Vinted Pro Launches In UK - Will Disgruntled eBay Sellers Switch Marketplaces?
As competition for UK non-new in season and second-hand merchandise heats up, Vinted launches Vinted Pro, allowing business resellers of clothing, toys, tech accessories, homewares and more to set up shop on the platform.
Previously, Vinted had been a strictly peer to peer consumer selling marketplace that strictly forbid commercial sellers. But that's all changed with Vinted Pro and most importantly - sales on the site will be completely free for business sellers!
Here's what we know so far:
You can become a Pro seller on Vinted if you’re a sole trader (entrepreneur), a charity, or a registered company incorporated in Italy, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, Belgium, or the UK - unfortunately it's not available in the US (yet).
Registration details
Once you register for Vinted Pro, you'll be asked to provide additional details about your business:
- For sole traders
- Business registration number (BRN)
- Registered business name
- VAT number (if your business has one)
- Business representative details
- Business address
- For charities or registered companies
- Business representative details
- Registered business name
- Business address
- Tax Identification Number
- Business Registration Number
- Enter your profile details (such as your display name and contact details)
- Provide the documents requested to complete the Know Your Customer (KYC) / Know Your Business (KYB) process.
Sellers must also agree to the Vinted Pro terms of use, and Vinted Pro terms of sale, which will require (among other things) allowing the buyer to return an item within 14 days of receipt.
Once completed, a “Pro” badge will be applied next to your name on your profile and item pages and you can add additional sellers policies (if any) which can complement the standard terms of sale with additional points on item returns, refunds, and more.
According the the FAQ, selling with Vinted Pro is entirely free and you can list as many second-hand items as you like at no cost - though there may be additional fees for added services to boost visibility.
Other than that, the standard Buyer Protection fees will be applied and charged to the buyer at checkout.
Vinted Pro allows businesses to list items in the following categories:
- Women’s, men’s, and children’s clothing, footwear, and accessories
- Children’s toys, furniture, and childcare equipment
- Tech accessories (e.g. headphones, smart watches, phone cases)
- Homeware (e.g. textiles, tableware, home accessories, seasonal & party decorations)
- Entertainment goods (e.g. books, video game consoles and games, board games and puzzles, music, and video items)
- Pet care items (e.g. pets’ clothing, accessories, bedding, and toys)
Vinted is also supporting API access for large volume Pro sellers to seamlessly integrate their catalogues with the platform.
The move is no doubt shaking things up amongst small business resellers in the UK who are growing increasingly fed up with selling on eBay in particular.
eBay UK faced heated questions at their recent in person seller conference, where business merchants aired frustration about favoritism and benefits that only apply to private sellers.
Liz Morton
Youtuber Reseller George revealed that a seller challenged eBay staff about the fee structure with private sellers being charged no fees vs businesses in clothing categories, receiving applause from fellow sellers when she said she would be moving her listings to a competing marketplace :
So at the Fashion Workshop where it's just basically clothing...let's just say that there was a bit of a to-do. Basically someone asked about you know the fee situation between private and business and this one woman basically said said we show you so much loyalty and we get nothing in return.
She said when Vinted Pro comes out, there's nothing that you're offering to incentivize me to stay, so I'm going to move over to Vinted full time and she got a round of applause and the poor like speaker was like I'll pass that on to management...did not know what to do after that.
To add insult to injury, eBay did not let on that they were about to drop a huge bombshell, making private sales in the UK fee-free across all categories except Motors, in a clear maneuver to avoid facing business seller wrath over the decision in person at the event.
Instead, they made the announcement via press release and media appearances on October 1st.
Liz Morton
Some sellers have even pointed to the notice quietly tucked in eBay's 8-K filing yesterday announcing Buyer Fees coming in 2025, saying it shows these plans had been in the works for months and thus would have been well known to executives like Chief Commercial Officer, eBay UK Sholto Mee when they presented at the eBay UK Open event - they just simply chose not to say anything.
Since the news dropped, the eBay UK community and social media has been flooded with complaints about how the new policy creates an uneven playing field, especially with longstanding problems of eBay not enforcing strict compliance on definitions of "private" vs "business" seller with many less than honest traders taking advantage of the situation.
rare_treat
I still find this unbelievable. Business listings paying through the nose with fes and having to use promtion fees to try and stay noticed, yet so called private are totaly fee free. On what possible logic is this fair?
I feel like I've been dumped as a business seller. I'm mortified. I'm actually experienceing greif, all five stages. But I'm not sure I can ever reach acceptance.
What an absolute horse kick in the teeth. I'm physically depressed.
Sellers also took to the weekly community chat with eBay staff to voice their opinions about the changes, with some even directly referencing plans to move to Vinted Pro.
community-teamebay
With the new free to sell for all private sellers offering yet more incentives and rewards to private sellers (both genuine and business sellers looking to exploit free listings) there is now more business sellers on the site particularly the smaller ones looking to either cease trading or move over to other platforms that offer far greater incentives for businesses.
I must add that I and nobody else has any issue with real private sellers getting free listings to drive traffic to the site.
However Private sellers both real and fake can now undercut small business sellers due to the savings they make on costs to sell, meaning an already difficult selling market is made all the more difficult. I myself have not been on here long (2 months) and i'm already looking at other platforms that will look after its registered and compliant business sellers, not hinder them.
Vinted pro is now live offering free listings for businesses along with many other platforms such as Amazon, Etsy, hosting your own website etc. Can you tell me what is the incentive now for a small business to continue to operate on this platform when all that is promised to them in return is a clamp down on fraudulent returns and on false private sellers which are not rewards, these are standard things eBay should be doing anyway.
I feel really unsupported as a business seller especially now private sellers pay no fees and i have to directly complete with these " private sellers " one for example has 3500 items listed ... with vinted pro going live with no fees for business sellers why shouldnt i just move my business to vinted ?
Youtuber Retro Reselling provided commentary for BBC Radio4 on the subject, giving voice to business seller concerns about the new fee-free eBay UK private selling policy.
I can see how it should hopefully improve it because people are or have
been flocking away for past couple of years.The example I always use is my own mom. She did try and sell a bit on eBay previously, just our own stuff like her sofa, some clothes, and always found it tricky and then the fees as well so it gets expensive.
She actually moved over to Vinted and she hasn't turned back and even with these changes I think the ease of use and everything with Vinted I don't think she's likely to come back either being bit of a technophobe.
So yeah I can see the good and bad points but for business sellers we see it as sort of being a bit unfair. Obiously we do make the majority of the fees for eBay. Like myself, September my fees were £1,200 to pay eBay to sell for a month.
Obviously I've made money I've paid the mortgage today thanks to eBay for the majority of it...£1,200 in fees and there's no sort of incentive like offers or things to keep us happy and keep us chugging away on eBay.
eBay Fashion GM Kirsty Keoghan was also involved in the BBC segment, but completely dodged the presenter's very direct questions about business seller concerns. (Begins around the 37 minute mark)
Kirsty Keoghan, if you were really interested in helping the secondhand Market why wouldn't you give someone like George who is selling secondhand you know mid-century furniture all that kind of thing why wouldn't you help grow his business you know cut his fees a bit?
Keoghan responded:
So we're trying to just make sure that we give all of our sellers as much
support to grow their business as possible. I mean in an ideal world everyone would like not to have fees but you know ultimately we are a business.And so that's why we try to create the best possible experiences for our business sellers, our consumer sellers, who actually have very different needs.
So our consumer sellers I think like Jason said there'll be some people that just want to clear out stuff, you know they might be moving house...
Presenter Winifred Robinson pushed back on Keoghan's answer, saying that often people selling second hand items on the platform are businesses, they may be small, but that private sellers do still directly compete against them and now have an advantage with no selling fees.
There are some people who are small businesses, they're the people he's supplying...they're small businesses they might be very small but there they are businesses.
But Keoghan stuck to the prepared talking points of quoting eBay statistics showing consumer sellers also buy twice as much on the platform as non-sellers and "a lot" of those sales go to businesses sellers (without of course providing any kind of details about what "a lot" really means.)
Yeah and what we do with those small businesses is we give them one to one coaching we give them tools, there are lots of access to different exposure on the site that only those business sellers would get to help them be successful.
But ultimately eBay is not successful if our our sellers are not successful, so it's in our interest to make sure that we are really trying to drive the overall site, get as many people coming and as many people selling but as I said before if you sell on eBay as a consumer you buy twice as much and a lot of those items that you then go on to buy are from business sellers so this is really going to help to fuel the growth of business sellers.
That line clearly isn't working to quell eBay business seller concerns and ire over the situation, with many saying they are rushing to apply for Vinted Pro today.
Retro Reselling also posted video about Vinted Pro later in the day.
Are you planning to move some or all of your eBay sales to Vinted Pro? I'd love to hear from you! Leave a comment below or contact VAR.
