I am a VC ‘Expert Seller’- Beware: No Customer Service, No Accountability
I have been an expert seller at Vestaire Collective for many years. Recently it has become unbearable to sell on this platform- once I finally receive payments for my sold items (if I ever do!) I will delete my account. It’s decent if you are a buyer. However as a seller it’s awful. Platforms like the RealReal and Vinted are far superior because they take accountability when things go wrong, they issue buyer protection, and customer service is prompt and accessible- plus there is no (exorbitant) fee to list!
Here are only some of the issues w/ VC:
#1. The worst part is getting paid or getting a refund. 8/10 times, the shipping carrier they provide is incompetent: the package is ‘lost’ in transit or cannot be delivered after contacting UPS numerous times! This often goes on for several months. During that time you have to wait. VC takes no responsibility for the loss of a shipped item. They do not update you or notify you if your package is delivered. VC customer service is nonexistent. You are forced to use a “chat” service to ask for help or claim a problem has arisen, and they often will claim that they “don’t have the necessary clearance to give additional information”. Then you must wait within 48 hrs for an email. This email ‘update’ will never arrive.
#2. If you are lucky enough to have your package delivered to a buyer (and have remained patient during a 2+ week limbo period where the buyer forgets to pick it up + 72 hrs where the buyer can claim there’s a ‘problem’), you may or may not receive your money! You are lucky if you receive an email! In that case you have to go back to a chat room and ask them what’s going on! And most of the time they don’t know!
#3 As a Seller, you are penalized and your ranking/visibility on the site is deducted if you don’t ship within 1-2 days. Sometimes life happens- but if you send just one package later than 48hrs, you are penalized. But if the buyer takes 3 weeks to pick up said package, there are no repercussions.
#4 Commission: Some items are not worth listing. If the item is 20€ , you make less than 5€. They take huge cuts, and you can be banned from communicating this fact with buyers. They censor any information you try to provide to buyers to make a sale. And you get no customer service for that commission rate. So you feel perpetually scammed.
#5 Listing: They want all the photos on a white backdrop. Fine. But often it depends on the day or the person reviewing your submission that allows something to be uploaded. I have submitted the same item with the same photos only days apart after having it rejected the first time, and the second time it is accepted and put on the site. They can arbitrarily reject your submission for a million different reasons: they claim the price you set is too high, the photos are not good enough, or they give no explanation at all. In the meantime all the work you put into that submission is erased and lost, and you must start again.
Overall it’s a frustrating, unjust and honestly an incompetent platform. I have sold on Poshmark, Depop, Mercari, Vinted, etc and this platform is enormously more flawed than the rest. So many illogical issues that actually reduce the number of sales. They are making bundles doing nothing and treating secondhand sellers like trash.
I also know many people who have purchased designer items for thousands of dollars who later discovered (after taking the item into the designer headquarters for review) that they have been scammed and the items are not authentic - this is after the item was “reviewed” and “verified by our ‘team’” as VC loves to claim with unwarranted authority. Would like to know who their ‘Team’ is comprised of. They seem to be as unreliable and ditzy as they come.
I am hoping that Kering will take these complaints into account and improve VC.
My advice would be to only buy here if you are looking for something very specific and are already familiar with a brand so that you know what is real. Otherwise beware!
26 April 2021
Unprompted review