Mercari is one of the top online marketplaces within the secondhand shopping community. New features are being released frequently to increase the ease of use for both shoppers and sellers.
After all, Mercari takes a fee from each sale, so it only makes sense the platform is trying to promote increased revenue. One of Mercari’s newer features is the ability to make bundle offers. And let me tell you, it's one of the best things to ever happen for Mercari buyers and sellers.
Prior to Mercari offering this new feature, sellers would have to manually create a new listing to bundle for a buyer. This caused excess time and friction for both the buyer and seller.
However, those days are gone with the Mercari bundle feature. Now you’re probably wondering, “How do I bundle on Mercari?”
In this post, we will discuss how to bundle on Mercari, strategies to increase bundle sales, how to increase customer satisfaction, and more Mercari insider tips.
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Selling On Mercari
Mercari is advertised as a secondhand online marketplace that originated in Japan. It has grown in popularity in many areas worldwide, with an average of 20 million monthly active users.
Luckily, Mercari is one of the easier platforms to get started on with minimal learning curves. This is unlike eBay, which we go over in our article about Mercari vs eBay.
On Mercari, users can buy and sell both second-hand items along with new items. Categories range within a wide variety of items from clothing items, to home goods and beauty products, wooden toys, trading cards, Halloween costumes, textbooks, and even electronics and pet items. Due to this variety, there is something for each and every buyer on the platform.
Sometimes, there are even multiple items that the buyer wants and/or needs from one specific seller. If that is the case, creating a bundle is the best option for both the buyer and the seller. So now let's go over how to bundle on Mercari.
Bundle On Mercari: Step By Step
How To Bundle On Mercari
- Open the Mercari mobile app.
At this time, bundle offers are only supported on the Mercari app. This does not apply to the Mercari website.
- Navigate to the listing that you like.
Use the search bar and scroll through the search results until you find what you are looking for
- Tap “Add to cart.”
- Tap on the seller's profile.
Either tap “View profile” or click on their profile picture.
- Scroll through their closet until you find another listing that you like.
- Once you've found it, tap “Add to cart” again.
- Navigate to your cart in the top right corner of your Mercari account.
- Tap “Bundle items and make offer.”
- Set your offer price.
- Tap review offer.
- Confirm your address and payment method.
This includes your credit card, debit card, bank account, or PayPal account - whichever payment method you prefer
- Tap “Send offer.”
Bundling Details You Should Know
After the offer is sent by the buyer, the seller has 24 hours to accept, decline, or counteroffer. If the seller does not respond to the offer, it will disappear.
As a buyer, you can send the offer again, message the seller, or send another offer. If the seller counters, the buyer and seller can go back and forth negotiating. After all, you are both trying to come to a reasonable price that works for both parties.
As a seller, if you do not want to get caught up in the back and forth, send your lowest price as a counter and notify the buyer that this is the lowest price you will consider.
Buyers will not be charged until the offer is accepted.
Mercari allows bundles with quantities of 2-10. Mercari buyers cannot bundle more than 10 items at one time.
Although typically few and far between, at times sellers can make a full price sale of a bundle, even without the negotiation. This means the buyer purchases outright without sending an offer first.
Once the items are purchased, the seller will ship all of the items in a single package. This helps both the buyer and the seller save time and money when it comes to shipping.
New Vs Old Way Of Bundling
So how did Mercari bundle offers work before this new and improved feature? Well, it took extra manual labor and time from the seller.
In order to bundle, the seller and/or buyer would have to reach out if a user was interested in multiple items. The buyer would have to outline which items they want and send them in the chat between the buyer and seller.
All negotiations would have to take place within this same chat. If the buyer and seller came to strike a deal, then the seller would have to manually create the bundle listing.
This involved either modifying an existing listing or creating a new listing, adding photos of the items to the new or modified listing, adding a description for each specific item, changing the shipping fees, and ultimately waiting for the buyer to purchase it.
Although sellers technically do not have to go through all of those steps, it is a good practice in order to protect yourself as a seller. If the bundle arrived and the buyer claimed something was off, you would not have the proof in your listing if you do not cover all of your bases.
Plus, many times buyers would still ghost the seller, even after all of that work. But, I am glad to say the days of manual bundle offers on Mercari are no more. Now, buyers and sellers can bundle with minimal effort.
Mercari Bundles: Seller Strategies
As we’re learning about how to bundle on Mercari, we have to talk about the notable limitation of Mercari's bundle offer structure. At this time, sellers are not able to initiate sending a bundle offer.
This means that only buyers can initiate and send a bundle offer.
This is unlike Poshmark, which allows sellers to add items to a bundle if one user liked multiple of their items. This practice can really help generate sales, so hopefully Mercari will make this update in future versions of their bundle feature.
In the meantime, sellers can add a line to their Mercari descriptions to promote the awareness of sending bundle offers.
Here are a few examples of the easiest ways to attract sellers to bundling:
“Now accepting bundle offers! Explore my closet for other items and let’s negotiate an amazing bundle deal.”
“Like what you see? Feel free to check out my closet for more similar items! Add them to your cart and send me a bundle offer - we’ll work out an irresistible deal together.”
“Are you finding multiple items that you love? I will help create a personalized package just for you - I offer crazy good bundle discounts for my buyers!”
Hopefully, by adding a blurb to each item description, it will increase awareness and use of bundle offers and deals on Mercari. All of the above phrases can be modified to specifically cater to Mercari users that are looking for a specific brand name or style.
Shipping
When a buyer creates a bundle, it will always show as buyer-paid shipping. That is unless the seller chooses to ship on their own.
Since items are being bundled, this will result in an increased weight of the overall package. Due to that, Mercari automatically calculates the shipping weight and price for you.
Mercari takes the weight of all of the individual items in the bundle, adds them up to get the total weight, and selects the most affordable of all of the shipping options offered. This is where sellers have to pay close attention.
Typically shipping with USPS is the cheapest and easiest option for smaller, lighter items. Plus, shipping with USPS comes with the extra convenience of being able to schedule a porch pick-up, meaning you don’t even need to leave your house to ship your package.
If multiple items are bundled, the weight can begin to increase quickly. This may result in the USPS option becoming too expensive, resulting in Mercari picking UPS or FedEx as the shipping method.
While this is typically not a big deal, sellers have to be aware and plan/coordinate going to a UPS or FedEx location if that is the shipping method for the bundle offer they accept.
Shipping Insurance
Mercari prepaid labels offer shipping protection on an amount of up to $200 for any single purchase. This limit unfortunately also applies to bundle purchases.
This means that sellers may want to pursue purchasing additional insurance if their bundle includes one or many expensive items. If not, and if something were to happen to the bundle, the seller would only be reimbursed up to $200.
Packing Up The Items
As a part of learning how to bundle on Mercari, it is important to also have some tips for after you’ve landed the sale.
Sellers can also protect themselves by implementing a few quick and easy tactics when packaging up their bundled items. First, it can be beneficial to give the buyer an elevated customer service experience by packaging everything nicely.
First, it is important to find the appropriate-sized box. This is one that is not too large where things may shift around in transit, but also not too small where the items are being smashed.
Additionally, you may want to wrap each item individually. Ideally, put the items in some type of eco-friendly and recyclable material. For any breakables or fragile items, take extra care to secure the items and wrap them with bubble wrap.
Although this is not required, it may be a good idea to record a video of you packaging up all of the items, sealing the box, and attaching the shipping label. It can be easy for a buyer to claim that an item did not arrive with their bundle deal.
This way, both parties are held accountable and as a seller, you can have peace of mind. Another way to prove that all items are in fact included in the box is by having the package weighed and scanned in person.
Whether you are shipping with USPS, UPS, or FedEx, it may be advantageous to take the item in person to drop it off. That way, the carrier will weigh the item and give you a receipt.
This is another method of proof, showing that all items were included due to the recorded weight of the parcel.
Returns
The same return and refund policy applies to Mercari bundles. Mercari technically does not allow returns, and if they do it is for a very specific reason.
Either the item would have to be not as described in the listing, broken or not working, or proven to be damaged while in transit.
Mercari sellers can still request a return or refund for any of the above issues for their bundle offer. If Mercari approves the return, the buyer is required to return all items within the bundle.
Unfortunately, Mercari does not support partial returns or the ability for buyers to return just one item. As always, it is vital to describe items with great detail, disclosing flaws, and packaging items carefully.
Bundling: Mercari vs Poshmark
There are many similarities between Poshmark and Mercari’s bundle features. First, both types of bundle offerings allow buyers to initiate and send a bundle offer.
Who Can Send Bundle Offers?
On Poshmark, a potential buyer can like or favorite items, or add them to a bundle straightaway. It does not involve adding items to a cart which is unlike Mercari.
As we talked about earlier, Mercari does not allow sellers to initiate bundle offers. However, on Poshmark, sellers are able to send the first offer on a bundle if a user likes multiple of their items.
Bundle Limits
While Mercari limits the number of items in a bundle to 10, Poshmark limits by weight. On Poshmark, buyers are able to add as many items as they would like, however, the weight cannot exceed 10 pounds.
If the weight is over 10 pounds, the buyer and/or seller has to split up the sale into multiple offers.
Shipping and Returns
Poshmark also structures its bundle shipping differently when compared to Mercari. First, sellers can offer either discounted or free shipping on a bundle. Mercari, on the other hand, has a default setting where buyers pay shipping and does not allow sellers to modify or add a shipping discount.
Also on Poshmark, all sales are sent with one shipping method: USPS Priority Mail Flat Rate. any item that is 5 pounds or less is able to be sent with this method. That is why, many times, it is much cheaper to send a bundle offer on Poshmark.
If the package weighs over 5 pounds, the seller has to purchase an upgraded shipping label that is prorated based on the weight.
Poshmark is similar to Mercari when it comes to bundle returns. Both Poshmark and Mercari do not allow partial returns. Therefore, on both platforms, if there is an issue the entire bundle will have to be returned.
As you can see, selling bundles on Poshmark has many perks. If you’re not already selling on that platform, what are you waiting for?
You can use Vendoo to quickly and easily crosslist your inventory from Mercari to Poshmark. Vendoo is my sidekick, and I don’t know where my sales would be without it!
Recap
In this post, we’ve gone over both the old and the new way to bundle on Mercari, tips for sellers for protecting themselves, tips to help increase bundle sales, shipping, returns, and so much more.
Hopefully you can feel confident with some new tools in your toolbox regarding our initial question of, “How do I bundle on Mercari?”
Have you sold or purchased a bundle on Mercari? How was your experience? Comment below!
FAQ
If one item from your Mercari bundle sells, Mercari allows buyers the opportunity to make a revised offer on the new bundle minus the one item that has already sold.
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