Vinted mystery. Can anyone explain the scam here?

[CrackOfYawn]

Recently I’ve noticed that in the early hours of the morning loads of designer bags appear in my recommended feed (Mulberry especially) The bags appear all in good used condition according to the pics. They are all priced at the exact same low amount. This is normally around the £6-£9 mark but always very specific amounts like eg £9.37. The sellers all have different names but all are made up of random letters and all have no reviews.
Now obviously I’m not a dafty, I know a Mulberry bag selling for under a tenner honks of a scam but I’m a curious fecker so I start favouriting them to see what happens. They seem to last until the morning and then suddenly vanish.
Yesterday there were stacks of them so I reported half a dozen. Vinted just sent feedback on the reports, saying on 3 of them that they had taken action and on 3 of them the item had been removed before they could view.
Thing is, I’m mystified how this can be a scam? You don’t get paid on Vinted until the buyer receives and accepts they’re happy with the item so how do these scammers make money out of this?

I've noticed it with Roka
Couldn't sleep the other night and at 2am they all appeared. BNWT £6.18 seller had no feedback
I watched a couple. By morning they are removed. They are marked as removed not sold. Each morning there are more and then they get removed
I don't get the scam either

I feel for this once from a seller that had no reviews. It was just a standard baby item, nothing that would usually stand out as an obvious scam. It was a pain trying to get the money back off Vinted. I guess they rely on people forgetting to chase it up at the right time, easy to do when you have a busy life.

Buying drugs? Unlikely to be money laundering for such small amounts, but it's definitely not about purchasing a fake bag or something perfume.

I put a wedding dress on FB marketplace. I got one man who told me in great detail how he wanted it for his wedding. Then after asking a few questions, asked if he could come round to my house and try it on.

I explained what the scam is above. It's not drugs.

Oo keep us updated. There’s dozens of them on my feed this morning, all Mulberry bags listed under Firepits. I’ve reported 6 or 7 of them then got bored, I doubt Vinted will be grateful.

I expect we’ll see more and more of these type of scams - relatively small amounts of money at stake for each individual transaction, but systematically mass generated and following identical patterns.

AI has made it really easy for entire workflows to be automated. So a scammer doesn’t need to spend ages manually setting up lots of different accounts, creating sales pitches, marking things as sent etc. A well “trained” ai bot will do it all for them.

So even if only a small percentage of the scams works out the scammer will be raking it in. It’s spam on steroids.

I wonder if it’s a scam linked to the postage, as it’s the only thing they are getting before the account is deleted.
seller marks item as sent, probably through their own shop/ outlet etc, then gets paid for handling the item. It’s probably only a few pence but it all adds up.

Well done! This totally checks out.

Oooh hadn't thought of bots! Yes, perhaps this is it.

The worst thing is my entire recommended for you list is now the same scam.

Just as I am still recovering from saving a few items for my 92 year old mum and my entire recommended list assumed for weeks I was a size 16 and likely in my dotage.

Same. I cannot believe Vinted are doing fuck all about it. It would be so easy to start some sort of verification for new accounts, or an "I'm not a robot" check for new listings until you've got a certain amount of positive feedback.

@ShittyHottieexactly!
Just checked out my own stats, 250+ reviews and 5* I imagine going forward that reassurance will be quite valuable and new sellers will struggle initially.

I’ve heard back on 3 of the ones I reported this am. They say 2 had already been removed before they could investigate and that the 3rd one isn’t breaking any guidelines and helpfully suggested I just block them 🙄 really? It’d be nigh on impossible to block all of them because they change user names every day.
I also noticed today that the nearly all have badges now as well. Frequent Uploads one is expected I guess but the Soeedy Shipper badge would suggest they are actually sending stuff out.
Like others, my recommended feed is now pretty much unusable cos it’s literally full of £9.35 bag scammers! So frustrating

Noticed typo, should say Speedy Shipper but think I’ll let that stand as seedy shipper 🤣

The scam is they bulk list hundreds of items across hundreds of spam accounts for random prices, they send a fake shipping label or send a piece of paper in the post. Then they rely on a few people to either manually mark as received or it will track as received and some people will forget to accept the order and the seller gets paid.

Yes I imagine it’s linked to the postage.

And buyers won’t be able to cancel if they get excited by a bargain and buy before thinking/ checking out the seller rating because buyers can only cancel before items are marked as dispatched (and these items are being marked as dispatched straight away).

“Speedy shipper” makes sense if they immediately mark items as sent! Ties in completely with @ShittyHottie ’s explanation above

This has really ramped up in the last two days. My thread is absolutely swamped with fakes. Thanks for the explanation on postage as it was seriously bugging me. It’s making Vinted unusable. I’ve reported loads and got automated responses just saying the items have been removed. Clearly bot activity. You’d think Vinted might be a bit more concerned that sincere users are being caught up in it but guess they will only start to worry if their own numbers start to fall as people are turned off the site.

Yep, their fake and impossibly fast shipping labels are actually earning them a Vinted badge that lends them credibility. Disgusting.

I had this too. On an artipoppe baby carrier, had been watching them them for days so when one popped up at 97 I bought before realizing the username and no feedback. I asked vinted to cancel which they did and refunded but the "seller" said it had been posted and I had the evri tracking that "had received it" but nothing ever came. I got my money back but I think the scam is that people forget as it's only two days to raise a claim after maximum postage time.

I always wonder how they get it scanned on to evri? Do the scammers work for an evri drop off point? Ultimately I'm presuming vinted would claim money back from evri if they have proof of postage?

I guess Vinted will lose out on sales and trust. To be fair I had never previously checked reviews before purchasing but will now. Pretty useless generic response.

But I disputed the transaction and got my full £90 and postage back so the seller lost out on the batteries and the sheer hassle

only think I can think of is if the case isn’t reported in two days the sale automatically completes?

I had some Teva sandals come up in my recommended this morning, then another pair with identical photos but different user name. They got sold. I did notice they didn't come up in my saved searches because there was no size in the category, so I wondered if it is bots doing the listing.

Oh no I have purchased x