right up until I confirmed the payment on paypal because when my order finished processing the invoice I got had my old Japanese address on it and they also actually charged me for shipping to Japan. (I never input my Japanese address when using that paypal account and I even checked to make sure of that so that couldn't've been at fault.)

I immediately contacted their Custom Service via the contact form on their site explaining the situation. Granted, I did not notice that you're supposed to include the order no. In the body of the message because you already have to input it in the contact form itself so that's on me but still. It took 2 whole days for them to get back to me and they asked me for my order # and the correct address which I promptly email them back with.
Or at least I /tried/ to because it took another 2 days before I got the "failure to deliver message" notification. I was using a slightly obscure local email server so I figured that might've been to blame so I changed to gmail and messaged them again. And again. Finally they replied me to pay them the amount necessary to cover the difference in shipping fees and tell them the transaction number and I did it as soon I received the message. I even added a short explanation when making the payment via paypal, informing them of my order no. And including a screenshot of their request. Of course that particular email was no different and it also ended in failure to deliver so I typed out a long message detailing out the situation for the umpteenth time and provided them with all the required info including the address, transaction no. And all.

I didn't hear back from them in a while so I messaged them using the contact form again asking for an update & confirmation that they did indeed receive the money and actually revised the delivery address to which they replied and I quote, "we are sorry but we cannot hear from you for address change for order (...) we got updated like (wrong address)".

So I freaking messaged them again and today they got back to me with an outrageous email saying that it's too late to revise or cancel the order because "it is being delivered to post office or cannot withdraw your order details from thousands of deliver list"? This was the last straw so I sent them 2 very angry capslock messages demanding that they either revise the order or cancel it and just informing them what I think about their abysmal incompetence and total inability to do their job in general.
The order status still being stuck on "payment accepted" aside, where do they even find the gall to tell a customer who's been doing way much more than they have been to solve the arisen problem that sorry no can do because no. And also how do they even dare to proceed with the order when they've been aware of an ongoing issue with it for weeks now? They should've freaking put it on hold or whatever, they should've done SOMETHING but in these 3 weeks they didn't make a single effort to fix it.

As a whole, all of their replies to my elaborate, very polite and understanding emails were really curt and offered little to none information. Not to mention that each time I had to explain my situation from the very beginning and even when I took care to attach screenshots of my previous conversations with their CS, the person who replied would have no clue about anything and be totally unhelpful.

I've been so upset and mad at them since I got that ridiculous email but since I can't really do anything more right now anyway, I'm going to wait for their answer and if they still insist that it's not their problem to solve, I'm taking this up with paypal.

I have little faith in this freaking mess being cleaned up in satisfactory manner but even if I do eventually manage to get them to ship my order to my country (which I doubt), I'm never ever ordering anything from them again and will advice everyone I know against it as well.

Case in point: don't ever order from kpoptown. You may luck out like some people and get your order without a hitch but if by chance a problem with your order arises, kpoptown CS sure as hell won't move a finger to help you solve it.

EDIT: Of course they did ship my order to the wrong address. I already got a refund for the additional payment I made but I had to file a complaint with Paypal for it to happen because to my message (on pp) that I want a refund for a service I didn't receive (ie shipping to Poland), they replied with a tracking number for a package sent to Japan? It's like their staff doesn't understand what's being spoken to them. I'm waiting for the package to get returned to the sender and then I'm filing another complaint with PP because trying to reason with them directly just yields no results.

I all warn everyone before ordering from Kpoptown! I ordered there twice. The first order had a lot of bumps but could happen from the shipping too so I didnt make a huge deal out of it. This time I do. They simply dont seem to care much about their customers and ignore them in many ways. I contacted them through e-mail, the website itself, facebook (which all of a sudden I got blocked on?) and tumblr. On e-mail I got a vague reply that didnt help me at all, the website twice sent me a pre-made e-mail in return. Telling me to wait. Wait what? Another month or two?

I kindly asked them twice to approach me to tell me what is wrong with the goods I ordered. A Limited edition $#*! of Zico which soon got removed of the website. What worries me because why is it suddenly gone? Thats why I e-mailed in the first place. I wanted to see if I could change my order to a Taeil shirt if Zico wasnt available anymore before he would sell out.
Next to that I ordered goods that all were in stock (the Zico shirt included). I made sure they could be here on time/ soon because Im always overly excited when I order stuff. But do you think they reply?

I even paid extra for fast shipping and they just dont give a damn? I now contacted them through paypal because I am fed up found out they use another e-mail account on that one. (I already have been contacted in 3 different e-mails?) So honestly. Are they scammers or what? They sell stuff they dont even seem to own. Sell stuff that arent in stock at all. This is so so sad. And it always seem to happen to kpop fans more. (Scamming and lies)

I have to add that I am not a person who is $#*!-talking just someone or a shop when I have a bad experience. But I really just have a horrible feeling over this all. I myself work in a company and its just unacceptable to carelessly handle a complain like that. The three email addresses thing just alarms me too. I am also not a person who easily complains, if the Zico shirt was going to be sold out Id change it for another member right away. Also I am fine with waiting - I already wait 4 months for ToppDogg Albums and I am more than fine with that. But not ignoring me or keeping a person updated and promising fast shipping? Its all false advertisement.

UPDATE:
On 6-2-2017 I finally have my good shipped to me. Sadly again they don't care about customers and didn't even take the time to send me an email with information. Just an empty one with nothing in it.

I am not excited to know how badly my package will look.