Are sellers penalized for cancellations requested by the buyer?
I just did a cancellation for the first time and got this notice, but I as the seller was not the one who initiated the cancellation. The buyer was.
Sale was made at about 9am this morning. I boxed up the items and was about to walk out the door to drop it at the post office shortly after 1pm when I looked at my Mercari messages and saw the buyer had just minutes previously sent a message asking if they could cancel the order because they’d just been told someone was going to gift it to them. A little annoying but not the end of the world. Since I hadn’t shipped it yet I told them I’d accept a cancellation request if they sent it, thinking I didn’t want to initiate it myself and risk being penalized, but I got this message anyway.
“We discourage cancellations…high cancellation rates will appear publicly on sellers profiles.” ????? Why would a buyer-initiated cancellation appear on my profile and not theirs? I could have been an a**hole and pretended I didn’t see their message until after I shipped it, but cancelling it was a very easy fix and the nice thing to do.
Is Mercari penalizing sellers for buyer-initiated cancellations too or do you think this is just standard notice that goes out the first time any cancellation happens while only penalizing seller-initiated ones?