You all know how much I love Vinted, but I have to concede that it is not without its faults.
The platform is great, the content is great, the customer protection is pretty good too – but that doesn’t stop the scammers.
It’s true. Sadly, Vinted scams are a thing, and if you don’t know what to look out for it can be easier than you think to get caught out. Any service as successful as Vinted is going to attract scammers, and they try to exploit people using it in several ways.
I think I can credibly call myself a Vinted veteran these days, on the buying side and the selling side, so I have come across most of the common Vinted scams, and I’ll tell you exactly how they work and how to avoid them below.
I’ve split this into scams targeting buyers and scams targeting sellers, so you can skip to whichever section applies to you 😊
Scams Targeting Buyers
Online scams targeting buyers are nothing new. They are almost as old as e-commerce itself. Scammers on Vinted know the platform inside out, and also know how to take advantage of it.
Requesting Off Platform Payments
You would think this is obvious but people still fall for it.
A buyer shows interest in an item, maybe by favouriting it or getting in touch to ask a question or make a lower offer. The fraudulent seller then messages back and suggests taking the sale off the platform (handling it privately).
They might give all sorts of reasons for this, or offer sweeteners like a discount or throwing in something extra to say thank you, but it’s always a scam. You can make any deal sound amazing if you never intend to honour your end of it.
If you agree to go off platform, they will inevitably ask you for an off platform payment, then never send anything. You are essentially just giving away your money.
The simple way to avoid this one is to never use off platform payment methods. Ever. No exceptions.
Counterfeit Items
You get this a lot with football shirts. As a Mum of a football mad 6 year old, I have seen about a gazillion fake football shirts on Vinted. The product code P95985 is a sure fire sign.
To be honest most people know they are buying ‘snide’ kits – they are so accurate that many buyers don’t mind – but when it comes to designer fashion, it’s a different story.
It goes without saying that you should study the images on the listing carefully. Zoom in, check check every bit of it for anything that might give the game away. If the photo’s are bad, minimal, or blurry, ask for more. If the seller won’t provide them, don’t buy the item.
If you have done your due diligence and are spending enough to justify it, you can also use Vinted’s authenticity service. It only costs £10, and the seller sends the item to Vinted, who check it is genuine, then send it on to you once it has been confirmed. Not worth it for a £20 pair of jeans, but if you’re spending hundreds, it’s a good idea.
For cheaper fake goods, there’s only so much you can do. If something turns up and is clearly a knock off, take photos, reject the order, and go through Vinted’s standard procedures to get a refund.
Sending Something Else
This is more common on smaller items that don’t weigh a lot.
The fake seller will list something, accept the sale, then send something else instead. Something worthless but of a similar size and weight, like a few folded newspapers instead of a folded jumper.
This creates a legitimate tracking label via the courier, and Vinted sees the parcel has been shipped and delivered, but they obviously can’t see what was in the parcel. So now it’s your word against the seller’s.
Unless you video yourself opening the package, it can be very hard to prove what has happened. If the seller has sent something a totally different weight, or a package that could never hold the item they were supposed to have sent you may have a chance, but otherwise it can be a real headache.
The only real solution here is to video yourself opening the package so Vinted can see exactly what you saw in the moment you opened the parcel. Of course, you are far less likely to come across this one if you stick to established sellers with lots of positive reviews.
Fake Support and Phishing Emails
This isn’t specific to Vinted, but some scammers use this well known tactic in a targeted way.
You will probably get spam emails claiming to be from Vinted, asking you to log in or reset your password or something like that. However, these are usually very obviously not from Vinted. Even the ‘good’ ones are rubbish.
The golden rule is to never click a link in the email. If you have reason to think the email may be genuine, go to Vinted via your browser (type in the address yourself) so you know you land on the real site. If there is no message in your Vinted inbox similar to the one in your email inbox, it was a scam.
There have been slightly more sophisticate scams though.
For example, you buy something and it never turns up. As soon as you mark a problem with the order on Vinted, the seller gets a notification. The seller is also the scammer of course, so they now put their plan into action. They will send you fake emails from ‘Support’ with detailed information about your order, which they of course know all about because they are the seller as well as the scammer.
This knowledge makes them seem more trustworthy, so they can either proceed to try stealing your details or convince you to move money around etc.
Scams Targeting Sellers
I think Vinted’s customer service is pretty good, but you have to remember that it is the buyers who pay the business, not the sellers. Selling is free on Vinted, but buyers pay for the service, so the company is incentivised to keep the buyers happy over the sellers.
I only say this because scams targeting sellers are arguably more common than those targeting buyers, and Vinted will side with the buyer by default unless you can prove your case. So as a general rule, take lots of photos or even a short video of you sending your item properly packaged and hang on to it until the sale is completed.
Requesting Refund After Completion
Once an item has been delivered, the buyer has 48 hours to accept the item or raise an issue. The sale automatically completes after this time if the buyer doesn’t do it manually.
Sometimes, a buyer will let a sale automatically complete, and then come back to you with an issue and ask for a refund. They will say they were away or something to explain why it took them longer than 48 hours to get in touch.
Since the transaction is completed, in Vinted’s eyes they are no longer involved, so the buyer will ask you to refund them via bank transfer or Paypal. They may even say that they contacted Vinted who told them you need to sort it out between yourselves. If you do this, they will not send the item back and you have no way of getting your money back either.
Vinted can’t help because you refunded them off platform, so you’ve been had.
AI Damage
Ah the joys of modern technology.
Since the AI boom, certain unscrupulous buyers have taken to using artificial intelligence to create photos of the item you sold them with ‘damage’ that doesn’t actually exist.
They then ask for a refund which seems perfectly reasonable going off the photo. But as the seller, you know they are lying.
They are hoping that you refund them without requesting the item be returned. Since the onus is on the seller to prove the item was sent in good condition, the hope is that you will just get bored of the process or not think it is worth fighting your case. In which case, you lose the item and the ‘buyer’ gets it for free.
Item Not Delivered Claim
This is when you sell, package, and post the item, it’s marked as delivered, then the buyer claims the package never arrived.
This is another case where Vinted may find it easier to side with the buyer and issue a refund, so you lose the item and the buyer gets their money back. They rely on you giving up or not having enough evidence to prove you sent the item.
It’s especially difficult to fight your corner if you use a non-integrated delivery service like Royal Mail. The integrated services like Evri and InPost go through Vinted’s platform, so they are automatically tracked and Vinted knows exactly what stage the process is at. If a buyer makes a non-delivery claim Vinted simply look to see if the package was scanned as delivered and say “Yes it was” – case closed.
For non-integrated services this is not the case. They can’t be sure what happened and are more likely to side with the buyer. The solution then, is to not use non-integrated delivery services, or if you do, keep lots of video evidence.
Empty Parcel Claim
The empty parcel claim is not so easily disproven.
It’s simply when a buyer claims you sent them an empty box, hoping Vinted side with them and issue a refund, then they get the item and their money back.
This can happen even with integrated delivery services, so the answer, annoyingly, is to take a video of you wrapping the parcel and another of you posting it. And keep your postage receipts! They often have the weight on which can be good evidence if a ‘package was empty’ complain is made.
There is a Vinted legal department if you ever need to take it that far and talk to someone who really knows what they are doing.