Korean Job Discussion Forums

[tismecasie]

Hi, I was wondering if anyone has used or heard anything about the Flight Service from the Arrival Store?

http://www.thearrivalstore.com/tas-flight-service.html

[foullows]

I'm not so much interested in the flight service that they offer, but I would like to know if anyone has used any of their other products and if it was worth it.

[young_clinton]

How can they be sure you're going to pay them back later? What if the job you're going to is a Hogwan?

If it's too good to be true then it isn't true. $150 is not enough for them to make profit off of this kind of arrangement.

[YTMND]

[tismecasie]

No..I'm not advertising. I'm planning on coming to Korea sometime at the beginning of next year and it has been hard saving up enough money. I was just curious about this company. I haven't found much information online about anyone using this service which makes me hesitant to trust them & I don't want to waste $150.

[TASscot]

Hi Guys,

Great thoughts on the product. I'm Scot, I work with The Arrival Store. Just a couple of clarifications.

1. We learned awhile back that it doesn't do us much good to try advertising through forums on Dave's ESL. Come to find out people don't look to fondly on that ; -). We are not fond of shooting ourselves in the foot so we stopped that pretty quickly. We monitor the conversations of course, and will give input when it is directly related to our products.

I can assure you tismecasie doesn't work with us or do we know her/him. tismecasie if you have any questions and need further explanation give our office a call no pressure whatsoever. All the phone numbers are on our website under contact us.

2. There is no hidden catch to the TAS Flight Service. It's exactly as it is stated on our website. If you are unable to purchase your plane ticket upfront we will purchase your flight for you for a fee, and you will have 60 days to reimburse the ticket price. These are limited to 10 customers per month. The 60 days typically gives people plenty of time to collect the reimbursement and possibly their first paycheck. We sell out of the flight service pretty much every month, so it isn't something we need to push very hard.

3. In terms of getting you to use your money to buy other products. This isn't necessary, we also offer an Order Now Pay Later (ONPL) option for all items but the Flight Service. This gives the customer 60 days to pay once they've arrived in the country interest free. Currently the ONPL is free, but we'll soon be adding a $10.00 surcharge to ONPL orders because it takes us about 5 times longer to process the paperwork and do the billing than a normal Credit Card order.

So I think that Credit Cards are a great option for flights too YTMD.

4. The philosophy behind the Order Now Pay Later and TAS Flight Service comes from our own experience as English teachers. We were broke when we started out teaching. We scraped by for a long time , it was tough to save enough to purchase plane tickets AND get our apartment set up AND have any fun. We thought the ONPL option and flight service would help customers who were in a similar situation as us.

I hope this info helps a bit. If you ever have any questions or tips for us please get in touch with me.

Just trying to do our job and do it well and be straight forward about it.

Scot

[radcon]

What a strange business model. What is your guarantee that the "customer" will pay for the ticket when he gets reimbursed by the school. And you mentioned that you "sell out" of the airfares every month? How do you sell out this type of service?

[TASscot]

1. Guarantees are put in place between the customers and TAS
2. A set amount of funds are allocated to this service, limiting the number

[radcon]

[YTMND]

Here is where I draw the ethical line. If the service is meant to help those without funds and also refuse to use a credit card, then it sounds like a really nice option. This doesn't have to be Korea only flights, it could also apply to teachers going to China because they don't get reimbursed immediately or as soon as teachers in Korea. The price is still the same, regardless if the monthly salary is lower. This factor could be good or bad for a service like this to include themselves on the China market. However, since things are very cheap in China, you won't be spending much of your salary anyway.

The products being offered also seem to have a more hidden agenda. After all, this is where the seller can make more money. So, I am wary of a service offering both a flight and products.

Do teachers get to pay back later for the products too? If so, then I would be less suspicious. However, that would limit the funds available for a flight.

So, what I would do is have 2 independent sites. One site would only address flights, and the other would only address products. This way, there is a distinct offer of a flight for those who need help, and then there is another distinct offer of products at a more normal price and that need to be paid in full.

This way, if I had the money already for a flight but not the products, I could go to the products site and see what I needed, pay for the products, and then give the rest as a down payment for the flight.

This also gives the service more money to work with since I might be left with more than $150. I then pay a smaller amount back later. A service like this would find some middle ground and offer cheaper flights too, saving the customer in the end instead of having them buy a ticket elsewhere and buying the products they wanted elsewhere as well. You could either reduce the cost of the flight or add some promotional aspect to buy 2 or more items and get a certain amount off on the flight. I am only an ideas man, not a numbers person, so someone else will have to fill in that gray area.

If I have already chosen against credit card purchases (hypothetically), then I would want to pay off my loans immediately and not wait. That's the concept of having the credit card to begin with.

So, perhaps this is a legit service, but I think it needs some tweaking to be presented as a suitable business plan to the customer's mind.

Less $150 promotion, less buyer beware attitude.

[TASscot]

YTMND, thanks for the comments.

A couple more clarifications:

Flights are purchased at discounted rates as you recommend. Customers confirm the flights and prices before purchasing. They are provided with an invoice from the airline for the ticket price that they can provide to their employer etc.

The customer can choose to purchase any products they would like according to their needs. They do not need to purchase the Flight Service in order to purchase products. Everything can be purchased a-la-carte.

There is no hidden agenda with the products, we sell products like any other store at prices the market sets, we just deliver them to a convenient location where the customer can access them as soon as they arrive.

Order Now Pay Later purchases, can be paid off at any point within 60 days. So if the customer wants to pay them a couple of weeks vs. 60 days, that's totally fine. Same is true with the flight service, if they would like to pay the ticket or a portion of the ticket ahead of time, they are are welcome to do so.



[/quote]

[YTMND]

[busanliving]

Jeez YTMND what are you getting so stressed about?

It's common to sell discounted flights online
Taking a deposit is less common but not unheard of
Exactly how many examples of stores that sell things online and deliver the products would you like? 10? 100? 1000?

As for claims they should do the same for teachers going to china, well inpersonally think HP sauce should sell their product here but they are a business and they chose which markets to operate in.

[alwaysbeclosing100]

im not interested in using the service and im about as buyer beware as they come.......but from a business standpoint i think it might be profitable and legitimate.......the business might take some tweaking and i think the $150 is a low fee.........if i was running it and you pulled a runner/nonpayment i would certainly slap the debt on your US credit report.........for nonpayment in korea i would get a court judgement against the borrower.........but this seems like a lot of work for $150 per loan..........i would be interested to know the default rate since the business started...........

having met plenty of broke no money new teachers i dont doubt there is a demand for the service........15%(150usd on a 1000 ticket) seems a low return for what amounts to a subprime type of debt......

[luckylady]