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Mercari - pros and cons?

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SunPony:
I've been thinking about branching out in my pony-purchasing, specifically using Mercari.  Do you use Mercari?  What are its pros and cons?  Anything I should watch out for?  I'm familiar with eBay, Craigslist, and Facebook Marketplace, but I understand that it is different from all of those...

Thanks for any tips.

LadyMoondancer:
I don't really have anything to contribute except I bought clothes off there a few times and it went fine.  I can't remember what I used to pay . . . I want to say it was Paypal.

StarryEmerald24:
I use Mercari and eBay back and forth. I think Mercari is pretty easy to use on the app. I check both because sometimes one will have better deals on something than the other. You don't have auctions like you do on eBay, which is probably the biggest difference.

I will say I've more likely had purchases cancelled on Mercari or Facebook Marketplace than on eBay (but it was only a few out of dozens and dozens of purchases over the last year or two; it's just one of those things that it hasn't happened much but it's odd it happened multiple times, ya know? - thinking of that Doofenschmirtz two nickels meme). However, I always got my money back very easily when something got lost or cancelled.

I don't think I can prove it, but I feel like Mercari also has better deals in general than eBay. It's a little annoying on Mercari, but when you search sold and for sale listings show up together and you have to filter the sold ones out, while eBay filters sold listings out by default. (And then I get angry seeing deals I missed!)

eBay's messaging is more like a mini email thing, while Mercari's is very strict, not allowing photos or emojis. I had one complaint one time but I couldn't send a pic to show what I meant and that was frustrating.

eBay doesn't seem to require feedback as much as Mercari does. Mercari holds payments from sellers until you leave feedback, although after a while Mercari will automatically give feedback and pay the seller. Sellers obviously will be annoyed if you don't give feedback and have them paid sooner. I'm not sure how it works on eBay, but I don't think eBay requires it that way, at least they didn't state it as obviously if they do.

On the eBay app versus the Mercari app, the eBay app has better ways of filtering, sorting, and searching your favorited list. Mercari's just lists them in order of when you favorited, and the filters aren't helpful at the moment. eBay sorts by just about anything and makes it searchable.

So eBay is great functioning wise but Mercari has a simpler and cleaner look. Both have their own quirks I'm sure, but overall they are very similar.

I don't use Facebook Marketplace all that much because it gets so hectic, and I've never used Craigslist, but I think Mercari and eBay are great for comparison.

I hope that helps!

Cobblestone:
I also use it with eBay. I think the smaller market can sometimes work in your favor because sellers aren’t seeing extreme prices in the searches when they try to price their own items, based on the market. I’ve found some good deals, but I would say it’s maybe more of an honor system than eBay so there’s some luck to it.
As a seller I can’t say how well it works but I think more and more people are getting wise to it so it wouldn’t be bad to have a presence there.

tailrustedtealeaf:
Every time this post comes up I thought I had replied already-I hadn't! So let's get my thoughts down:

I both buy and sell on Mercari (not, actively, mind you, but) and there are some things that I think it does better than eBay and worse, both from a buying and selling standpoint.

As a buyer:
I have found that, if you are careful, you can catch good deals better on Mercari. This is, I think, because the app markets itself as a "oh, you chuck a few things here and there" sales app rather than an eBay one, which people can sometimes see as more adjacent to Amazon. Just like with eBay, my sweet spots to look are to have a very generic name to search and set it to newest items. If you're looking for something that might be harder to identify, you can try to look up broad words. There are no titles, but if a person describes the item as "some red weird lumpy horse, I guess?", if you look up "red horse" it will come up in results.

What I find very annoying, and one of my bigger gripes with Depop, is the keyword stuffing. This doesn't come up so often with MLP related searches, but if you look up brand name clothes or designer brands, be prepared to scroll through a lot of people jamming branded keywords in their descriptions to appear in more searches. Be careful if you're looking for items that are the typically easily faked stuff, make sure what you're buying is what you actually want, etc.

Mercari gives buyers three days after an item is marked as "delivered" to open a claim with a seller. If you are ordering around busy times of year and won't be able to properly check/open items, I would be more hesitant about ordering. I've not had an order go awry yet(did have one get delivered to the wrong house because the seller's pen was running out of ink when they wrote my house number, though. That got resolved before the 3 days were up, so no worries). 

Really, the most important thing that is new or unique to Mercari is to just remember that once you "accept" an item, you can not file for a refund or dispute! You can leave reviews for unsatisfactory orders, but the seller still gets their money in full.

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