Keeping second-hand at the heart of Vinted: our Trust & Safety lead on the rules behind commercial selling

Aurelija Plėtienė is Vinted's Senior Director of Trust & Safety. Her team decides what can and can't be listed on Vinted, and looks after the people and the technology that keep those rules working across millions of listings a day.

Commercial selling is one of the topics members ask us about most, so we sat down with Aurelija to go through it properly: what the rules actually are, why we have those rules, and what happens behind the scenes.

Part one: what the rules actually are

Let's start right at the beginning. What is commercial selling?

Vinted was created for people to pass on things they no longer wear or use, and for someone else to give those items a new life. That's still at the heart of our platform. So when we talk about commercial selling, we're not talking about members making a bit of money from their own things. Selling items from your wardrobe, your home, or the family clear-out is exactly what Vinted is for.

Commercial selling is when someone uses Vinted less like a second-hand marketplace and more like a business storefront. That typically means buying, sourcing or making items specifically to sell them on at a profit, rather than passing on things you owned.

So selling a lot doesn't make me a commercial seller?

No. Selling a lot doesn't make you a business. If you've had a huge clear-out and you're listing two hundred items from your own wardrobe, that's completely fine.

What makes the difference is intent. So the line isn't about how much you sell, it's about whether you're passing on your own second-hand items or using Vinted to run a business.

Is all commercial selling banned on Vinted?

No, and this is the part that gets misunderstood most. It depends on two questions.

The first is what account you're selling through. We don't allow everyday members to run a business through a personal account. Only Vinted Pro members are allowed to sell for a profit as a business.

The second is what you're selling. Vinted is a second-hand marketplace, so all selling activity must be genuinely centred on second-hand goods, and that applies to everyone, regular sellers and Pro sellers alike.

Get both of these right and you're fine. Most confusion comes from people only answering one of the questions.

Why can't we let all members sell as a business or for a profit?

That isn't us being difficult. It's because businesses have legal obligations that private sellers don't, tax being the obvious one and protections for buyers being another. Registering properly as a Pro seller is how those obligations are met.

Can everyone register as a Pro seller?

Vinted Pro is a free service currently available in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, Portugal, Spain and the UK. You can register as a Pro seller if you're a sole trader, a charity, or a registered business in those countries.

If Vinted Pro isn't currently available in your country, you aren't allowed to sell as a business or on behalf of one. This means that if you're a company, shop, or professional trader, you won't be able to run those commercial operations on Vinted.

Does going Pro mean you can then sell anything you like?

No, and this is the part people often miss. Registering as a Pro seller means you can sell as a business, but it doesn't change what Vinted is for. We're a second-hand marketplace, and that stays true even when you're selling as a business.

So there are things that are off the table for everyone, Pro sellers included. For example, selling mostly new items or multiples of the same new item in your profile isn't allowed, whether they're commercial stock, bought in bulk, from third-party suppliers, or drop-shipped. Brand new handmade items are out too, along with services like rental, repair, customisation or made-to-order work, because they aren't second-hand items at all. We don't allow misleading listings either, so no listing new items as pre-owned, and no misrepresenting an item's condition.

Anything else Pro sellers need to know?

They still have to follow our general rules like everyone else, such as no counterfeits or dangerous goods, or anything else we don't allow under our Catalogue Rules. And because they're businesses, they have extra obligations on top, like offering a 14-day refund window to people who buy from them, and filing taxes correctly.

Part two: why the rules exist

Why not just let businesses sell as many new items as they want? Plenty of marketplaces do.

Because that's not what people come to Vinted for. Our members use Vinted to find a pre-loved jacket with a bit of history to it, not one of fifty identical new ones out of a warehouse.

Vinted started with people selling second-hand clothes to each other, and although we've grown into a lot more categories since, that's still what we are at heart. If we let that slide, we'd end up a different marketplace, and not the one our members chose.

Is there a harm to it beyond the vibe of the place, though?

Yes, and this is the part I'd really want people to take away. Specifically, if a business poses as a regular everyday seller, it's not just unfair to other honest sellers. It's unfair to buyers too. 

When you buy from another member, you know where you stand. But when a business quietly sets up shop and doesn't register as a Pro seller, you think you're buying from a person and you aren't, so you miss out on the protections the law gives you when buying from a business. And they aren't meeting their own obligations either, tax reporting included.

So it isn't only about what Vinted feels like. Members are being short-changed without realising it.

What happens when someone breaks these rules?

We first give them a warning and apply restrictions to their account until they comply with our rules. For a lot of people that's the end of it. They didn't realise they'd crossed a line, they register properly or remove the prohibited listings, and they carry on selling.

In a small number of cases, sellers keep breaking our rules, or carry on with commercial activity that isn't allowed on Vinted, such as selling mostly new items or misrepresenting their conditions, even after registering as a Pro seller. When that happens we may eventually suspend the account, either temporarily or permanently, to protect the marketplace our members love.

Part three: what happens behind the scenes

With the volume Vinted handles, how do you actually find hidden commercial sellers?

There are millions of people using Vinted, so technology has to do a lot of the heavy lifting. We use a combination of trained moderation teams, member reports and detection tools to identify potential breaches, in the same way any large consumer platform does. There's no version of this where a person reads every listing by hand.

But technology doesn't set the rules. My specialised team does, and they're the ones who review and handle the difficult calls, including every single appeal.

Can you tell us how the detection works?

Our teams look at a range of factors and signals, which might include a member's behaviour, their listing patterns and their account history. No single piece of evidence decides a moderation decision on its own.

What I can't share is the specifics of how we weigh all that up. There are bad actors who try to get around our rules, and spelling out the details would only help them, so keeping it back is how we protect everyone else.

What if members don't agree with the moderation decision?

If someone doesn’t agree with our decision, they can appeal. When someone appeals a decision, my specialist team will look at it. It’s rare that something goes wrong - millions of members buy and sell on Vinted every day, and most of them never have a problem at all. But at this scale mistakes do happen, and commercial activity can be a hard judgement call to make, which is exactly why we've put an appeals process in place.

How does the appeals process work?

If a member thinks a decision about their account was wrong, they can appeal using the link in the inbox message or email we send with the decision. Each appeal goes through a manual review process. That means a person from my team looks into the case and the evidence shared, and determines whether the restriction or suspension was correctly applied.

If we find we made a mistake, we reverse the decision and let the member know. If the account did break our rules, the decision stays in place, and the member will be notified too. We don't allow repeat appeals after that, so people deliberately breaking our rules can't keep trying to get their appeal overturned, and every genuine appeal gets the attention it deserves.

Although it only affects a very small number of members, our appeals process exists so we can correct mistakes and make sure no one is left without a way to challenge a decision, and we do want to hear from members when we've got something wrong.

Any last tips for our members?

Have a read of the commercial selling section in our Help Centre, where we provide plenty of tips and guidance for our members. If you're suspicious that a seller isn't complying with our rules, you can let us know using our reporting tools.

And remember, the rules aren't there to catch people out. They're there so that when you buy something on Vinted, you know exactly who you're buying from and what you're getting. That's worth protecting.