I wanted to know if anyone else has recently received the questionnaire sent by Vinted concerning « commercial sales » and reports for mass selling.
I answered it, and honestly, the questions seemed extremely biased.
From memory, there were questions like:
How many reports for « mass selling » do you estimate you make per month? (Already a very questionable question, encouraging snitching )
Do you easily recognize a commercial seller?
Does the presence of « pro » sellers bother you?
Do you think there are too many new items on Vinted?
Do commercial sellers harm the experience of private individuals?
In short, the whole questionnaire really gave the impression of trying to measure how favorable users would be to a large wave of restrictions or account deletions considered « professional. »
When you already see the numerous bans and sanctions that have been happening for months for « commercial sales » or « mass selling, » sometimes after simple abusive reports, it does raise questions about the direction the platform is taking.
I mostly got the impression that Vinted was trying to « gauge » its users to see if its aggressive policy against pro sellers was well accepted by the community. A bit like a marketing/directional study before making new decisions.
Did you receive it too?
And if so, did you have the same impression when answering the questionnaire?
I also did this survey yesterday!!! It was ironic because I am a business seller.
What I thought it showed was that vinted are panicking about how their users are seeing commercial sellers. The questions were mostly about perception towards business sellers and whether you notice more or less pro sellers since the last three months.. I suspect they have made changes to the algorithm around that and are trying to measure the response amongst users.
I made it very clear that I felt there needs to be both business sellers and personal users - it’s great for competition and offers something for everyone.
Further irony is that I am currently on a restriction - mistakenly - reason given is my photos not being my own… I joined this forum to talk to others about similar situations as am considering legal routes to recover lost earnings if there is no change.
The survey reassured me in some ways - that there is a collection of peoples’ opinions at least; and it offered some insight into what Vinted thinks of commercial sellers. They are clearly frightened of becoming Etsy imo where they are flooded with Chinese sellers / drop shipping tactics; and rightly so. But there should be a middle ground where well functioning businesses can operate without fear of illegal interference from vinted..
I didn’t get it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the approach is the opposite of your feeling: trying to confirm that Vinted should not be limited to individuals but should open up more to pros.
Why do I lean towards a scenario where Vinted moves towards greater acceptance of pros:
Vinted is a business and they are going all out to be profitable (cf. their ads even on shipping labels… ridiculous ). And pros are definitely a big source of €€€
Vinted was built on sales between individuals, and it’s to protect that image that they haven’t made life easy for pros. But it doesn’t make much sense to fight against people if they are involved in second-hand sales and generate revenue for you.
Time will tell if I’m right or not… but for me, they shouldn’t pit individuals against pros because pros will always have a disadvantage compared to individuals: they have fixed costs and pay taxes.
However, combating new items and undeclared pros seems more relevant to avoid becoming a dropshipping platform.
I made it clear in my answers that I felt pro accounts were a force for good on the platform and listed the following:
great range of products (eg vintage clothing in my case) as businesses have access to suppliers and can source in demand product that doesn’t exist between c2c
good customer service
Competitive pricing because pros are alongside individuals and therefore have to keep their prices down
Can sell / move more product overall as a group (eg we sell 100 pc a week instead of 2) which in the case of used products is great for the planet
can create a sense of community because we build a regular customer base - it’s unlikely between individual users that you’d buy from the same person more than once
If a business user develops a ‘brand’ feeling then they may well be capable of drawing new customers to vinted just for them (initially) - also good for vinted growth
Vinted will know how many items we are likely to sell a month based on consistent statistics, meaning they would be able to predict revenue for a certain chunk of the platform. Very hard to do if you’ve just got 4 million random people. Sometimes they’re selling lots, other times they’re on holiday. Not true with business sellers- they are looking for consistency so in theory if they functioned well on the platform you would know that of your user base , 25% are businesses and therefore they’ll probably sell XX over XX period.
Another major thing to consider is that vinted need to have a ‘professional’ option- not because they necessarily want one, but because the various fiscal regimes set by the government mean that they cannot allow vinted (and other similar platforms) to just let the public sell all their stuff and not declare it. They want a slice. And for that, they say ‘well if you’re selling more than €300, that person is a business’ and therefore vinted have no choice really but to try and set something up that allows them to continue their business whilst their users can operate within the fiscal system. If vinted had no professional option, I suspect many governments would say vinted banned in our country because then essentially it would just be a huge black market on an app. Complex when you think about how many different countries vinted is operating in!!!
At the same time, you don’t need to do a study for that, you just need to look at the history of sales platforms. They all targeted second-hand goods from individuals at the start, then opened up to new items and professionals for their development. But Vinted is resisting more than the previous ones. But at some point they have no choice, otherwise they stagnate.
it’s not really possible to truly dropship on Vinted since we are forced to go through them for shipping, so we are forced to have stock. And new items can be from unsold items or old stock, so it’s possible to be virtuous as well.
Anyway, they need to stop with their stories about big brands. It’s impossible to sell on Vinted at retail prices, so it’s not possible to source from official distributors for current products where the margin won’t exceed 30% even if sold at full price. We can only do clearance sales or buy back old stock.
)
). And pros are definitely a big source of €€€