Poor buyer protection policies on Vinted

I made the mistake of using Vinted recently, on the assumption that it would be similar to eBay in terms of buyer protection.

Nope. Not only does the platform appear to have far more scammers, but the seller validation and buyer protection policies are astonishingly poor.

Scammers will either put nothing into a Royal Mail delivery locker (that never arrives), or ship you an empty envelope.

If the item never arrives, Vinted will let you launch a claim after 25 business (!) days. This waiting period persists even if the seller has been banned from Vinted. Not only that, but at T+25 business days, you have a window of only 2 (non-business) days to launch your claim, otherwise the transaction is marked as succesful.

I'm surprised there isn't more uproar about how poor this is. I'd argue it's bordering on abusive since Vinted are enjoying a free loan of my money, which they will clearly hold on to (unjustly enriching themselves) if I didn't launch the claim in time. And I doubt it would survive a chargeback to a credit card.

Do all the eBay competitors have such hostile policies, and why are such companies permitted to operate in the UK?

Vinted, FB Marketplace and other non-ebay sites are just a hornets nest of scammers - steer well away! Dont buy anything from any of these sites that can't afford not to get!

Depends what you're buying I'm guessing; I've not really had much trouble on the platform but might just be what I'm buying/looking for. I usually check the seller profiles before buying, and the images uploaded usually help too (if someone has only put stock images of original retailer listings this is suspicious).

I've not had scam concerns with eBay, however the platform has become increasingly less useful in recent years from my experience. Some items are harder to find, and/or international sellers have to be filtered out more, to name a couple.

I have though wondered if one way of reviving the high street is for so much of the online retail space becomes scam-laden, that one can only trust what they can physically touch/inspect before buying.

DiscoSteve said:

Vinted, FB Marketplace and other non-ebay sites are just a hornets nest of scammers - steer well away! Dont buy anything from any of these sites that can't afford not to get!

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So true. The only online purchases I make are from established retailers and Amazon, but only if I can't buy something elsewhere and the item is sold and dispatched by Amazon.

brad465 said:

Depends what you're buying I'm guessing; I've not really had much trouble on the platform but might just be what I'm buying/looking for. I usually check the seller profiles before buying, and the images uploaded usually help too (if someone has only put stock images of original retailer listings this is suspicious).

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Completely agree. I've made 259 (my email has a folder for every year of receipts) purchases this year to date on Vinted and i've not had one issue out of all of them.

MY wife uses Vinted (a lot . . . really a lot . . .) for 2nd hand clothing etc
Anyway, she has a lot of issues with people who send items that are "selectively" photographed so when the item turns up you then get to see the marks and scuffs that they really should have took pictures of and put the true condition of the item on their listing.
As per post #3, she has an issue with people using catalogue/retailer images to sell items - and religiously reports such listings to Vinted. There is pretty much a 100% result rate of such listings being removed after reporting, so Vinted do take the odd thing seriously (although it may only be the odd thing . . .)

Darandio said:

Completely agree. I've made 259 (my email has a folder for every year of receipts) purchases this year to date on Vinted and i've not had one issue out of all of them.

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My experience is the same. Between us, my wife and I have probably made 50-60 Vinted purchases and not had any issues with any of them.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Wednesday at 16:59 ==

eyebrook1961 said:

As per post #3, she has an issue with people using catalogue/retailer images to sell items - and religiously reports such listings to Vinted.

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These are generally obvious though, I've seen them a few times and regard them as a red flag to avoid that seller. I apply the same logic to any eBay listings of used items that don't have pics of the actual item for sale.

gg1 said:

These are generally obvious though, I've seen them a few times and regard them as a red flag to avoid that seller. I apply the same logic to any eBay listings of used items that don't have pics of the actual item for sale.

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Indeed. Anybody that uses stock images couldn't be arsed to take a picture, it's likely they also can't be arsed to describe the condition properly, pack the item securely or send at all. Avoid. In the category I buy there's an increasing amount of AI images being used, more than often by people with zero feedback but they're easy to spot.

Anyone buying just needs to take their time, it's very easy to spot something which will cause an issue.

Darandio said:

Indeed. Anybody that uses stock images couldn't be arsed to take a picture, it's likely they also can't be arsed to describe the condition properly, pack the item securely or send at all. Avoid. In the category I buy there's an increasing amount of AI images being used, more than often by people with zero feedback but they're easy to spot.

Anyone buying just needs to take their time, it's very easy to spot something which will cause an issue.

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I also tend to avoid items that have descriptions clearly AI-written, which do not really describe the item properly and are long-winded waffle, even if what's being sold is genuine.

Thanks for the info. I never got a good vibe from them. Will stick to eBay or vintage shops!

DiscoSteve said:

Vinted, FB Marketplace and other non-ebay sites are just a hornets nest of scammers - steer well away! Dont buy anything from any of these sites that can't afford not to get!

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Every few years I have something I think hey, I'll list this on Facebook Marketplace so someone local can buy it.

Every few years I regret my life choices.

The amount of absolute time-wasting for obvious scammers is just not worth the £30 I'm trying to get for an old desk. I prefer to just give it away on Freecycle. You still sometimes get timewasters from people who don't turn up but it's far less.