Tag: 解決法

Trouble is almost inevitable when buying and selling on Mercari.
I’ve done over 100 transactions myself, and the other day I ran into my first real problem.

What I bought was a coffee machine, and some of its functions didn’t work.
When I contacted the seller, they said they had checked that it worked properly before listing it and had had no problems using it.

Mercari’s FAQ has an entry titled “The item I received is different from the description / is broken.”
However, it basically says that the seller and buyer should discuss the matter between themselves, and for returns it describes agreeing on who pays the return shipping and then cancelling the transaction.

In other words, the transaction guide makes it feel like your only options are to return the broken item or accept it as is.

Depending on the item, though, only some functions may be broken while everything else works fine.
And if those functions aren’t that important to you,
there are times when you’d rather not pay full price but would be happy with a discount.

In that case, you can arrange a partial refund.
You can’t do it unilaterally, but if you reach an agreement with the other party you can contact Mercari’s support office.

In my own case, I proposed a partial refund and sent an inquiry to the support office.
They replied that the buyer and seller should decide the refund amount between themselves and then contact them again through the inquiry form with that amount.

Once we agreed and settled on a refund amount, I reported it, the partial refund went through without a hitch, and the transaction was completed.

The support office responded very quickly—from the time I told them I wanted to arrange a partial refund, it took only about a day to decide the amount and receive the refund.

Problems on Mercari can happen no matter how careful you are.

When something goes wrong in a transaction on Mercari, you have to negotiate with the other party and settle it there; the lack of a fixed protocol or procedure on Mercari’s side was quite confusing at first.
In my case the other party was very reliable, so resolving the issue went very smoothly.

Apparently, if you can’t get in touch with the other party, you can also have the transaction forcibly closed by contacting Mercari’s support office.

Incidentally, for the coffee machine I bought, I was refunded about 40% of the purchase price.
But after the transaction closed, I took it apart to see if I could fix it and found a water leak, so I decided it was dangerous to use and threw it away.

In hindsight, maybe I should have just returned it…

When you swap a PC’s HDD for an SSD, reapply thermal paste, or try to fix a broken appliance or piece of furniture yourself, it’s all too easy to lose the screws.

Once you lose a screw, you have to buy a replacement at a hardware store, and finding one that fits exactly is no easy task.
I lost a screw myself when I tried to repair a Switch Pro Controller, and ended up having to go buy one.

In recent years, electronic components circulating in the Chinese market have become available through AliExpress, Wish, and similar sites, and junk items are now easy to pick up on flea market apps like Mercari. As a result, far more people are trying their hand at repairs themselves.
With COVID keeping people at home for longer stretches, I think this trend has only accelerated.

Still, keeping track of screws is a basic part of fixing anything—and, I’d argue, one of the most important.
So I’d like to share how I manage screws when repairing junk items.

You can make this with a magnetic sheet with an adhesive backing and a clear tray, both available at a hundred-yen shop.
When I bought mine, the magnetic sheets were in the stationery section and the clear trays were in the storage section.

Just cut the magnetic sheet to a suitable size and stick it on—that’s all there is to it.

Stackable trays work even better: stacking them in the order you disassembled the device makes it easy to tell which screws came from where.
Being able to keep small parts alongside the screws is another selling point.

It’s easy to put together, so give it a try.