My Vinted Review: Is Vinted Any Good? Is It Safe to Buy From?

I'll admit that I haven't used Vinted a whole lot, but based on my limited experience, while I admit the platform can be extremely frustrating to use at times, I still intend to use it a heck of a lot more moving forward, and think it's one of the best websites I've used to buy secondhand items.

It's difficult to explain why without getting into the nitty gritty, so I'll absolutely be discussing this here.

Preamble: Addressing the Plethora of Negative Reviews About Vinted

That being said, before I get into things, I wanted to address the fact that if you look up "Vinted Reviews" on Google, you'll immediately encounter a bunch of one or two star reviews from furious shoppers who had terrible experiences.

Do I think they're fabricated? Absolutely not. I assume there are are lot of bad actors on the Vinted platform. Both sellers and buyers.

At the same time, I also assume there are many more legitimate people - individuals whose job it is absolutely not to sell you the products they list on Vinted.

The bulk of the sellers on Vinted are just trying to bring in some spare cash on the side of their real job.

And these people can piss you off with how long it takes them to ship, their lack of professionalism, lack of communication, and their seemingly uncanny ability to take a vacation at the absolute worst possible time - but they are just regular people after all, so this is absolutely to be expected.

I'd like to point out something you almost certainly already know and understand: the types of people who are motivated to leave a review are not often those who had a neutral or even good/very good experience with a product (in this case, the product being the Vinted platform).

It's those that had a god awful experience who are most highly motivated to leave reviews.

Anyone who had expectations about buying from Vinted (especially if those expectations were that it would be something like buying from eBay or Etsy - I assure you it is not), and had those expectations be shattered into a million pieces because they were unmet in a million different ways, is much more likely to leave a review about Vinted because - well they're furious.

They want to warn other people off since they had a bad experience. And rightly so. But that doesn't mean that's the only experience to be had on the platform.

There are so many people using Vinted in Portugal that if I hear someone say they sell clothes they no longer want on the side to make some extra money (yes, this comes up in conversation), I immediately ask if it's on Vinted, and thus far the answer has always been a resounding, "Yes."

I can't imagine that many sellers, that many buyers, Vinted infultrating the culture to this extent, and it being overall such a terrible platform that it should never be used.

I have to assume that for every negative review, there have to be at least ten dozen people who have had positive or neutral reviews who didn't bother to write them.

Because otherwise, no one would be using this platform to buy or sell their secondhand goods on. Let alone half the country as it seems to be here.

My Vinted Review: Why Vinted Is Infuriating, Yet I’ll 100% Continue to Use It to Buy Secondhand Items

Now that that's out of the way, here's my take on the nitty gritty.

First, I'll start by listing as many of the negatives about my experience that come to mind...

Some Reasons Why I Feel Vinted Sucks

I've managed to complete only around half of the transactions I intended on making, which is exceptionally frustrating because a number of these were items I really wanted and couldn't find again easily.

A number of the transactions were cancelled on the seller's end or automatically - no communication from seller so I have no idea about the true reason behind the cancellation.

A number of the transactions were created as a group by me and never approved for sale by the seller.

Sometimes people told me they were on vacation and couldn't do approve it yet, but never ever got around to approving the transaction.

Other times crickets, with zero communication ever from the seller with regards to why the grouped items were never approved to become a transaction.

Again, super frustrating.

Vinted's parcel tracking sometimes works, sometimes doesn't - even when the seller is trying to be co-operative.

I've had instances where pieces I've bought were in worse condition than they looked online - sometimes my fault, not really a problem, and part in parcel with secondhand shopping in general, just thought I'd mention.

I've had sellers ask me if I'm reselling items, and if I happen to be, to please not use their images (which have them modelling their own clothing), to which I asked if this was common and heard back that apparently it is and there are a number of creepy/annoying/bad practice folks on Vinted, both sellers and buyers.

That's not nice to hear, but this is from someone who sells quite well on Vinted, and so if it wasn't worth it for her to be on the platform, she certainly wouldn't continue to sell her clothes on there.

I'm not sure I would buy anything truly expensive on Vinted, and if I did, I would definitely be much more careful, asking for more information, more pictures, etc, so I could try to guage the product better.

I think the limit I would spend on an item is much lower, comparitively speaking, to how much I would be willing to spend on other platforms.

But to me Vinted is for buying budget items, not luxury items, which transitions me perfectly into the next section...

Reasons Why I'll Continue to Use Vinted Nonetheless

As I mentioned, I feel as though Vinted's ideal use is to buy cheap items.

I don't think I would ever buy a luxury item on Vinted - and definitely I would not buy one that's easily or commonly knocked off.

I would feel very bad being scammed on an expensive purchase, and I think there are a lot more bad actors in this regard.

But buying secondhand items, from fast fashion brands that I buy from anyway, this is a great use of the platform.

I can easily find countless people selling the same item - often even if it's still being sold in stores - and pick and choose from those with the best price to those who have other items for sale that I think would suit me, so I can group purchases together.

Vinted is my equivalent to thrift store shopping, which I don't think really exists here in Portugal, unless you count the one charity store here my husband and I regularly frequent to the point where almost all our furniture is from there - Remar. Check it out if you're into antiques and live in Portugal.

But I use this store for furniture, secondhand books, and other bits and bobs. I wouldn't use them for clothing, and I'm starting to buy more and more odd ceramics that I use as pots to plant in, which I think I'll turn to Vinted for, as there's so much more variety.

There are deals and steals to be had on Vinted, which I spoke about in this article that outlined tips for using Vinted to buy secondhand items.

Men's clothes and accessories are exceptionally cheap - my theory is because it's their wives who are selling their stuff, they want the closet space, so they just want the clothes out.

Women's attire - less so, especially if it's not a fast fashion brand.

Although it is possible to negotiate a price down, these items start off at much higher price points than menswear, even if the menswear is from an even better brand, and is even better quality.

All this to say, when I shop on Vinted, I assume there are bad actors, and I am as careful as I can be, but I'm not going to stop using the platform even if I have a bad experience or two because it's really ideal for a certain kind of buy.

It's really something you have to try for yourself, I would say, and if you're making sure to buy things that are not all that expensive, the risk is almost always worth taking.