When a mystery package encased inside a Pampers wrapper arrived on Sophie’s doorstep, she wondered if it was someone’s idea of a joke. Or, depending on what was inside, if she’d run afoul of her worst enemy. No, she quickly discovered: it was actually the second-hand T-shirt she’d bought off Vinted. Just, for some reason, wrapped as confusingly as possible.
Think of Vinted as a modernised, mobile app version of eBay, where you can barter with strangers over pre-owned clothes and accessories. Sounds easy, right? If only it were that straightforward. Everyone who’s used the app will have at least one bizarre tale, like the buyer who received second-hand jewellery inside a Fruit Shoot bottle, or another whose parcel was delayed as the seller was too “distraught” over Molly-Mae Hague and Tommy Fury’s breakup to mail it on time. Some have even encountered dirty socks for sale for £5 a pop.
I began using Vinted in 2022, when I learnt that the company – unlike its biggest competitor Depop – doesn’t take a cut of my sales. Since switching to Vinted, I’ve made more than £1,000 selling my pre-owned clothes and, generally, I’ve had an extremely positive experience. The site is much easier to use than Depop or eBay, since it generates a digital packing label and automatically calculates the price of postage before charging it to the buyer. In recent months, though, I’ve noticed that Vinted users have developed a slight decorum problem – social boundaries and common decency have been thrown out of the window entirely.
I have received passive-aggressive ALL CAPS messages from a disgruntled buyer annoyed that the parcel didn’t arrive in time for their special occasion – this despite the fact that I have no control over the several delivery companies that Vinted operates with. I’ve had someone claim that the item I sent was filled with holes, even though I sent it in perfect condition. In another instance, a prospective buyer complained that I didn’t reply to their messages quickly enough, so bombarded me with endless “?????” until I did.
Sophie tells me that, aside from the nappy incident, her interactions with Vinted users have been relatively normal. But the prickly and strange encounters have stood out. “I’ve had people message me demanding that I ship the item the same day because they need it the day after, even though I have a day job,” she says. “I find that people can be quite bossy in general… you wouldn’t treat an actual store employee like that, but I think people just hide behind screens.”
Some stories are worse than others. Rhiannon Picton-James tells me she ordered a second-hand cardholder for £20 on Vinted, one that was originally from the luxury brand Osprey and seemed like a bargain at the time. However, things went awry when the parcel arrived containing a broken Gucci watch, sans wallet. The buyer admitted they had accidentally sent the incorrect item, but they weren’t cordial about rectifying their mistake.
“The woman sent me a barrage of messages saying she’d reported me to the police and registered the item as stolen,” says Rhiannon. “She said that if I ever take the watch anywhere to get the battery changed, they will know I’m a thief!” Vinted also couldn’t help her, as the transaction window had expired. Rhiannon sent the watch back to the seller’s home address, with the expectation that she would get the cardholder she had ordered. When it did arrive, four weeks later, it was discoloured and falling apart. “It was useless so it went straight in the bin,” says Rhiannon. “I loathe fast fashion, but I wished I’d just bought one in H&M instead of all of the commotion.” The Independent has reached out to Vinted for comment.
The fact that these transactions take place online, and without any face-to-face interaction, means there isn’t much to discourage people from behaving poorly, or making up a lie to excuse their bad service. The less serious and more meme-worthy of these incidents are documented on the viral Instagram account @dmdrama, which shares screenshots of the most unhinged conversations between buyers and sellers on the app.
The (albeit unverified) exchanges shared on the Instagram account have included outlandish excuses for not posting parcels on time, from someone’s boyfriend getting his “finger stuck in a can of lemonade” to a woman “getting trapped in a PureGym security pod for more than five hours”. In another conversation posted on the account, a prospective buyer is seen politely enquiring about the measurements for a skirt, to which the seller responds: “Can’t – booking Magaluf.” For buyers and sellers, this sometimes funny and sometimes deeply uncomfortable overfamiliarity is baked into the Vinted operation.
The company was founded in Lithuania in 2008 by Milda Mitkutė and Justas Janauskas, after Mitkutė realised she needed a way to sell her surplus clothes. In its formative years, Vinted largely flew under the radar in the shadow of eBay and Depop, but it’s recently witnessed exponential growth. In 2020 and 2021, the company operated at a loss, but by 2023, it posted net profits of €17.8m, with revenues increasing by 61 per cent.
In order to compete with Vinted, eBay has slashed its transaction fees, and the “Vinted effect” has been seen more widely across the second-hand industry, with Depop also introducing no-fee days on a regular basis. Today, the market for used fashion is valued in the tens of billions of dollars a year in Asia, North America and Europe, according to a recent report from US-based second-hand retailer ThredUp. In the UK, consumers spent £2.4bn on second-hand clothes and shoes last year, with around half of them buying something pre-worn, according to a new study. In fact, Vinted has become so successful that high-fashion stylists and designers are using the app to source their pieces. At Paris Fashion Week in September, a designer working for the French luxury label Coperni reportedly purchased a vintage Donald Duck T-shirt for just €8 (£6.71) on Vinted, haggling the price down from €9. That T-shirt was sent down the runway the following day.
Commercially, Vinted is a success, but the paradox of user-to-user digital marketplaces is that users are trusted to be reasonable people who won’t take advantage of one another. As Rhiannon’s Gucci watch ordeal demonstrates, it can be difficult to strike that balance. The company does its best to tame its sometimes feral users, outlining that sellers must send their items in sturdy outer packaging, like a cardboard box, using appropriate inner packaging like “bubble wrap, foam, paper, newspaper, or corrugated material to protect the item”. It also prohibits inappropriate behaviour, including posting “insulting comments, harassing other members, or acting phishy [when someone tricks you into sharing your personal information to scam you]”. But there’s no way for Vinted to screen every single conversation or transaction to see who’s telling the truth in a knotty dispute.
There’s a funny side to these interactions, or the improvised forms of packaging that leave us perplexed next to our letterboxes; it’s why @dmdrama has thousands of followers, after all. But some people also operate in this online space as if there were no rules at all – transforming a valuable platform into a lawless wasteland. There might not be a reward for how nice and professional you are to someone who’s buying your T-shirt, but surely there’s no harm in trying?
