Where the campaign is being felt
Each pin is a Vinted user who has added themselves to the map. Add your city and country to be counted.
Last updated: 8 July 2026 · 1,909 responses · average rating 1.42/5
The headline numbers
(1,133 of 1,909 respondents)
(623 — 55% of bans escalate)
(771 respondents)
(1,230 respondents)
Supporting numbers
- Scammed: 417 (21.8%) — roughly 1 in 5.
- Vinted actually helped resolve it: 19 people out of 417 scammed users — 4.6%. 371 (89%) say Vinted did nothing. This is the single most damning number in the dataset.
- Got an irrelevant CS response: 1,457 (76.3%) — combined with "ignored," that means the overwhelming majority of users who reached CS got either silence or a useless reply.
- Stopped using Vinted entirely: 292 (15.3%) — and many more in free-text say they're moving to eBay, Etsy or Depop.
- Rating distribution: 77.1% gave 1 star, 10.9% gave 2 stars — 88% are 1–2 stars. Average rating: 1.42 out of 5.
- User type: The overwhelming majority are both buyers and sellers, not resellers — which kills the "it's only resellers complaining" narrative.
Money lost banding (of the 605 who quantified a loss)
- Under £10: 69
- £10–£50: 233
- £50–£100: 144
- £100–£500: 98
- £500+: 61
At least 303 respondents have lost £50 or more, and 159 have lost over £100. Using midpoints of the bands (and a conservative £750 for the £500+ tier), that's roughly £95,000–£109,000 in self-reported losses across this sample — and that's only counting people who put a number on it. Several free-text responses reference losses in the thousands or tens of thousands from banned Pro accounts and frozen trading income.
The patterns driving the damage
1. The Pro Account Trap (the most damaging pattern)
Users get a "commercial selling" restriction → Vinted tells them they must convert to Pro → they convert, complete HMRC/sole trader registration → then get banned again for commercial selling on their Pro account. Dozens of respondents describe this exact loop.
Several state Vinted later admitted "it was a mistake," reinstated them, and banned them again within hours. Account restrictions are routinely lifted only to be reapplied the same day, sometimes for the same alleged breach. Users describe the cycle as impossible to interpret and impossible to plan around.
This is structurally incoherent — Pro accounts exist for commercial activity — and it's destroying small businesses (one respondent quotes ~£15,000 in lost income, another £1,200 from a single 7-day ban).
2. The Counterfeit Bot Catastrophe
The AI is flagging mainstream high-street items as counterfeit and issuing permanent bans, often within minutes of listing, with no human review. Items flagged include:
Primark, New Look, M&S (multiple), H&M, Tu (Sainsbury's), Tesco F&F, Matalan (including a plain Matalan t-shirt), Mango, Shein, Peacocks, Bonmarché, North Face, Superdry, Boden, Oh Polly, White Company, Pandora, Ralph Lauren, Carhartt, Fred Perry, Adidas, Nike, Uggs, Vibram, Gucci (genuine, with receipts), Canada Goose (with receipts), and one case of a Monet costume necklace flagged because the bot apparently confused it with Monet the painter.
Several users report the same item was previously bought through Vinted's own verification, then flagged when relisted.
The classifier is failing across categories too. Multiple users report bans for allegedly "listing open cosmetics" when the item was a piece of clothing — the AI misidentifying the item type entirely.
Bans are also being triggered by ordinary edits to existing listings. Users report accounts restricted the moment they change a price or update a description on an item that had been live and viewable for weeks. Any interaction with the listing appears to re-trigger the moderation pipeline.
3. The Customer Service Vacuum
"AI bots," "copy and paste," "automated responses," "no human" now appears in the majority of responses — over 1,450 individual users. When users do get a reply, three in four say it doesn't actually address their issue. Appeals quoted at 120 hours routinely take 2–6 weeks or never resolve. One respondent's appeal denial was signed off with paw print emojis.
Customer service replies systematically fail to explain the specific reason. Users report that responses never quote the section of the Terms & Conditions relied on, never identify the specific listing or behaviour that triggered the ban, and never reference the individual account facts — leaving users to guess which of dozens of rules they may have breached, or whether any rule was breached at all.
Multiple users have submitted Subject Access Requests (Art. 15 GDPR) and Art. 22 challenges to automated decisioning — this is escalating into a regulatory exposure issue.
4. Asymmetric "Buyer Protection"
The protection fee is functionally a tax — almost no respondent who needed it actually received protection. The pattern:
- Buyer claims item fake/damaged/not received → Vinted refunds buyer and lets them keep the item → seller loses both stock and money.
- Buyer receives genuinely misdescribed item → must pay return postage themselves.
- Sellers report scam playbooks: AI-generated "damage" photos, claims of empty boxes (with photos of different packaging than was sent), wear-then-return on dresses for weddings.
Money lost reported: 303 respondents have lost £50 or more; 61 have lost over £500; several report five-figure losses from banned Pro accounts. Total self-reported losses across the sample now exceed £95,000 — and that only counts the people who put a number on it.
5. Courier / Locker Black Hole
Inpost, Evri, Relay and Yodel parcels going missing with no recourse for either side. Vinted ping-pongs users between themselves and the courier. 35-day investigation windows that frequently expire with no resolution.
Secondary signals worth noting
Algorithm collapse
Multiple respondents in the last week of data (mid-June 2026) report sales going from 60–70 a week to under 10 — "dead." Suggests a recent ranking change.
Sizing change rage
The new grouped sizing (M12-14, 20-22) is universally hated and driving buyer confusion and returns.
Reporting system inverted
Users report fakes or scammers → no action. Users get reported maliciously by a buyer they declined → instant ban.
Exodus signal
People are primarily returning to eBay as a safer, more stable platform.