Hey, so I recently bought a 150,000 JPY piece of DJ hardware from Mercari. The description stated 目立つ傷なし; well, when the product arrived, lo and behold there was a huge gouge on the front of the equipment. I contacted Mercari, who asked me to contact the seller. After some back and forth with the seller, who refused to do anything and blames the shipping company (but has no proof to back this up), I contacted Mercari again.
Here’s the weird thing, despite writing solely in Japanese, Mercari just sent me a canned response asking me to write in Japanese. Their message:
メルカリ事務局では、お客さまからのお問い合わせに英語で返信する場合もございますが、主に日本語にて返信しております。
お手数をおかけし申し訳ございませんが、日本語でご連絡をいただけますでしょうか。
I suppose this is because I have a foreign name? I’m not sure what to do next…I feel like I have a strong case against this seller to get my money back and the item returned, but if Mercari is being discriminatory like this I’m not sure what to do. My Japanese is N2 level and while not perfect it certainly gets the meaning across. I write emails in Japanese for work everyday.
Has anyone had luck in such a situation with Mercari before? Any advice would be very welcome!
14 comments
Had a case with Mercari before and also bumped into their canned response wall.
I remember it was hard to find the phone number, but I just called them and explained the matter orally. Was quickly taken care of.
So maybe just call them and talk to a real human.
Credit card chargeback. See if they bother to read your emails then.
ETA: And at least look up what chargeback means before replying with “oh, you’ll get banned as a scammer.”
This is a perfectly normal reason to do a chargeback.
https://www.cnbc.com/select/what-is-a-chargeback/
https://ja.komoju.com/blog/credit-card-settlements/chargeback/
ETA2: And yes, this is a TOS violation that will probably get OP booted. Not as a scammer, but as a hassle. If customer service treated me like that with my 150k at stake, I would be happy to be known as a hassle. But it is up to OP to decide.
You can just try sending the email again
Sounds like the seller is being a total twat and complaining to Mercari that you’re a foreigner who doesn’t understand Japanese or some nonsense.
I don’t understand why so many Japanese people think foreign people here want English services at all. I wish they didn’t exist.
If it was sent by らくらくメルカリ便 it should be covered, just have to take photos of how it was packaged and the damaged part and they’ll refund you the money+ let you keep the item. Sender also gets their money.
Write your message in English, post it in ChatGPT and ask it to translate it to polite Japanese. Done.
Good luck OP.
I have 500+ sales on Mercari. Only twice have I had any transaction issues and Mercari seems to have a strong “figure it out amongst yourselves” policy. They’ll just copy and paste the same bs to all your enquiries. In your case, that’s a purchase with a massive price tag so give them hell lol
To put this in perspective, imagine a person with a Hispanic name contacting a company in America, in English, and getting a response that says, “Sorry, but we don’t speak Spanish. Please contact us in English.”
Write harder!
Had similar case once, I just use easy to understand japanese for communication with seller, then try to drive it so that seller don’t care and have no intention to refund.
After that all I have to do is contact mercari with simple inquiry, but with a lot of screenshot instead.
No question asked, they immediatelly tell me to return the item with seller paying the shipping fee.
Oh when contacting with seller, I also just take picture of the goods and screenshot of the description. Upload it to image hosting.
At least it’s easier to convey the message that way.
probably mercari has auto algorithms: if your name contains katakana then this template happens
Weird, maybe they are AI translating from Japanese to English, so odd.
Yahoo Auctions has a “sympathy money” program, where they reimburse the buyer with up to 200,000 yen when there’s a problem that can’t be solved between buyer and seller.
Maybe Mercari has something similar?
Next time use Yahoo Auctions, for extra safety.