Recently, I found a product on Mercari, it was available (not sold). So I created an account in order to purchase it. I was a bit surprised but alphabet cannot be used to input your name and create an account. So I wrote my foreigner name in katakana, and succeeded to create an account. I was happy, and I clicked to purchase the product. I received some instructions to send money. I used google translate to understand the content, and I selected a payment at Family Mart. I went to Family Mart, and I successfully transferred money to the seller. It worked perfectly, and it was really easy. Then I waited the product to be shipped and arrived at home. But, after 1 week, the product was not shipped. In fact, I will NEVER be shipped by the seller. The seller did not answer to any message in japanese, including messages translated using ChatGPT. Later I received a message from Mercari saying that because the seller did not complete the shipping procedure in the expected delay, then I can CANCEL. So I clicked to CANCEL. Next step, indeed I need my money back, so I followed the procedure to get money back. There are some documents to input from the mobile phone application only. For example, it is requested the bank account name, or the copy of driving license, or copy of alien card. But as you know, all those official documents are created from PASSPORT name, which is indeed in alphabet, not in katakana. Therefore the account name in katakana, and the official document in alphabet will NEVER match. Therefore any official documents can prove your account name, which prevents completely to get finalize the procedure to get money back. So intuitively, you want to call MERCARI. Yes, it is possible, but you cannot get a human on phone to explain your problem, only digital voice. Therefore, there is no solution to get my money back. That how I lost more than 50,000 Yens. So please, be very careful with MERCARI if you are a foreigner. I recommend to send a message to the seller to be sure that the product is still available even it is not red marked as “sold”. I should have send a message before purchasing, but as the product was available, and as the seller recently answered to other person’s message (for same product) during the last 6 months, I really through that the product was available. From Mercari platform, I should have expected a one-click way to get money back, but it turns out that it is not possible, so the actual procedure becomes a hurdle with the account names and official document name that will never match. I do not know what to do except contacting a lawyer, or engaging some procedures. I am really surprised by this Japanese company, because usually, it is going smoothly with other platforms but Mercari is special …. Be careful. I hope my experience will be helpful to many foreigners in the future.
by Trabrucks