Anybody else find Mercari sellers are idiots and time-wasters?

romanaOne · Mar 23, 2023

Have you ever bought something on Mercari, only to find the seller doesn't respond and you have to wait a few days for your money to come out of escrow?

This happens to me over and over on Mercari and I'm just about fed up completely with that crap store. I suspect what happens is :

1. Mercari sellers don't check their listings very often.
2. When they finally get around to noticing someone bought something, they check to make sure the item's price hasn't gone up since they made their listing months ago and promptly forgot all about it.
3. If it did go up, they just play dead and until the sale is automatically cancelled.
4. Relist at higher price.

Hayato213 · Mar 23, 2023

Too bad that is how Mercari operated, if the seller doesn't ship within certain amount of days, the order get cancelled, the seller doesn't get pay until you give them feedback for the order, perhaps you are dealing with new or unactive seller.

FAST6191 · Mar 23, 2023

Didn't know anything of the service and will probably forget not long after I close this tab.

That said alt services go one of two ways (the becomes a new household name service is so rare that I barely even note it).

So ebay and amazon have suffered a race to the bottom. They charge fortunes, are hugely restrictive on what they do, if you do well at something they will probably undercut you and generally it is an awful way to do anything, but it is the big thing so what can you do.

Someone however looks to take a shot at the kings. Maybe they have an idea that in an ideal world would do something (escrow meaning sellers stand a chance and buyers still get something as opposed to selling basically having to up prices to account for the dishonest) but that counts for little.

Nobody grows organically any more (see blitz scaling) so some venture capital firm pays an inordinate amount of money to advertise on TV or wherever the plebs are looking, some might opt to target a market segment such that you can build from there (or at very least be the cool thing the kids are using -- facebook was originally targeted at the US colleges/universities, today it is desperately uncool as your grandmother even uses it) as well as pay a few shills aka influencers but probably not here, and also effectively pay the fees of the users (better is one thing, cheap is quite another).

You get a few good eggs that don't like the aggravation of amazon and ebay, you get the scammers/wastrels that could not make it on said same and eventually you get the Chinese drop shippers. The latter two strangle it on the vine, the good eggs and the plebs take the team easy path of continuing with the usual suspects and we go back to someone else taking a shot at the kings the year after that.

Thus is the story of the young tech startup. The 1% of the time it blows up and becomes a new household brand (etsy probably being the last one) then being how said venture capital firms get paid, and the 0.1% of the time it becomes the next microsoft, google or amazon being what they dream of.

hippy dave · Mar 23, 2023

FAST6191 said:
Didn't know anything of the service and will probably forget not long after I close this tab.

That said alt services go one of two ways (the becomes a new household name service is so rare that I barely even note it).

So ebay and amazon have suffered a race to the bottom. They charge fortunes, are hugely restrictive on what they do, if you do well at something they will probably undercut you and generally it is an awful way to do anything, but it is the big thing so what can you do.

Someone however looks to take a shot at the kings. Maybe they have an idea that in an ideal world would do something (escrow meaning sellers stand a chance and buyers still get something as opposed to selling basically having to up prices to account for the dishonest) but that counts for little.

Nobody grows organically any more (see blitz scaling) so some venture capital firm pays an inordinate amount of money to advertise on TV or wherever the plebs are looking, some might opt to target a market segment such that you can build from there (or at very least be the cool thing the kids are using -- facebook was originally targeted at the US colleges/universities, today it is desperately uncool as your grandmother even uses it) as well as pay a few shills aka influencers but probably not here, and also effectively pay the fees of the users (better is one thing, cheap is quite another).

You get a few good eggs that don't like the aggravation of amazon and ebay, you get the scammers/wastrels that could not make it on said same and eventually you get the Chinese drop shippers. The latter two strangle it on the vine, the good eggs and the plebs take the team easy path of continuing with the usual suspects and we go back to someone else taking a shot at the kings the year after that.

Thus is the story of the young tech startup. The 1% of the time it blows up and becomes a new household brand (etsy probably being the last one) then being how said venture capital firms get paid, and the 0.1% of the time it becomes the next microsoft, google or amazon being what they dream of.

Mercari are Japanese and have been around for a decade.

romanaOne · Apr 9, 2023

Yeah, I noticed that they were from Japan. I first noticed them a few years ago when I was hunting for a cheap, dead OLPC for my junk collection after reading that book about what a total clusterfuck OLPC was. Most dead OLPCs aren't really broken but suffering from a firmware bug where they won't boot if the BIOS battery and the main battery both run down. Apparently, none of the geniuses at MIT thought to test what would happen if the computer they planned to send to the 3rd world sat unpowered for a really long time.

btw, I did find an OLPC eventually.

K3Nv2 · Apr 10, 2023

I had one try to tell me broken PS3s were getting hard to find and they were having second thoughts. 2 weeks later it was still listed for sale.

Veho · Apr 10, 2023

romanaOne said:
reading that book about what a total clusterfuck OLPC was.

I don't know about the book, maybe it defends its thesis a little better, but boy the claims in that article are a gigantic unfounded ass-pull.

romanaOne said:
Apparently, none of the geniuses at MIT thought to test what would happen if the computer they planned to send to the 3rd world sat unpowered for a really long time.

I don't see why it would ever sit unpowered for a really long time. The longest time it was ever meant to stay unpowered was during the summer vacation. Was that long enough to kill the BIOS battery? Weird.

romanaOne · Apr 10, 2023

I don't understand what an ass-pull is, exactly. I did some, err, development work 20 years ago. In those days, clueless (sometimes with good intentions, sometimes not) people from rich countries thought if you just bring in computers, everything will be great. Nevermind the fact that there is no power, no running water, and bullying, sexism, and corruption are the rule, not the exception; but, hey, import a load of computers and everything will magically be wonderful.

Even if by some miracle the power is on for more than a few hours at a time, the idiot staff would not let the students go anywhere near the status-symbol computers. Then we got a printer and it all went to hell. The heads just wasted all the power printing self-aggrandizing bullshit to impress their mucky-muck friends until the power or ink run out for good.

OLPCs could sit in a container for years if some corrupt jackass in customs feels like keeping them. Maybe he didn't get a big enough bribe or has plans to steal and fence them later..... Around 2001, I found shipping containers full of Commodore 64s that had been sitting in a stockyard for years. A friend of a friend showed them to me. My friend's friend in shipping was very covetous of his cache and only let us have a quick look; maybe he thought I might make an offer or know someone who would. The C64s are probably still sitting in that yard today.

But the much more likely scenario I think is just lack of power. The little battery for the BIOS is just a non-rechargeable coin-cell watch battery: whether you use it or not, it will fail in a few years. Then, when the computer's main battery drains completely over holidays, the clock resets to 1970, the laptop bricks and you need another computer and RS232-to-usb adapter to get it to boot again.

In any case, the device became superfluous as even in 2010, people everywhere were figuring out all by themselves that phones and tablets were way more usable where the is little, none, or decaying energy and network infrastructure.

Post automatically merged: Apr 10, 2023

K3N1 said:
I had one try to tell me broken PS3s were getting hard to find and they were having second thoughts. 2 weeks later it was still listed for sale.

At least they were honest. Usually, you only get the automated messages. This happened to me quite a bit when minidisc mania started and the things went from worthless to, err, collectible. Still waiting for the Dutch Tulip moment for minidisc, LOL.

namekawa · Jun 7, 2023

Mercari is badly runMalicious sellers are also in the wild

VashTS · Jun 13, 2023

ive been crushing it on mercari over past 4 years or so - just surpassed 10k in sales

check me out if you need an RGH3 xbox. same username VashTS

AncientBoi · Jun 13, 2023

This is Good to know, as I was browsing the site for an item. Thank you.

G33ksquad · Jun 17, 2023

I’ve used Mercari for rarer gaming items, collectors items, had good luck, last time I sold a switch on eBay the buyer got it banned and tried to blame me, thankfully eBay sided with me but I’ve quit selling v1 switches on any platform after that.

Hayato213 · Oct 23, 2023

I guess I have a story to share.

So at the beginning of this month, I bought an OLED Switch bundle with a broken screen mentioned in the listing on Mercari, while I got an OLED switch with a broken screen, the switch was tempered by the seller with screws missing and the zif connector for the power and volume buttons to the motherboard broken.

I request a return with Mercari customer service and they denied the request because the seller is a power seller with zero understanding how the switch work. After arguing with Mercari customer service back and forth for several days. I decided to complaints to the better business bureau, my home state Attoney General, and California state Attorney General (Mercari headquarter in California in the US), California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, and opened a dispute with paypal.

So after arguing with Mercari for about two weeks, Mercari finally agree to process the return and will be issuing a refund.

Rumple · Oct 25, 2023

romanaOne said:
Have you ever bought something on Mercari, only to find the seller doesn't respond and you have to wait a few days for your money to come out of escrow?

This happens to me over and over on Mercari and I'm just about fed up completely with that crap store. I suspect what happens is :

1. Mercari sellers don't check their listings very often.
2. When they finally get around to noticing someone bought something, they check to make sure the item's price hasn't gone up since they made their listing months ago and promptly forgot all about it.
3. If it did go up, they just play dead and until the sale is automatically cancelled.
4. Relist at higher price.

I know. It just happen to me. I bought something and no response. Told me her mother had a stroke after I cancel it. I saw it sold on Etsy. She’s cross listing. Everything she selling on mercari is ALSO listed on Etsy. I think that’s underhanded. She blew me off and the mother story was a lie. Mercari looks at those messages.

Post automatically merged: Oct 25, 2023

Idk if my reply reached you. I bought something from a Mercari seller, and it never came, and there was no response. The person’s feedback was horrible. So many cancellations and people complaining about getting dirty stuff. And so I canceled it. And she wrote me that her mother had a stroke. But then I was googling that item and found that same item listed on Etsy in there she was. So she’s cross listing. So she blew me off so she could sell it to somebody on Etsy. I think that’s underhanded and I did tell her so. She should look at all my sales and look at your $15 and said that I was pathetic. I caught her in a lie. I’m not pathetic. She is for doing that the people. So I suspect that a lot of people are doing that. I am seeing so many complaints about this stuff. My money was tied up for like 10 days. And then I got another one on a site that starts with a P. Don’t know if I can say that here. They make me wait seven days. The person even told me that they would ship it tomorrow morning and they did not. They should not do that. list some thing on one or the other but not both. But they’re just so greedy for money, that they’ll do anything for a buck. Well I’m just about fed up with it. I may not buy anything online anymore. And then some people tell you that it’s not cracked are chipped in when I get it. It’s cracked and chipped. So it’s really getting out of hand

Post automatically merged: Oct 25, 2023

Idk if my reply reached you. I bought something from a Mercari seller, and it never came, and there was no response. The person’s feedback was horrible. So many cancellations and people complaining about getting dirty stuff. And so I canceled it. And she wrote me that her mother had a stroke. But then I was googling that item and found that same item listed on Etsy in there she was. So she’s cross listing. So she blew me off so she could sell it to somebody on Etsy. I think that’s underhanded and I did tell her so. She should look at all my sales and look at your $15 and said that I was pathetic. I caught her in a lie. I’m not pathetic. She is for doing that the people. So I suspect that a lot of people are doing that. I am seeing so many complaints about this stuff. My money was tied up for like 10 days. And then I got another one on a site that starts with a P. Don’t know if I can say that here. They make me wait seven days. The person even told me that they would ship it tomorrow morning and they did not. They should not do that. list some thing on one or the other but not both. But they’re just so greedy for money, that they’ll do anything for a buck. Well I’m just about fed up with it. I may not buy anything online anymore. And then some people tell you that it’s not cracked are chipped in when I get it. It’s cracked and chipped. So it’s really getting out of hand

ELY_M · Dec 8, 2023

I have bought item off Mercari twice. lucky, It went well for me and I am happy.

Anybody else find Mercari sellers are idiots and time-wasters?

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