Mercari Balances Can Be Used Again In California
If you have sold on the Mercari marketplace from California (and a few other states) over the past two years, you are well aware that using money from your sales to make purchases directly on Mercari has not been possible.
Instead, to make a purchase, California sellers had to transfer the sales balances from Mercari to their bank account, and then transfer money from their bank to PayPal. Once PayPal had the money, the purchase could be made on Mercari via PayPal.
It was a tedious, lengthy process that required a minimum of a two weeks to complete. Of course that meant shopping on Mercari from California was simply not something many sellers wanted to do, if for no other reason than the process to make it possible.
Sellers on YouTube and in Facebook Groups asked about how to use their balances on Mercari continuously, and full blown complaint specific topic threads had become the normal.
Today is the day after Michael Jackson's 60th birthday. I had been listening for the first time, to some of his previously unreleased music on YouTube. I had always supposed he might have unreleased music, I knew that Prince had tons of it. Sure enough I came across two of the ten post-departure albums that were released.
I wasn't too impressed with most of the releases, but I did take a strong liking to the songs on the Xscape album.
I happened to have a balance sitting in my account from a few recent sales, but like usual I just figured I would have to use my balance in PayPal account. My logic when it comes to PayPal, is if I have to use money from my PayPal account, I might as well shop on eBay where I have a longer return period and will not get penalized if I filed a PayPal return. Instead I decided to look on Mercari instead.
I noticed when checking out, a drop down menu button called "Balance". Being the inquisitive type, I decided I might as well see if it was still blocked, and was surprised when it showed my balance and several related payment options.
Still a little skeptical, I decided to see if it would let me actually complete the transaction and to my surprise, it did.
While i can only confirm at the time of this article announcement that using the balance was possible via Mercari's new website.
This is actually only my second purchase on Mercari for the previously stated reasons. Not only because of the two-week multi-transfer process to get money from my Mercari sales to PayPal, but also because my first purchase on Mercari was really, really bad. It was for a brand new bike rack to be used on the back of one of my fleet delivery bikes and it was shipped in an old dumpster dived box with no bubble wrap or other protection.
The box had a hole in it and the product was poking out. They had used a damp dumpster dived box. Not good.
It was just easier and my confidence higher to shop on eBay. I have bought and sold on eBay for 14 years and though I have lost money from bad sellers, eBay always ended up making it right. Once they gave me several hundred dollars on a used computer that fried two days after receiving it and the seller had already deposited the payment and spent it. As a shopper, I like to know I am going to be able to get resolve and a fair solution if their is a problem and the product fails immediately.
As a seller on Mercari, similar to eBay, I want to have as much confidence with the marketplace I shop on as I have when I sell on it. Thus the reason I decided to make my second purchase on Mercari.
Unfortunately, Mercari still lags behind in announcing changes on its marketplace. That means, it takes articles like this one, seller posts about changes to Facebook, and YouTube videos from channels like SellerThink to get the word out that balances can now be used in California and other states that had been blocked.
Great news and a move that will eventually increase sales on Mercari from California and the other previously balance blocked states.