I’ve recently been in the market to find me a used GPU for my PC and my golly gee, 80%+ of the profiles feign a modest story to the effect of “Bought brand new. I used to own this for a year. Upgraded to a new one recently so I am selling this GPU. Barely used. Operation tested and in good condition.” Very modest stuff.
And then you check their profile and they are clearly a self owned resale shop with a hundred sales of other CPUs, GPUs, coolers etc etc. So they 100% didn’t own it or use it personally, they’re just inheriting the story told to them by the last guy who sold it to them in used condition.
I used to use Mercari some years back and I swear outright false profile stories were a small minority. I feel like it has become normal now?
eBay, a place I used to consider lower integrity than Mercari, has now surpassed Mercari by miles in terms of honest users. At least in my mind. (Not to mention that eBay has a robust buyer’s protection policy).
Anyways I want to hear your thoughts on this. Would you consider my assessment to be correct?
How do people trust sellers on this platform anymore, lol.
9 comments
I feel you. I came across a few seller profiles recently selling decent to high quality bicycle lights, but without the parts required to attach them to your bike. And their whole page (twenty or so items) is bicycle lights of various makes and models so they’re obviously professional thieves lol.
Mercari doesn’t want to or can’t do anything about it, and it has really lowered the trust I used to have in the site. It’s ironic really how a big part of their appeal (and advertising!) was buyer protection with their payment and shipping policies.
I don’t often look at the profiles so I cannot say much about that, but I loved Mercari a lot more when most of the products were actually second hand or just unused things as I like buying second hand for sustability reasons. Nowadays there are so many people just reselling cheaply produced things to make money which makes it harder to find things I want to purchase…
As long as I can buy cheap things I can’t find elsewhere.
Well theres nothing stopping people from looking at a sold product page then copying the description to their product and trying to sell it.
What I personally hate is resellers with 100s of the same crappy earbuds/cables/insertcheapchineseproductname listings that flood your search page when youre actually looking for something good/genuine
Japanese auction sites have a slimy atmosphere that evokes noughties ebay. The level of blatant lying from JP sellers is way higher than in the UK/US, it’s something of a meme in photography groups.
‘untested, buy at own risk’ aka I know it is damaged and I’m going to pretend I don’t. ‘clean with some minor fungus, B+’ okay buddy.
Sadly this is just the online marketplaces. They have all been infiltrated by people who’s sole business is reselling shit online. Mercadi, eBay, offer up, fb marketplace, it’s all the same resold bs and Chinese garbage.
So far my experience has been good, but I use it for stuff like vintage goods and some produce (a lot of people selling “ugly” fruits and vegetables in bulk for cheap).
Yes. Always check the seller’s profile. I never buy from a person when the profile and the item description don’t seem to match up.
I also don’t buy when they are selling dozens to hundreds of the same item- I just assume they’re reselling fake items they bought off of Aliexpress or that were gained through nefarious means.
Maybe I’m missing some good deals that way, but I’d rather buy an item that’s obviously being sold by an individual just getting rid of their unneeded stuff.
I agree that merucari has gone a bit “cold” these past couple years. Like before you wouldn’t even dare buying something before asking the seller if it was ok to buy. Also the messaging/negotiating part has gone from cordial (sometimes pleasant) exchange to 〇〇円で購入していです
As for the lying part the case you described maybe you should report it? I myself sell 目玉商品 from my main business on merucari never came to my mind to lie about it on product description. But now if the seller’s reviews are good anyway then you should trust them no?