Is there a way to “negotiate” a price with a seller on Mercari when using a proxy service?
I’m using Buyee. A few weeks ago there was a piece on Mercari where the buyer had said they would be willing to negotiate price. I contacted Buyee to see if they would ask they seller to take less, and they said they didn’t do that.
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Buyee won’t do it, but I’ve contacted sellers directly via Twitter 
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Well, if you join Mercari you can ask sellers questions… but you not only need to know Japanese (most of the time), it’s completely disconnected from the account that will do the buying… Unless they just lower the auction listing price and you happen to notice it in time to buy before someone else does?
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my previous mercari proxy (hoyoyo) did, but stopped it (it was obvious that it was too time-consuming for the agents). I guess it was implemented by mistake (you had to enter a price for an item, and if the entered price was lower than the mercari offer, they tried to negotiate).
I read with discomfort the observation by a local (RPD?), that in the meantime price negotiations established as standard at mercari.
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I heard back from ZenMarket. They said they can’t offer any price negotiation. However, they are aware of this nature and they are considering a future feature to allow for buyer-seller communication.
I have to find a good translator that’s free. I’ve seen some people say Excite.co.jp has better translation accuracy than Google translate. But that was a few years ago. Knowing Google, they’re always working on improvements.
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deepl is the best (free) for english (from/to german). it has japanese, but i don’t know if it’s better there, too.
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Vielen danke!
I’m not conversational in German, but I still remember a range of phrases from my time there. So do you find Deepl does a better translation job from English to German than Google Translate?
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Yes, deepl is much better. Most translations can be directly used without manual corrections.
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If anyone wants to ask for a price down, just copy paste these.
For any price down
コメント失礼します。
こちらの商品は購入を考えていますがお値下げ可能でしょうか？
よろしくお願いします。
Or for a specific offer
コメント失礼します。
こちらの商品は〇〇〇〇円で購入希望ですが可能でしょうか？値下げしてくれれば即決します。
よろしくお願いします。
Change the circles for the desired yen amount.
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Thanks, Diego.
So in essence, you use your own account created on Mercari to request a lower price, then watch intently for the seller to lower it, hopefully getting to buy it in time with your proxy service of choice. Is that about right?
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Id say so. If the proxy service has a low time delay, I think it’s feasible. Otherwise, it may be hard to pull off…
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‘Papago’ is an interesting app to use for English to Japanese translation.
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Interesting results. Japanese provided by Diego:
コメント失礼します。
こちらの商品は〇〇〇〇円で購入希望ですが可能でしょうか？値下げしてくれれば即決します。
よろしくお願いします。
According to Deepl, it says:
Excuse my comment.
I would like to purchase this item for ¥10000, is that possible? I will settle immediately if you reduce the price.
Thank you very much.
According to Translate.com:
Excuse me for the comment. I would like to purchase this product for 〇0000 yen, is it possible? If you lower the price, I will decide immediately. Thank you in advance.
According to Google Translate:
Sorry for the comment.
I would like to purchase this product for 〇〇〇〇 yen. Is it possible? If you lower the price, I will buy it immediately.
thank you.
Seems like Google is a little more nuanced here, especially with the last sentence. Funny how Deepl interpreted the “〇” string as ¥10000, even using the yen symbol (which it loses, as 2500 becomes “2,500 yen.”).