Mali Osmelak never imagined that selling clothes on Vinted would end with a court claim to recover almost £6,000.
She started trading on the platform to earn an income while managing Crohn’s disease and caring for her four-year-old daughter.
But when she became a professional seller in March, she was unable to complete Vinted’s verification process, leaving thousands of pounds inaccessible in her Vinted wallet. After several weeks of trying to resolve the issue, Mali took legal action.
Vinted says sellers may be asked to complete verification checks to comply with legal and regulatory requirements and 98% of transactions are completed smoothly without needing help from its support team.
Vinted is hugely popular in the UK with 17 million users. The online marketplace does not charge a fee to sellers for listing on there.
After the BBC reported on users whose accounts had been suspended or banned, dozens of people got in touch describing difficulties accessing money held in their Vinted wallets.
Mali joined Vinted in 2024 as a side-hustle. Demand for her second-hand gymwear grew rapidly and, within months, she had set up a limited company to expand the business.
This year she signed up for a Vinted Pro seller account – designed for people who want to sell a high volume of items and who are registered as a business.
Within weeks she had generated almost £6,000 in sales. But when she tried to withdraw the money, she discovered her account had been restricted and was told she needed to complete a verification process.
“I thought, ‘That’s OK. It’s not rocket science,'” she says. “I’d set up the business with the help of an accountant and had all the information they needed.”
Mali says she spotted an error Vinted had made with her name and she flagged it with Vinted, but “again nothing was done and the verification kept failing”. She found herself stuck in a cycle of automated responses.
In an effort to break the deadlock, she also contacted Mangopay, the payments company that at the time operated Vinted sellers’ wallets and processed transactions on the platform. She was directed back to Vinted.
After eight weeks without access to the money, Mali decided to take both companies to the small claims court, spending £455 in court fees.
