Vinted review: Blocking account without warning.

My experience with Vinted was short but painful. My daughter had been using Vinted for a few months for buying and selling without any problems, and I needed some party outfits for a couple of Christmas social occasions I have coming up so I downloaded the app and created an account. This was about 2-3 weeks ago. My experience as a buyer was good and I have no complaints about that. After ordering a few things I thought | would try selling, and this was my downfall. I had 2 Lacoste Tee shirts, which I had bought from the Lacoste shop in the retail outlet in Ashford, Kent. I had only worn them once and decided they didn't suit me so thought selling them would be a good place to start. I uploaded pictures of them (both sides and the label) and listed them for £8 each. This is a very good price for Lacoste and a reasonable price for any brand.

Following this I heard nothing from Vinted. A few days later( Thursday 11th November) I logged into my account to find it had been blocked and a message referring me to my inbox. In my inbox was an alarming message stating that my account had been blocked due to suspicion of fraud and violation of terms and conditions. My initial thought was that this must be an error as I didn't feel I had done anything wrong, so I contacted the customer support asking them to look into it. The reply I received stated that there was no error and their decision was final. This filled me with panic and terror as I genuinely didn't know what | had done wrong and thought someone must have hacked my account or stolen my identity of something. I asked Vinted for more information and the reply just stated the same thing and referred me to the terms and conditions. I had a look at the terms and conditions, but they are extremely lengthy and I had no idea which section I was supposed to be revising, also by then was too distressed to really take it all in. I kept asking vinted for information and kept getting the same inane reply. It started to dawn on me that I was communicating with a robot. as my questions were not being answered and I could find no way for speaking to a human being, so gave up. I spent the rest of the day in a state of anxiety wondering what had gone wrong. I am 62 years old and suffer with IBS and this experience brought on the worst attack I have had in years. I was unable to sleep and so turned to google to see if anyone else had had a similar experience and could throw any light on the matter. There were quite a few comments from people who had been blocked after uploading genuine designer items and I started to realise that my T shirts were probably the problem. I had not received any messages from Vinted telling me that they needed verifying and had no warning before being blocked. I have since referred back to the terms and conditions and the sections on verification are vague and confusing and nowhere does it say that sellers will be blocked for this.

I do not want my account reinstated or any communication from Vinted. Frankly I have no desire to do business with a company which treats it's customers with such contempt. What I do want. is, for Vinted to realise the impact their actions have on people. I have never had so much as a parking violation before and, yet, yesterday I was accused, triad and sentenced for fraud without a chance of a defence. Vinted may be run by robots, but their customers are human beings, some of which may need a bit of help and support whilst using the Vinted app especially first time sellers like myself. No one can be expected to memorise all of the terms and conditions. How difficult would it have been for Vinted to have sent me a polite message warning me that my items needed verification and what the consequences were for failing to comply. If I had received such a message I would have taken the items down as I wouldn't know how to do this verification. I took my T shirts to the charity shop this morning and they were very grateful for them, and as soon as I have received my last delivery from Vinted I will delete the app and put all this behind me. However I would like this complaint to go on record as a warning to other users. I think it is too much to hope that Vinted will take any notice of my concerns or care enough to make any changes, but it would be nice if they did. Thanks for giving me the chance to put my side of the story, it's a shame Vinted didn't do the same.