Curious about this online marketplace? We’ve been using Mercari for years now and wanted to share our thoughts. Keep reading for our in-depth Mercari reviews!
Mercari is a popular marketplace for people to sell all types of products. From clothing to accessories to home decor to electronics, you can find it all. Unfortunately, I’ve read quite a few negative Mercari reviews where people were scammed and started questioning if the site was legit.
Having purchased (and sold) various items on Mercari for over 6 years, I figured I’d clear the air on the subject and help anyone who’s on the fence make a decision!
What is Mercari?
Mercari is an e-commerce marketplace that anyone can join to sell and buy almost anything. Most people use their app, but they also have a website as well (view it here!).
Mercari is very similar to other selling apps such as Poshmark and Depop. With Mercari, you choose the price of what you want to sell and can change it if you need to. For example, if your item isn’t selling, you might decide buyers think it’s too expensive and lower the price.
Mercari Overview
To list an item on Mercari, all you have to do is take some pictures of your item, then post it with a description, the price, and whether or not shipping is free for your item. In order to give your buyers free shipping, that means YOU have to pay for the shipping. Mercari itself does not pay for shipping.
As a seller, once you make a sale, you have 3 business days to ship the item or the sale can be canceled. It’s also important that you have an accurate weight of your item for shipping or the buyer will be responsible for the extra shipping fees, which means they will probably rate you poorly.
As a buyer, once you receive the item you have 3 days to inspect it and either accept it or initiate a return. You also have the chance to rate the seller on the transaction.
As far as selling fees go, Mercari takes a 10% selling fee of whatever you’re selling. Additionally, they charge a payment and processing fee which is 2.9% + 0.30. These fees are taken out of the payment amount you receive from selling your item.
RELATED: ThredUp vs. Poshmark – Which Should You Shop (or Sell) At?
Our Mercari Reviews
Overall: ★★★★ 4 stars
We have used Mercari numerous times and have found that it’s a legit platform that is easy to buy and sell items. Most negative complaints come from people being scammed, but there are a lot of precautions you can take to make sure the items you are buying are legit. We’ll talk more about this below!
Experience: ★★★★ 4 stars
It’s very easy to sell and buy on Mercari. All you have to do is list your item, print out a shipping label, and then ship it. Just make sure you have the correct weight for your item or it might not ship/ your buyer might have to pay the extra fees and then rate you poorly.
As a buyer, it’s easy to buy and communicate with the seller. Just make sure to check their ratings on their profile first to make sure other buyers had a good experience. This is one of the easiest ways to make sure you aren’t getting scammed. If they have poor ratings, no ratings, or only have automatic ratings from Mercari, this is probably a sign you should not buy from that seller.
Customer Service: ★★★★ 4 stars
Although some people say they had a negative experience with customer service, there are a lot of other people who had a positive experience with them. It seems more people have good experiences than bad.
What Others Are Saying
Although we have used Mercari for years and had good experiences, we still wanted to search the web for other reviews to see how they rate the company. Overall, here are the main points of feedback from other Mercari users. Most say that:
- Mercari is easy to use
- It’s a great place to find and sell items
- Most negative complaints are of being scammed; if you take proper precautions, you can greatly reduce this risk, however.
- Some people complain that the selling fees are too high while others say they are much lower than other selling sites.
Is Mercari Legit?
As a company, Mercari is completely legit. However, there’s no guarantee that people selling or buying are legit since anyone can join the website.
That being said, Mercari has plenty of guidelines in place to help avoid scams.
For one, the seller doesn’t receive their money until the buyer receives their item. The buyer has 3 days to report anything wrong with the item, and then the funds will be released to the seller unless something was wrong.
They also don’t allow people to take business outside of the platform. Some sellers will request this so they can save money on the seller fees, but some will also try to scam you. When you do business outside of Mercari, your purchase isn’t protected, so make sure to stay on the platform.
How to Avoid Scams on Mercari
Instead of blindly purchasing from anyone on the site, there are quite a few precautions you can take to minimize the risk of being scammed.
Never do business outside of the platform – This is against Mercari guidelines for a reason. When you do this, your purchase isn’t protected and you won’t be able to get your money back if anything goes awry.
Check seller feedback – When buying from a seller who has tons of great feedback, it’s very very likely they will deliver what they promise. I especially recommend this if you’re buying a more expensive item.
Confirm your order – Once your order is marked as delivered, you have 3 days to request a refund if anything is wrong. After this, Mercari will assume everything is fine and the funds will be released to the buyer. So, if anything is wrong, make sure to let them know within these 3 days.
Avoid electronics – One big problem on Mercari is fake products. To avoid these, it might be a good idea to just avoid purchasing higher-end electronics altogether (especially Apple products). Fakes have become pretty surprisingly close to the real thing, so you might not even realize it’s not real. Odds are, if it’s an amazing deal, it’s too good to be true, so you might as well just purchase it somewhere else.
That said, cheaper items are less likely to be fakes. For example, I purchased a used Instax camera from someone who didn’t want theirs anymore and it was perfect.
For sellers, get a weight receipt at the post office – Unfortunately, sellers can be scammed too. Some buyers will order something and say the box was empty, resulting in a refund (sometimes they will even ban the seller). So, when you drop off the package, take an extra minute to get a receipt that shows the weight of your package.
For sellers, check buyer reviews – You shouldn’t only check Mercari reviews when you’re buying products – sellers should check the reviews of your buyer as well! If your buyer has great feedback, it’s less likely they’re trying to scam.
Bottom Line
At the end of the day, Mercari is a very legit company and I have made hundreds of purchases and sales on this platform. As long as you check buyer feedback and don’t do business outside of the platform, you’re in good hands!
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