Rob and Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about Mercari's announcement about zero selling fees.
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The New Mercari Update And What It could Mean For You?
Rob: What's up, Pro Flippers? On today's episode, we are talking about the new Mercari update, and what it could mean for you as a reseller.
All right, guys. So today we're talking about Mercari, something that we do not sell a lot on but we know there is huge buzz going on right now about some updates that they've recently done.
Melissa: So Mercari just announced, just well, at the time of recording this last week.
So I'm not sure when this is going to go live, but, that it is not having any more seller's fees, which is huge. So that was a really big like announcement that they're not going to be having seller's fees anymore, which that's a big expense for us. You know, that's one of our larger expenses is, selling fees.
So what does this mean? And yeah. So we wanted to kind of unpack that. And I asked on our social channels too what people thought, and there was comments on all sides of it. Like it's, it's great. It's awful. Never, I'm never selling a Mercari again. Oh, I'm going to start selling on Mercari. So it was pretty interesting to see all the different sides of what people are thinking that this could mean.
So absolutely. So zero selling fees to dive in, sounds like it's a pretty good idea. So, but what does that mean for, so. Mercari is still going to get their fees, but now they're passing it on to the buyer. So what does that mean in a buying selling relationship? So are we going to end up bringing prices down because the buyer now is looking at it that they're going to be paying more fees?
So what does that kind of look like? What are your thoughts?
Rob: I don't know. But the biggest news is eBay's following suit. Just kidding! No, don't even start that rumor. I'm just playing around. No, eBay is not following suit.
Melissa: But that was one of the comments too. Is it, are other platforms going to like see this?
Is this like a competitive move with other platforms? Are they doing it to get an influx of resellers so that they can sell the plot, say it, sell it. So there's a couple different theories and ideas of why they might have done this. So, I mean, and we'd love to hear what you think. Like, do you think it's a good play?
Are you going to keep selling to Mercari? Are you going to stop selling? So, it is, it's interesting, like, will it force resellers to lower their prices to, like, because now the buyer's paying the fees? So, it's kind of an interesting thing. There also is a $2 cash out fee, so when you get your money in your account, every time you do a transaction to your account, it's a $2 flat fee.
So, that's something new that they added too, which should still be a lot less than the 10 or 13 percent. So.
Rob: What is the biggest thing that is with Mercari doing this? No seller's fees. What is the biggest thing that has changed about the whole transaction? What do you mean? Like, I thought you had told me that they are allowing only, what is it?
72 hours.
Melissa: Yes. So that's another big, so that's on the buyer side. So the buyer, like they did this whole, like, this is what the seller's getting. This is what the buyer's getting. So the buyers are also allowed to return an item for, any reason is what they said, be, you know, buy with confidence. You can return your item for any reason, but it's with 72 hours.
So that's not a lot of time. It's not. So it's not a 30 day window, which is nice. Like it's a 72 hour window. And I did read somewhere that they have to still submit pictures. Like it's not an easy return process. So it's not just like Amazon, that's easier returns. Is that new within this? I believe so. Yes.
Rob: Okay. So with the last change of no seller's fees, they've added this to it. Yeah.
Melissa: So people are not excited about that. So there's a lot of uproar about Now i'm never selling on mercari because i'm not gonna take returns for any reason of this. So. And that brings up another thing that people also said was Mercari doesn't have the best customer service.
So that comes into play when you have a refund and a return. And then who is paying for the return? Is it all come out of the seller? I would assume so. That the seller loses out on that at. Do the fees still get collected? So there's still some unknowns but as it starts rolling out people will be using it and see what happens but I don't know I don't know if the 72 hour refund, do you think people are really?
I have no idea. Yeah. So it's interesting because we don't accept returns on our stuff. So on eBay, they encourage us to accept returns. They want us to accept returns. They want everybody to accept returns. But we do not. And that doesn't mean that we've never had a return. So I don't know if you want to elaborate on that a little bit.
Yeah.
Rob: No. And eBay wants you to accept returns within, I think they've changed it recently. It's 30 days. Yeah. They want you to get a return policy, but eBay does similar to where they will require you to take a return. What is that thing that they do? A money back guarantee within 30 days. If something is not as described, which that's why we tell everybody under promise over deliver on everything that you do and you won't have this issue.
And we typically don't have this issue anyways on what we do, but eBay can force you to take a return within the 30 days. Even if you have, no returns on your eBay items, they can still force it. If you do something wrong and the buyer says it's not as described, they can force you to take that return.
Melissa: Yeah, so now this process with Mercari, we don't really sell I mean, I started on Mercari for a little while, but then we were just not getting as many. eBay just still is always better for us. So it's never a bad idea to cross post. But if you do it for a long time and you realize that you're putting all this effort into one platform, it's not really paying off, it might not be worth it anymore.
So, and for the stuff we sell, they don't let us do freight shipping on Mercari. So, maybe that'll change. Maybe. Who knows if that'll change. But It wasn't really worth us putting our stuff on Mercari. So, because we could only do the regular shipping. So anyways. Yep.
Rob: So we're just weighing in on what all of the social has said and what is going on right now.
So we typically, we don't sell on Mercari. We're on 95 percent on eBay. eBay is where we make the majority of our money and we do a little bit on Facebook Marketplace. Yeah.
Melissa: It is interesting to see like how up in arms people get with change. Like you think like, oh, no sellers fees is great, but then the returns comes in.
And so it's like people don't like change. Nobody likes change. But what if they would have said, oh, we're upping our fees to an extra percent or an extra, you know, but maybe this will encourage that was another comment I saw by somebody. Maybe it will encourage eBay fees to come down a little bit because now you could go sell on Mercari for free.
For no seller fees. So yeah, so I mean, maybe it will create more competition. Maybe we will see some eBay fees go down. We'd love to hear your thoughts and let us know, find us on any social channel, Flea Market Flipper, and let us know what you, what you think about the new Mercari update and if you think it'll last, if not, is it going to hurt sales with the refund policy?
And if you've actually used it yet. So, by the time this goes live, let us know.
Rob: Absolutely. You guys are amazing. Hope you have an amazing and wonderful day, and we'll talk to you on the next episode.