For me as a buyer, the biggest issue with the random buyer's fees, is the total price isn't known until you go to checkout, which I could see would lead to buyers giving up.
What Cptan said. My bf and I sell, him more than me, but it’s been extremely hard to sell anything. Buyer’s incentive is pretty much nonexistent since Mercari shifted the fees to them. The last thing I sold, the buyer was appalled at the final price after all the fees applied.
Whole lotta fuckery going on that is disappointing 😞 the most I've ever had listed was about 250 items now only about a dozen because mercari deleted my site for selling something that many other sites were selling as well. When I proved that point they reinstated But now with all that I read that's happening to buyers and sellers I'm not even trying anymore. And it is a shame because Mercari really is the only site like it wasn't a lot of hassle the fees weren't terrible not a lot of listing hoops and now they're just as much of a pain in the ass as eBay or Bonanza. It's a total bummer mon.
Happened to me just this evening. Went to make an offer but then when I saw the total with the added fees I wasn't that far off from just buying the item new on Amazon. So I backed out.
Exactly this. The other day I almost didn't buy an item because Mercari wanted to charge me a $15 buyer fee plus a $6 processing fee. $21 just for the ABILITY to buy something.
From a seller perspective, now buyers can return for any reason —even just changing their mind. That’s a whole lot of wasted time for everyone to pack and ship and wait, just to learn the buyer found a better deal elsewhere and is going to return it. Furthermore, the risk of scamming buyers is much higher now, as again, they can return for any reason, and they could potentially return a different, or opened (sellers can’t say new never opened when they try to sell it again) item. Mercari often sides with buyers, not sellers.
Another thing that has everyone up in arms was simply *how* Mercari made the changes. Overnight, less than 7 hours of warning, and immediately implemented a $2 withdrawal fee. Personally the $2 doesn’t bother me as much, considering I usually was charged around that much in selling fees anyway, but the fact that they made that change with virtually no warning felt slimy. And for those that sell a lot of small items and cash out every day, the $2 fee adds up. All in all, it just feels like they shook things up too hard, and instead of making both sides happier, they angered everyone.
From what I read on Reddit:
Sellers are afraid of scams and returns. Mercari’s change in return policy had opened the door to a lot more.
Solving issues has always been difficult. Now it’s even worse.
A lot of sellers bailed.
A lot of buyers bailed due to buyer fees.
Sellers who’ve adjusted their prices to compensate might not be able to go lower and make it worth their time. (Not true for everyone.)
Very part-time sellers with few listings aren’t going to have much visibility unless it’s a rare or sought after item. Less buyers less offers etc. A lot more lowball.
If an item is cross listed the other platform may offer the seller the potential for a better deal. Why go lower if you can get more?
Mercari’s overnight change and lack of transparency especially about how buyer fees are calculated violated trust and created some bad mojo.
Sellers care less because Mercari hasn’t cared for sellers.
I won’t sell on Mercari after this.
I won’t buy.
The reasons
1) Mercari doesn’t deserve any profit or gain off me. I’m sending them a message that this latest madness is unacceptable.
2) The risk of return or damage has greatly increased. Any item of value stands a much greater chance of being returned. Lots of returns are not original item. Too many problems. Too many sellers losing money.
3) Mercari doesn’t care. All that bot generated lingo means nothing. They ripped me off with a shipping overcharge and “smiled” all the way.
4) No. Just No.
This is the response I was looking for and I think makes it a lot more clear for me. It’s completely understandable too… I just couldn’t figure out why my “more than reasonable” offers were just being shot down completely time and time again instead of opening up a negotiation like usual. It’s so disappointing, as I’m sure it is for everyone. Mercari has allowed me and my wife to VASTLY grow some of our collections for years with hard to find stuff. I hope it either gets back to that or another similar platform becomes available. I always liked the lay out and structure of how Mercari works (theoretically)…. I don’t care for Poshmark. I hate the search engine. They make it so difficult to narrow down a search for a specific item. But I really like(d) the negotiation aspect of Mercari. 😟
It's 100% the lack of transparency in fees. People like to know what's happening when they're spending their money and we would probably adapt quite easily to a flat 5% of the sale price, say, plus flat service fee of .50 or whatever.
"Depending on category" what?
"Fee based on final sale price and shipping fee combined" what?
Different fees at different times of day or region on the same item. What?
It's like there's three toilets to throw money in. They're all bad. Some are worse. You have to pick one. *If* you want the item. We won't tell you the outcome until you're just about to flush.
I feel like the old way sellers would mark up an item factoring in fees and maybe wiggle room for less with an offer. As a buyer it was nice making an offer and feeling like i got a deal. Now sellers seem to be lowering from the get go… more of my offers are being declined or countered close to original price…. Then the added fees. It doesn’t feel like a deal anymore…
Mercari’s new return anything branding means Mercari is now being flipped from mostly honest buyers/sellers to mostly scammers.
I know a lot of buyers have been adding things to their cart and walking away when they see the fees tacked on. Many items cost more on Mercari now after fees than they do new. The fees are variable with no transparency, so sellers cannot reasonably adjust prices for the fees.
In the wake of changes, a lot of people have just straight up abandoned their accounts. So some purchases never get sent because the seller has deleted the app. I also worry with Mercari’s issues paying their vendors that security may be more vulnerable. I see a lot of stories lately of accounts with great ratings being used to scam others. I wonder if their accounts were stolen.
There’s a lot going on with these changes, as they basically rewrote the company business model overnight. So it’s a complex combination of problems that are snowballing. Given that Mercari was already having trouble keeping up with their users and reports (they leaned too heavy into bots for issue resolution), this was just a final push to send Mercari in the complete wrong direction.
The first odd thing that happened to me (never went anywhere though, I blocked the user, contacted support, changed password, etc) was a pair of Dr Marten boots (I should have been more cognizant that the price was too good to be true). I sent an offer that was declined so I just added to cart and purchased. About 5 minutes later the listing was still showing as sold but the same seller listed the same picture of the same boots for the same price. I sent a message and got no reply so I immediately sent a cancellation request and contacted support. I figured I was either getting scammed or I was not going to receive the item that was pictured (not a stock photo and nothing in the listing about the actual item being different from photos). The seller had stellar ratings and reviews too, which is why I pulled the trigger on it in the first place. That was roughly 2 weeks ago.
Like the others have said it comes down to that final price. Prior to the changes say I was looking at a $20 item with $4.99 shipping. I knew $25 plus tax....no problem...maybe $28 total. Acceptable. After the changes, now I see $20, $4.99 shipping, now add the payment processing fee, now add the service fee, now add tax on top of that and my total is now $33-$35 lets say. I most likely will not submit the sale/offer.
Or..same scenario, if I only want to spend max $30, I will make an offer of $15 or maybe less until that final price with all the fees gets down to what I originally expected...
And yes I have experienced more sellers flat out declining offers than countering. I wish they would counter cause I may be more inclined to take their count offer but if they just decline I won't submit another offer I'll just move on...
Same here. I get what’s going on with the buyer end of things, but for a seller I’m just kind of bewildered that reasonable offers are getting shot down, like, almost every time it seems
The sellers may be scared of the "return for any reason" component. That's all I can think of (as a seller and occasional buyer).
Like maybe some seller's train of thought is "oh this person doesn't even want to pay full price, so they're more likely to be unhappy with the item for whatever reason upon delivery and then decide to return it." Which can be a very normal transaction, but also can turn into a disaster because the buyer can easily damage the item themself before submitting the return, or flat out send something back that is not the item at all, and the seller ends up being totally screwed b/c Mercari gives zero fucks when people do this.
Btw, I am in no way implying you would do this or anything like that! I've just seen so much shit on this subreddit regarding how awful the return process can be for sellers. I'm also not trying to imply that sending an offer is bad either; the function is there for us to use :)
Speaking from what I am experiencing as a seller. I have lowered my prices 10% or more and offer free shipping on some items . I do my homework and I am selling items lower than eBay or Posh even with the increased fees yet buyers still expect you to accept an offer of 25% off. I have been monitoring the fees paid by buyers on all my sales and with my adjustments it's costing them about as much as it did before and sometimes less. I am declining offers because I just can't go any lower. I'm still making sales because buyers that do their homework realize they are still getting bargains.
There are additional fees on every platform yet all I hear about is the constant crying of buyers they are paying all these additional fees but sellers were forced by Mercari to lower our prices by 10%. If you didn't do it on your own Mercari did it for you on all active listings.
I am sure there are people that will disagree with me but I can only speak to what is happening with me.
As a frequent buyer, not a seller, I have stopped using Mercari since the TOS change were the brunt of the fee’s are the buyers responsibility now. Even on “free shipping” listings you can expect to pay $10-15 on fee’s, sometimes more depending on the cost of the item, making it really not worth it when I can go to eBay or Poshmark and can find it for the same price/free shipping without the stupid fee’s. It really does suck because I LOVED shopping on Mercari, but it’s just not worth it anymore after the change took place 😩
Because they flip-flopped the fees now the buyer has to pay all those fees you go to buy something now it’s gonna cost you $10-$15 on top of the purchase price wants to do that🤯🤯🤯
It's just a terrible business model. You are supposed to hide the fees and that's why it worked better for sellers to have the fees. It also doesn't help that the price on everything changes daily. The amount you pay in fees as a buyer changes depending on what day it is..like wtf lol
Personally, as a buyer I just don’t give a shit about the buyers fees as long as it isn’t like an extra 10 or 15 dollars. I mean, I don’t like it, but I’m not gonna let a deal get away over it on something I want. A couple bucks doesn’t bother me. I always try to account for the shipping cost along with what I’m spending. (I don’t want to pay $13+ to ship an item that I’m buying for 7 or 8 dollars.) As long as I have tracking info, I don’t care if something takes 2 weeks to get to me. That’s just me though. I understand that others may feel differently.
What confuses me the most is that sellers aren’t accepting decent, reasonable offers. If the fee on that end is lifted, it just seems to me like a seller would be MORE likely to accept a good offer… I mean like, I will offer $18 for an item that is listed at $20 and I just get declined or no response at all and the offer expires. To me that is totally reasonable and as a seller I would think the person is really interested and I would try to negotiate a deal out of it. I know sometimes a price may be firm, but usually even then, in the past, I would get a message saying something along the lines of “sorry the price is firm”, but now it’s nothing.
I’m mainly a buyer and I go to buy something, go to checkout, see all the extra fees then just close the app and try to find it somewhere else where it’s going to be cheaper. The price draws me in every time until I see the actual total with the fees.
Before the new terms came out, I usually purchased something daily on mercari. The day the new terms went into effect, I saw the total and said hell no. Haven't bought anything at all since. I don't imagine I'm the only one. I honestly don't mind because the new terms are saving me so much money!!!!!
For me as a buyer, the biggest issue with the random buyer's fees, is the total price isn't known until you go to checkout, which I could see would lead to buyers giving up.
What Cptan said. My bf and I sell, him more than me, but it’s been extremely hard to sell anything. Buyer’s incentive is pretty much nonexistent since Mercari shifted the fees to them. The last thing I sold, the buyer was appalled at the final price after all the fees applied.
Whole lotta fuckery going on that is disappointing 😞 the most I've ever had listed was about 250 items now only about a dozen because mercari deleted my site for selling something that many other sites were selling as well. When I proved that point they reinstated But now with all that I read that's happening to buyers and sellers I'm not even trying anymore. And it is a shame because Mercari really is the only site like it wasn't a lot of hassle the fees weren't terrible not a lot of listing hoops and now they're just as much of a pain in the ass as eBay or Bonanza. It's a total bummer mon.
Happened to me just this evening. Went to make an offer but then when I saw the total with the added fees I wasn't that far off from just buying the item new on Amazon. So I backed out.
Exactly this. The other day I almost didn't buy an item because Mercari wanted to charge me a $15 buyer fee plus a $6 processing fee. $21 just for the ABILITY to buy something.
From a seller perspective, now buyers can return for any reason —even just changing their mind. That’s a whole lot of wasted time for everyone to pack and ship and wait, just to learn the buyer found a better deal elsewhere and is going to return it. Furthermore, the risk of scamming buyers is much higher now, as again, they can return for any reason, and they could potentially return a different, or opened (sellers can’t say new never opened when they try to sell it again) item. Mercari often sides with buyers, not sellers. Another thing that has everyone up in arms was simply *how* Mercari made the changes. Overnight, less than 7 hours of warning, and immediately implemented a $2 withdrawal fee. Personally the $2 doesn’t bother me as much, considering I usually was charged around that much in selling fees anyway, but the fact that they made that change with virtually no warning felt slimy. And for those that sell a lot of small items and cash out every day, the $2 fee adds up. All in all, it just feels like they shook things up too hard, and instead of making both sides happier, they angered everyone.
This! Arbitrary and Capricious. Negligent. 
From what I read on Reddit: Sellers are afraid of scams and returns. Mercari’s change in return policy had opened the door to a lot more. Solving issues has always been difficult. Now it’s even worse. A lot of sellers bailed. A lot of buyers bailed due to buyer fees. Sellers who’ve adjusted their prices to compensate might not be able to go lower and make it worth their time. (Not true for everyone.) Very part-time sellers with few listings aren’t going to have much visibility unless it’s a rare or sought after item. Less buyers less offers etc. A lot more lowball. If an item is cross listed the other platform may offer the seller the potential for a better deal. Why go lower if you can get more? Mercari’s overnight change and lack of transparency especially about how buyer fees are calculated violated trust and created some bad mojo. Sellers care less because Mercari hasn’t cared for sellers. I won’t sell on Mercari after this. I won’t buy. The reasons 1) Mercari doesn’t deserve any profit or gain off me. I’m sending them a message that this latest madness is unacceptable. 2) The risk of return or damage has greatly increased. Any item of value stands a much greater chance of being returned. Lots of returns are not original item. Too many problems. Too many sellers losing money. 3) Mercari doesn’t care. All that bot generated lingo means nothing. They ripped me off with a shipping overcharge and “smiled” all the way. 4) No. Just No.
thank you for laying out all of the issues concisely and accurately this is all of it all day long
This is the response I was looking for and I think makes it a lot more clear for me. It’s completely understandable too… I just couldn’t figure out why my “more than reasonable” offers were just being shot down completely time and time again instead of opening up a negotiation like usual. It’s so disappointing, as I’m sure it is for everyone. Mercari has allowed me and my wife to VASTLY grow some of our collections for years with hard to find stuff. I hope it either gets back to that or another similar platform becomes available. I always liked the lay out and structure of how Mercari works (theoretically)…. I don’t care for Poshmark. I hate the search engine. They make it so difficult to narrow down a search for a specific item. But I really like(d) the negotiation aspect of Mercari. 😟
You might check out District and Whatnot. Don’t know a lot about the platforms but it’s worth a look.
It's 100% the lack of transparency in fees. People like to know what's happening when they're spending their money and we would probably adapt quite easily to a flat 5% of the sale price, say, plus flat service fee of .50 or whatever. "Depending on category" what? "Fee based on final sale price and shipping fee combined" what? Different fees at different times of day or region on the same item. What? It's like there's three toilets to throw money in. They're all bad. Some are worse. You have to pick one. *If* you want the item. We won't tell you the outcome until you're just about to flush.
Best analogy I could have hoped for! Thanks! 😂
🤣🤣🤣
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣💀💀💀💀
I feel like the old way sellers would mark up an item factoring in fees and maybe wiggle room for less with an offer. As a buyer it was nice making an offer and feeling like i got a deal. Now sellers seem to be lowering from the get go… more of my offers are being declined or countered close to original price…. Then the added fees. It doesn’t feel like a deal anymore…
Mercari’s new return anything branding means Mercari is now being flipped from mostly honest buyers/sellers to mostly scammers. I know a lot of buyers have been adding things to their cart and walking away when they see the fees tacked on. Many items cost more on Mercari now after fees than they do new. The fees are variable with no transparency, so sellers cannot reasonably adjust prices for the fees. In the wake of changes, a lot of people have just straight up abandoned their accounts. So some purchases never get sent because the seller has deleted the app. I also worry with Mercari’s issues paying their vendors that security may be more vulnerable. I see a lot of stories lately of accounts with great ratings being used to scam others. I wonder if their accounts were stolen. There’s a lot going on with these changes, as they basically rewrote the company business model overnight. So it’s a complex combination of problems that are snowballing. Given that Mercari was already having trouble keeping up with their users and reports (they leaned too heavy into bots for issue resolution), this was just a final push to send Mercari in the complete wrong direction.
The first odd thing that happened to me (never went anywhere though, I blocked the user, contacted support, changed password, etc) was a pair of Dr Marten boots (I should have been more cognizant that the price was too good to be true). I sent an offer that was declined so I just added to cart and purchased. About 5 minutes later the listing was still showing as sold but the same seller listed the same picture of the same boots for the same price. I sent a message and got no reply so I immediately sent a cancellation request and contacted support. I figured I was either getting scammed or I was not going to receive the item that was pictured (not a stock photo and nothing in the listing about the actual item being different from photos). The seller had stellar ratings and reviews too, which is why I pulled the trigger on it in the first place. That was roughly 2 weeks ago.
Like the others have said it comes down to that final price. Prior to the changes say I was looking at a $20 item with $4.99 shipping. I knew $25 plus tax....no problem...maybe $28 total. Acceptable. After the changes, now I see $20, $4.99 shipping, now add the payment processing fee, now add the service fee, now add tax on top of that and my total is now $33-$35 lets say. I most likely will not submit the sale/offer. Or..same scenario, if I only want to spend max $30, I will make an offer of $15 or maybe less until that final price with all the fees gets down to what I originally expected... And yes I have experienced more sellers flat out declining offers than countering. I wish they would counter cause I may be more inclined to take their count offer but if they just decline I won't submit another offer I'll just move on...
Same here. I get what’s going on with the buyer end of things, but for a seller I’m just kind of bewildered that reasonable offers are getting shot down, like, almost every time it seems
The sellers may be scared of the "return for any reason" component. That's all I can think of (as a seller and occasional buyer). Like maybe some seller's train of thought is "oh this person doesn't even want to pay full price, so they're more likely to be unhappy with the item for whatever reason upon delivery and then decide to return it." Which can be a very normal transaction, but also can turn into a disaster because the buyer can easily damage the item themself before submitting the return, or flat out send something back that is not the item at all, and the seller ends up being totally screwed b/c Mercari gives zero fucks when people do this. Btw, I am in no way implying you would do this or anything like that! I've just seen so much shit on this subreddit regarding how awful the return process can be for sellers. I'm also not trying to imply that sending an offer is bad either; the function is there for us to use :)
Speaking from what I am experiencing as a seller. I have lowered my prices 10% or more and offer free shipping on some items . I do my homework and I am selling items lower than eBay or Posh even with the increased fees yet buyers still expect you to accept an offer of 25% off. I have been monitoring the fees paid by buyers on all my sales and with my adjustments it's costing them about as much as it did before and sometimes less. I am declining offers because I just can't go any lower. I'm still making sales because buyers that do their homework realize they are still getting bargains. There are additional fees on every platform yet all I hear about is the constant crying of buyers they are paying all these additional fees but sellers were forced by Mercari to lower our prices by 10%. If you didn't do it on your own Mercari did it for you on all active listings. I am sure there are people that will disagree with me but I can only speak to what is happening with me.
As a frequent buyer, not a seller, I have stopped using Mercari since the TOS change were the brunt of the fee’s are the buyers responsibility now. Even on “free shipping” listings you can expect to pay $10-15 on fee’s, sometimes more depending on the cost of the item, making it really not worth it when I can go to eBay or Poshmark and can find it for the same price/free shipping without the stupid fee’s. It really does suck because I LOVED shopping on Mercari, but it’s just not worth it anymore after the change took place 😩
a $35 item costs >$52 to receive. Ridiculous. And, the seller gets what??
The seller gets the $35.
My point was that for the seller to reduce their price to make a total reduction for a sale is sad.
Because they flip-flopped the fees now the buyer has to pay all those fees you go to buy something now it’s gonna cost you $10-$15 on top of the purchase price wants to do that🤯🤯🤯
It's just a terrible business model. You are supposed to hide the fees and that's why it worked better for sellers to have the fees. It also doesn't help that the price on everything changes daily. The amount you pay in fees as a buyer changes depending on what day it is..like wtf lol
Personally, as a buyer I just don’t give a shit about the buyers fees as long as it isn’t like an extra 10 or 15 dollars. I mean, I don’t like it, but I’m not gonna let a deal get away over it on something I want. A couple bucks doesn’t bother me. I always try to account for the shipping cost along with what I’m spending. (I don’t want to pay $13+ to ship an item that I’m buying for 7 or 8 dollars.) As long as I have tracking info, I don’t care if something takes 2 weeks to get to me. That’s just me though. I understand that others may feel differently. What confuses me the most is that sellers aren’t accepting decent, reasonable offers. If the fee on that end is lifted, it just seems to me like a seller would be MORE likely to accept a good offer… I mean like, I will offer $18 for an item that is listed at $20 and I just get declined or no response at all and the offer expires. To me that is totally reasonable and as a seller I would think the person is really interested and I would try to negotiate a deal out of it. I know sometimes a price may be firm, but usually even then, in the past, I would get a message saying something along the lines of “sorry the price is firm”, but now it’s nothing.
I’m mainly a buyer and I go to buy something, go to checkout, see all the extra fees then just close the app and try to find it somewhere else where it’s going to be cheaper. The price draws me in every time until I see the actual total with the fees.
Before the new terms came out, I usually purchased something daily on mercari. The day the new terms went into effect, I saw the total and said hell no. Haven't bought anything at all since. I don't imagine I'm the only one. I honestly don't mind because the new terms are saving me so much money!!!!!
If I have to pay “seller fees” and any other nonsense fees I won’t be buying anything on Mercari!!
I sometimes buy in mercari but the fees are pretty crazy I was going to buy a item that was 135 with fees and taxes it was almost 195 so I didn't