Come and tell me all about Vinted, Depop and other selling sites, especially if you've left Ebay

[tectonicplates]

Right. I think I might finally be ready to move away from EBay after many years. I mainly sell clothes. I'm interested in Vinted, Depop or any other sites where I can:

• Post things to people, not meeting up in person
• Set my price and not have people sending me piss-take offers
• Have the website treat buyers fairly (i.e. not automatically taking the buyer's side if there's a dispute)
• Lets me keep the listing up for as long as I need, and doesn't charge me to relist once a month
• A website where people actually buy stuff! I'm more interested in achieving a good price rather than making a quick sale, but at the same time in looking for somewhere that actually has customers as Ebay is so slow these days

Facebook selling is a waste of time - I've only sold two items in a few years as there seem to be a lot of time wasters.

I'm interested to hear all about your experiences.

None of them are that busy right now in my opinion. I was a top seller on depop for several years, and that seems to have died over the past year or so. Never sold anything on Vinted either. I guess it depends on what you are selling but the market is pretty saturated. I’ve had to get a real job after 10 years!

Oh sorry if I didn't make it clear - I'm not trying to run a business. I'm just a personal seller with about fifteen items of clothing to sell. On Ebay I've been selling about one item per month if I'm lucky.

Ah I can't answer all your questions as only got a Vinted account at the beginning of March but...
It's free to sell things, additional fees are only for extras e.g you can pay to 'bump' your item but that's optional.
You can mail things directly to people without having to meet up in person. They also have the 'my Hermes' option which is handy if you have a printer (this lets the buyer purchase their own shipping label which you print out and stick to the package, then drop the parcel off at your local My Hermes drop off).
People do sometimes message asking if you'll sell an item for lower. A good side of this is that if you do actually lower your price, everyone who has 'favourited' your item will get a notification that the price has dropped.
I don't think they charge you to keep your listing up forever. At least I hope not.
People do buy things but from what I see people sell really cheap, so it depends on what you're selling. I have sold 4 items so far but all were for very cheap.
It's a really good app, much easier to use than EBay, and the best thing is that it encourages people to buy bundles, where they can select multiple items and - usually but at the discretion of the seller - get a discount, e.g 5 items for 10% off.
Sorry if this reply is a bit incoherent I'm tired and up feeding DD!

Am also interested. I'm finding eBay now is good for buyers, but not so good for selling. Prices are pretty low. Have also given up with Facebook selling. Takes too long sorting out collection times and that's if anyone actually sees your listing before it disappears down the page.

Hmm. I would like to get a fair price for things. I think £20 is fair for a Boden dress, for example. Wouldn't want to end up selling it for a fiver.

Do you have to be a "creative" or "arty" person to sell on Depop? I'm not one of those, I don't like Instagram culture and it looks quite intimidating. I was reading some advice pages but it all seems to be from business sellers, telling you to use hashtags, making sure to like other people's posts to gain visibility etc. Do you have to do all this stuff if you're just a personal seller selling a few old clothes? It looks scary. Is Vinted more "normal" and not so much for the cool people?

As a personal seller on Depop, how much work do you have to do once you've put your listings up? Can you just leave them there, or do you constantly have to be networking and looking at other people's stuff?

Also I don't understand the seller fees on Vinted. It looks a bit complicated.

Any advice or experience welcome!

On depop as there are so many items you need to bump them, just edit and save you don’t have to change anything. It just means they come up higher in the search results if someone looks for “black dress” for example. Use lots of keywords / hashtags. You will only sell things that appeal to a young audience, ie Topshop rather than Boden.

Hmm. I do actually have some stuff from Boden and Monsoon so maybe Depop isn't for me. I'd heard that Vinted might be better for that but it looks so complicated.

More comments welcome!

Hmm. I would like to get a fair price for things. I think £20 is fair for a Boden dress, for example. Wouldn't want to end up selling it for a fiver

I think your expectations might be unrealistic. As a buyer I would not expect to pay £20 for 2nd hand Boden.
Maybe £7 for a used Boden dress?

One reason for lower price is with eBay or similar sites the buyer is taking a big risk as to what condition the item is actually in. I’ve bought several items described as good or excellent condition but I wouldn’t have said they were good or excellent myself! (Although not bad enough to return, open a dispute etc)

Also I don’t consider Monsoon and Boden to be particularly desirable brands

Beyond the likes of Reiss, Whistles, Hobbs, LK Bennett etc I don’t think people will pay much at all for 2nd hand high street clothes.

I’ve recently sold on eBay with success but was pricing much lower eg £8 for jojo maman Bebe maternity dress , £10 for Isabella Oliver maternity dress etc

In the past year I've sold a Monsoon skirt and a Hobbs dress, both for £15 each.

I find the rule of thumb is that the total price (including postage) for a good condition used item is about one-third of the new price, including any discounts.

For me there is also a psychological barrier of going much over £20 as you are always taking a bit of a chance with an Ebay purchase and I only spend what I can afford to lose.

Well most Boden dresses cost about £60, so £20 (all my prices are including postage) is a third of that.

True, but some dresses are a bit older, or the colour’s a bit too bright, or the pattern’s a bit wacky, or...

I searched for sold listings for a Boden jersey dress - similar to one currently selling for £60 - mint condition ones were selling for £30, but some sold for £16, £12, £9 or even £4.

I tend to put my things on at a fixed price, then knock off a bit if I am not getting any watchers. It generally seems to work for me, touch wood.

There are so many sales and discounts these days that I would not assume £60 was the actual price paid for the dress new - unless it was one of the best sellers, a particularly in demand dress that season.

Anyway, this post has kind of gone off topic. I'm more interested in experiences of Vinted or Depop in terms of how easy they are to use, are they less annoying than Ebay etc.

Following with interest as I've found Ebay to be a bit slow too of late. I've not tried facebook selling sites but considering the trouble i'm having getting people to pick stuff I've put on Freecycle up when its FREE I'm not holding my breath.

TBH I've not heard of any of these apps so my stuff is probably not the kind of stuff people who use them would want to buy! middle aged goth clothes

One thing I find so annoying is that we're sometimes advised to wear the clothes ourselves to photograph them. FFS, I'm selling them because I can't fit into them! If they still fitted, I'd be keeping most of them and not selling. It's so unrealistic to expect people to stay the same size their whole lives.

I used to get my skinny friend to wear them!

I'm just bumping this thread as I'm yet again thinning of making the move. EBay have annoyed me again today!

Hi. I know it’s old thread but I wonder how did you get on selling on Depop. I found Depop more like artistic rare items. So far I bought two items on Depop, both very rare and exclusive.