Mercari Shoppers Beware--This is a complaint about Mercari San Francisco California

While the Mercari might have some great deals at times, for the buyer, it is a rip off! I have been using the site for months now and had a great review history from the seller's that I purchased from. I ran into a few snags though along the way with sellers not shipping items. Sellers would just quit communicating after I purchased the item. Then I started running into many issues which the sellers and Mercari wouldn't do anything about. When trying to resolve an issue, Mercari wouldn't do anything about it for a few weeks. Mercari expected the buyer to try to get the seller to honor their agreement. If that did not happen then eventually Mercari would sometimes step in or tell you that they were not going to assist you at all. The problem with this is that you would have your money already taken out of your account, on hold as they say, waiting for an item to come that never arrives. 

I had many problems with some sellers giving me bad reviews even though the seller was the one who made the mistake or falsified their listing and sent something that wasn't as described. The problem here is that you receive your item. It is a real hassle to get a refund if you don't like the product or it is not as described. You have to contact Mercari support and put in a request. It takes them many days to get back to you and they ask the most mundane questions and take up more of your time because again they do not reply back to you for at least 24 hours. Usually their reply comes 3 days later. So you can imagine if you contact them on April 2nd and inform them you have a problem, then around April 5th you will get a reply which states, "Thanks for contacting Mercari support! We're currently experiencing a high volume of inquiries, so our response times may be longer than usual. Our support team is working hard to assist you as soon as they can. We appreciate your patience. Be sure to include an item ID if your question is referring to a specific transaction or listing. You can find your item ID on your Order Status Page or in the email you received regarding the item. This is an automated message, no response is necessary."

About April 8th they will reply telling you that they need more information from you including the product ID even though you had included the product ID when you informed them that you had a problem. Then you reply to them on April 8th. They will reply back with a generic response again, the same as listed above. On April 13th they will respond that they want to know what the issue is or some other such nonsense. You can see I'm sure that this goes round and round. Or they will tell you the opposite of what you messaged them, see below for example. Around the end of the month you will get a message that states that you have been sent a return label, which you must print, to ship the item back to them and once they receive it back they will refund you. You ship it back let's say on April 25th. Around May 13th you will finally receive a refund. So just remember this product was originally purchased on March 31st. It takes them over a month to finally resolve your issue. That is if they decide to do so. I've had them refuse me a refund even though I proved that the seller falsified their listing.

I contacted Mercari about a seller posting poor feedback against me for a problem the seller created yet she blamed me for it. VS Angel was selling a mix of Crayola and Prismacolor colored pencils. In her post about the items she stated "Prismacolor pencils haven't been used except for 1 yellow. 50-70 total. She was selling it for $24 plus $4 shipping as the site generates the shipping label for the seller. I asked her to reduce to $20 and she wouldn't reduce less than $22. 

My problem was that the Prismacolor pencils were many duplicates of the same color five colors. The same 5 brown, 2 yellows, 5 light greens, 4 light blues, and 6 peach. There were not 50-70 Prismacolor pencils as stated by the sellers that there was. In the message section she stated, "You will see that there are a few repeats for the prismacolors." This is way more than a few!

Here is a link to this item so you can see for yourself. item.mercari.com/gl/m276194801/

I told this seller that I was not satisfied because I did not get what she had stated in the listing. She then posted a poor rating against me stating, "Had to ask for a rating after I dropped the price down and shipped out promptly. Then, got mad because she didn't ask questions about the items before she bought them. That isn't my fault."

How am I supposed to know, am I supposed to be psychic, and know that she was going to lie and not send what she listed? The picture showed a mixture of many colors, not just 5 colors of colored pencils. Why would I assume that she was lying about her listing? I purchased on 3/27 and she shipped on 3/29. Shipping the item two days later is not shipped out promptly.

Mercari's response to me was "Hi, thanks for contacting Mercari! I'll be helping to resolve your concern.

I can only change the rating on behalf of users if it is a positive change, for example, from Poor to Great. Because you’re asking us to change to a negative Rating, I will not be able to complete this request. Please keep in mind that you should NOT rate your seller until you are fully satisfied with the item.

Thanks for messaging us. Feel free to contact us with any new concerns."

Are you kidding me? I did not ask you to change to a negative feedback! I asked you to remove her negative false feedback against me! I did not deserve it, especially since I was not the one that falsified the listing!

I had sent Mercari this message. Quit sending me useless info...that you would be glad to assist me to change a rating if I can get ahold of the seller. I already told you they blocked me. At this point I am just going to blog about this experience with your site and how useless you are at upholding your own rules and regulations and instead let the sellers walk all over the buyers.

If a seller blocks you then you cannot message them for any reason. I had already told Mercari three times that this seller VS Angel had blocked me so that I could not work out getting her to change her rating.

I also messaged Mercari that the seller isn't willing to change their rating because I didn't review them within less than 4 hours of receiving the item. Yet I wasn't home when it arrived. Your policy isn't that a buyer has to rate a person within 4 hours? Within 24 hours? If not this is your responsibility to inform this seller and every seller your time frame for a buyer to rate the seller. Nor are you upholding your policies about how long a buyer has to rate a seller. Nor are you upholding the rating expectations and requirements, along with the seller following the rules and being honest and honorable in their review. Here this has not happened and you're not doing anything about it.

You have three days from the date of purchase to contact Mercari that you have a problem with the item you received. There is not policy that states you must rate the seller within three days, nor within the 4 hours that I received the item, stated as above.

Mercari takes the approach that you should ask the right kind of questions before purchasing an item. What is the right type of questions?

For example, suppose you were to purchase a remote control for one of your devices. You are supposed to figure out everything that could be missing or go wrong with this product and ask the questions to ensure that you purchase what you want, a working unit. Some question that I can think of would be:

1. Does the remote have the batter cover?
2. Does the battery area have any battery corrosion?
3. Does the battery area have any damage?
4. Has the remote ever been dropped?
5. Does the remote work?
6. Are there any problems or glitches with the remote?
7. Are there any missing pieces on the remote?
8. Do all the buttons work on the remote? 

Now sadly this list is still not all-inclusive of everything you would need to ask. So somehow you are supposed to be clairvoyant to this remote before you ever receive it. There are many items where this list of questions can be endless and yet Mercari doesn't care. 

Another problem I've had is that seller's will state that they are selling a certain amount of items. For example, Style and Co. 12 shirts, see pictures. So you see that there are 12 different shirts included and yet when you receive your item there are only say 10 or 11 items. You contact the seller who states they are sorry they didn't mean to not ship them all. You contact Mercari about this, because again you only have 3 days to contact them with a problem. Mercari will eventually tell you to work this out with the seller. Which I have tried on two occasions that this has happened. Even though both sellers told me they would send me the missing item, I never received it nor heard back from them. For instance Margie Mae seller stated that it was to have 20 items of clothing which included pictures and yet I did not receive 20 items. She stated to choose another item from her list of for sale items. So I chose a shirt. Not only did I never receive the shirt but she posted a less than perfect feedback against me for her mistake.She stated that I was very hard to communicate with. Took forever to respond. I responded to every single message she sent, which were numerous. These 20 items were a gift for my daughter who lives over 30 minutes away. So when the seller would ask me to describe every one of the items that I did receive, I had to leave a voicemail for my daughter indicating to do so and wait till my daughter responded to me. Sometimes my daughter would respond in a day or up to four days later. As soon as my daughter responded I informed this seller. This seller stated she would send out the replacement item and sadly never did yet Mercari still paid her my money.

Then there is Ronda's Treasures seller. I purchased a Nintendo 3ds power case from her which she listed as never used and good condition for my daughter. The item came and my daughter tried charging it like it stated to and found that it doesn't work. The battery in the case does not hold a charge. I contacted the seller only to get a less than perfect review from her and sadly I still have the item and never got a refund from Mercari. Unfortunately she got a perfect review from me with a Thank you because I did not hear back from my daughter right away that anything was wrong with it.

Also there is the seller clairfitz who I purchase a pair of UGG's from. I rated her perfect with a "Great, thank you! Happy Holidays!" and received a less than perfect rating from her. I rated her on 11/25 and she rated me on 11/26 only a good rating. I purchased this from her on 11/21 so my rating was within an appropriate time as I had to wait for them to come via mail and they arrived on 11/25. Therefore there was no reason she rated me as she did.

Another thing to note is that if you are busy trying to contact Mercari to get an issue resolved, and you do not rate a person within a certain time frame, Mercari site will automatically complete your purchase and issue the funds to the seller. At this point you cannot do anything to get your money back. This has happened to me as well. Mercari took so long dragging out their terrible responses to me, instead of resolving my issue and getting me a label to ship the item back to that I still ended up paying for items that came broken, not as described and missing items!

This happened to me with seller Taylor B. I purchased some brooches from her and instead of her wrapping them in enough tissue to protect them from rubbing up against one another and damaging each other, or shipping them separately, she wrapped them in tissue the size of a quarter. I don't know how she expected this to protect them. Some of these were vintage brooches which are not replaceable. I asked for a refund and still to this day never received a refund for them coming broken. I guess Mercari expects you to also be clairvoyant and realize that they may come broken so you would have to ask the questions...Will this be wrapped with enough tissue to protect from breaking? Will this arrive broken? What type of person asks or thinks to ask these questions ahead of time? You, as a buyer, are not expecting to experience these kinds of problems, let alone not get a refund from a site when you do!

According to the Better Business Bureau 389 complaints closed with BBB in last 3 years | 353 closed in last 12 months.