Mercari opens Japanese marketplace to U.S. customers

12 comments

1. Here come the “I will send UPS to your address with the cash payment and pick up the parcel” scams.

2. Guessing that will end up in higher prices for everyone

3. I get this question all the time. I’ve even been asked to receive a Mercari order for someone and forward it to a US address. I don’t do that.

4. I had no idea there was an American marketplace.

   I assume the selection is mostly going to be people who are focused on the US market as regular users in Japan aren’t going to want to deal with international shipping.

5. I’m pretty sure this will only be opt-in for the Japanese sellers. Most sellers won’t want to deal with this.

   Or it will be some kind of paid forwarding service like Sekaimon.

   Merukari has so many Japan-specific quirks and manners so I’m sure sellers won’t be happy having to deal with machine-translated foreign buyers.

   I sometimes see sellers write things like “As it cannot master English, buyers of the foreigner are not allowed”.

6. I wonder how the listings are translated?

7. I mean I use buyer to buy off Mercari jp. How is this different?

8. I’ve been to the r/Mercari and it’s not happy mood there.

   Mercari is already doing bad for its US market and the fee changes made everybody quite unhappy.

   Now this essentially wipes away a lot of the advantages the US sellers has for moving the goods in the US.

   The listing may be a little cheaper at first glance, with fees and international shipping complicate things, it gets expensive very quickly.

   Not saying this is a bad move, but Mercari is trying to be a marketplace listing giant like Amazon but without the backing of their logistic shipping system in place.

9. People can sell stuff to American buyers at stupid markups ! 🎉🎉🎉 Might as well make some cash !

10. I’ve been using it through a proxy site for a while. A lot of very cheap band merch but I guess that’s about to end.

11. Ok this is bad news .

12. Beware, foreigners will pay more.