Vinted sucks
Rant from a consumer perspective.
Transaction cancelled
I'd say 10-20% of my Vinted purchases fall through because the seller never reacts and doesn't send anything out. Vinted sets a time limit for shipping - 7 or 10 days? And then automatically cancels the transaction and refunds the payment. Cool, that it works easily and automatically. But it's very frustrating. While I wait for my purchase, similar items I saved are being sold and I end up with zero pants after I scrolled through hundreds and tried to make a reasonable decision.
Fees
Of course there's the ridiculous price increase since we're basically forced to use "the system". Shipping costs are completely in transparent and much higher then they would be if you send packages privately. Some odd service fee. Summed up I end up paying around 10€ for a 4€ item. Often puts me off of even buying.
(Human?) Error
Wrong item sent. Item is much smaller than expected. Item in worse condition than expected. Mistakes that happen. More people selling, people selling more - there's bound to be more error. I suspect that the whole second hand market is blowing up, people are getting ambitious, send out a lot of stuff and make mistakes. I just got sent the wrong package and the seller told me to just file a ticket with the system. We probably could have resolved the issue privately, but ok, let's make it more complicated and no y2k hoop earrings for me once again. I don't even know how often I've tried to get some for the last couple months but apparently that wish of mine is cursed. What I'm saying is, maybe people are getting a bit too ambitious with their private sales business. But we all gotta make some money, I get it.
Bigger Sizes
Of course it was never easy to find bigger sizes second-hand and shouldn't it be easier since Vinted is so much bigger now? More sellers, more things. I can buy stuff from Italy, and France, and the Netherlands, yay! Unfortunately they don't have fat people in Italy and France. (Not sure about the Netherlands.) So whatever they try to sell me from there is most likely not going to fit me. Size 44 doesn't mean the same in all of Europe. So I need to somehow check where something's coming from and that's surprisingly more difficult than you should think. You can't filter buy country. So around half of the stuff I bought since they opened transactions EU wide doesn't fit me.
Algorithm
It's here as well. We can never falter, never rest. We need to push our algorithm, need to make our offerings appealing and right and palatable. Don't ever sell anything without the system because they know and you'll get shadow-banned!
Awesome.
I still have this pile of clothes lying around and I'm planning on trying to sell it. But I'm not optimistic. It's not straight-sized stuff, it's not the latest fashion trends and I'm not a Vinted influencer. Might be easier to throw it away.
#rant #experience #internet
